Home Equality & Justice Pakistani Catholic families face eviction from their homes

Pakistani Catholic families face eviction from their homes

Hundreds of Pakistani Christians are facing eviction from their homes after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the houses are on state-owned lands.

The houses of at least 450 Catholic families were reportedly destroyed in the past week while about a thousand more are scheduled to be bulldozed in the coming days.

“This is a civic crisis side by side a human tragedy, and municipal authorities are responding to the civic crisis, but not to the human one,” the online news site Crux quoted Australian priest Robert McCulloch, procurator general of the Missionary Society of St. Columban.




Father McCulloch said there has been a perennial encroachment problem in Pakistan, with people occupying government-owned land.

He said it started in the past 30 or 40 years when people from the Punjab region moved toward the cities.

He said that when people first began to arrive, Christians — predominantly Catholics — began settling in fringes around the city, they settled in temporary shacks that eventually become permanent homes.

“There is no doubt that the land they’re on is encroached,” said the priest.

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“But they have long been connected to the water and gas grids, which gave a sense of stability to the people living there,” he added.

“The fact that they were all paying taxes to representatives of the municipal council in their areas, either over or under the table, made them believe they had some sort of legal claim over the land,” said the priest who lived in Pakistan from 1978 to 2011.

“Encroachment is happening all over the country, but those who suffer are the ones who have no money” to pay off public officials.

He said even the country’s Prime Minister Imran Khan built his mansion on encroached public land in Islamabad.

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