The prejudice suffered by the Tai Ji Men for more than twenty years must be denounced to the international community and to international institutions such as the United Nations, so that the international community may urge Taiwan to cease its persecution and comply with international human rights standards.
“religion and spirituality live in the hearts of the believers, but they create communities, and communities cannot exist without places where they can gather. For many religious and spiritual groups, these gathering places do not serve a functional purpose only. Land where devotees gather becomes sacred land. Religion and spirituality live in time and space. They separate portions of time and space from the daily temporal and spatial flow, appropriate them for themselves, and invest them with spiritual meanings. Taking their spaces away from spiritual movements means cutting their deepest roots.”
he traffic light coalition in Germany has taken many measures and passed laws to better manage migration. However, the number of deportations has also increased. Even to those countries where blasphemy laws are practiced in the strongest terms. Deportations of Ahmadi Muslims to Pakistan have increased sharply in the past.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has suffered long-standing persecution in Pakistan, where the very identity of an Ahmadi Muslim, existential by definition, has been denied. The community is persecuted and discriminated by law and by religious ideology. The fundamental right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief as well as other human rights of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community have been seriously violated.
We are gravely concerned to hear that an Ahmadi asylum seeker SIKANDER ZULQARNEIN BHATI who arrived in Germany in 2001 to seek asylum has now been captured by the German authorities with the intent to deport him back to Pakistan. During the past 22 years he has been desperately trying to get asylum, but his case has been repeatedly rejected and at one point when his deportation seemed imminent, he escaped to Holland but had come back to Germany to pursue his asylum case.
Ahmadi muslims in Germany who’ve fled state persecution are being deported back to Pakistan and it’s putting their lives at risk
The European Court of Human Rights has denounced in the past similar abuses against the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups in France. Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP-LC) has mentioned in several previous written statements with this Human Rights Council the case of Tai Ji Men in Taiwan, a spiritual movement that has been declared innocent of all criminal accusations raised against it, including tax evasion, yet has continued to be harassed through ill-founded tax bills (more information on its case may be obtained through the website TaiJiMenCase.org).
CAP Liberté de conscience and Human Rights Without Frontiers are particularly concerned about the dramatic shrinking of the freedom of journalists and media outlets in Ethiopia. The federal law enforcement forces and the judiciary and have largely abused their mandate throughout last year.
