Escalating Discrimination Against Pakistani Christians Through Employment Bias

Pakistani Christians face severe problems due to employment discrimination.

Throughout history, many Christians living in Muslim-majority countries have been subjected to harassment and persecution by government authorities and extremist Muslims, to the extent that in many cases they are even deprived of the most basic citizen rights such as education and employment.

In Iran as well, many Christian citizens, including Armenian Christians and those who have converted from Islam to Christianity, have been continuously subjected to harassment and persecution, and in some cases have been arrested, tortured, imprisoned, and even executed. This issue is not limited to Iran alone, but across all Muslim-majority countries, particularly among extremist Muslims, we witness greater severity of harassment and persecution against Christian citizens.

Reports released from Pakistan, an Islamic and Muslim-majority nation, indicate extreme poverty among the Christian community in that country. Christians in this country constitute the poorest segment of Pakistani society and are subjected to discrimination by the government in many aspects.

The majority of the Christian community in Pakistan is employed in the lowest-level occupations, and due to discrimination in many of their rights, these individuals have no hope for advancement and success in the future. Most Christians in this country work in sanitation services in healthcare facilities, which is considered severe social disgrace in Pakistan.

According to published reports, most job announcements released by government institutions have assigned simple sanitation jobs exclusively to non-Muslims, which a local non-governmental organization called the “Center for Law and Justice” has identified in approximately 300 advertisements regarding this matter.

According to reports from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Christians constitute less than two percent of Pakistan’s population, yet over 80 percent of workers in waste collection, sewage cleaning, street sweeping, and healthcare services are Christian citizens.

The discrimination institutionalized against Christians in this Islamic nation is inflicting great injustice, such that for this year’s Christmas holidays, many sanitation workers not only failed to receive their salaries from the past three months but were forced to take out loans to cover living expenses and meet their families’ needs.