Cold-Blooded Murder of a Surgeon in Pakistan for Belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Faith
LONDON, May 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --
Dr Mehdi Ali Qamar, a cardiologist from Ohio USA, was in Pakistan to provide free specialist cardiac treatment
The British Ahmadiyya Muslim community is grieving the callous murder of their fellow Dr Mehdi Ali Qamar that occurred in Pakistan on 26th May 2014.
Born in Pakistan, the Canadian-American doctor, who had arrived in Rabwah only two-days earlier to serve voluntarily at the renowned Tahir Heart Institute, was shot and killed at daybreak as he was strolling with his wife and a toddler son outside the historic graveyard where members of his family and elders of the community lay buried.
Dr Qamar was shot with 11 bullets by two assailants on a motorbike leaving him dead on the ground in front of his family.
The murder of Dr Qamar, 50 year old - who is survived by a wife and three young sons - is the latest in a line of target killings of Ahmadi Muslims that accelerated since April 1984 when the then dictator General Zia, amended the country's penal code and declared it a crime for an Ahmadi to call himself a Muslim, a crime punishable by death under the country's blasphemy laws.
In Pakistan extremist religious clerics openly preach hatred against Ahmadis with regularity in mosques and on TV and print media, and Ahmadis have been denied the right to vote.
The National President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in UK, Rafiq Hayat said:
"The Ahmadiyya Muslim community in UK is united in expressing its utter abhorrence at the brutal targeted murder of a surgeon who was on a humanitarian mission in Pakistan.
"We offer our condolences to the family of Dr Qamar, his friends and acquaintances the world over.
"We call upon the authorities in Pakistan to abolish the anti-Ahmadiyya laws in Pakistan, to safeguard the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, and to apprehend the murderers of Dr Qamar and bring them to justice."
An online petition to Rt Hon David Cameron MP, The Prime Minister, to urge him to raise the issue of the anti-Ahmadi laws with the Government of Pakistan and urge it to repeal them, set up three-weeks ago has attracted more than 11,000 signatures. Please read and sign the petition at: http://www.StopThePersecution.org
Learn more about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK at: http://www.loveforallhatredfornone.org
National media contacts are
Basharat Nazir media@ahmadiyya.org.uk Tel +447703-483-384
Mahmood Rafiq Tel +447971-060-962
Share this article