Ahmadis to boycott Pakistan election

Some 200,000 members of the minority Ahmadi sect will not vote in Pakistan's general election to protest their treatment by authorities while none of the political parties have dared to woo the community because of fears of upsetting hardline clerics.
The Ahmadis have been boycotting general elections since 1985, when authorities put them on a separate electoral list after declaring the sect a religious minority.
The National Database and Registration Authority has issued a list of over 150,000 Ahmadi voters but leaders of the community said the figure was closer to 200,000.
According to representatives of the Jamaat-e-Ahmadiya Pakistan, there are about 200,000 Ahmadi voters.

"Since we are not interested in the election process, we hardly bother to get our votes registered," Jamaat-e-Ahmadya official Amir Mahmood told PTI.
As in the past three decades, Ahmadis will not vote in the May 11 general election, he said.

"We will continue boycotting all types of elections till we are included in the joint electorate system like other minorities," Mahmood said.
Asked whether any party had contacted Ahamdi leaders to seek their votes, Mahmood said: "The fear of clerics keeps all parties, including liberal ones like the Pakistan People's Party, at bay."
A PPP leader, who did not want to be named, told PTI: "It's a sensitive issue and I don't want to comment on it."

Ahmadis, who believe the founder of their sect was a prophet, consider themselves Muslim but were declared non-Muslims through a constitutional amendment in 1974.
A decade later, they were barred from proselytising or identifying themselves as Muslims. Some 1.5 million Ahmadis live across Pakistan. Several Ahmadi cemeteries in Punjab province were vandalised last year.
Members of hardline groups destroyed or removed gravestones with Quranic inscriptions.
Police in Lahore removed Quranic inscriptions from several Ahmadi mosques and shops run by members of the community after receiving complaints from the public.
Election registration forms require voters to give their religion and Ahmadis refuse to complete them for fear of being attacked.