{"id":1425619,"date":"2022-04-08T11:45:49","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T15:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1425619"},"modified":"2022-04-08T11:45:52","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T15:45:52","slug":"pakistan-christians-relegated-to-manually-cleaning-sewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pakistan-christians-relegated-to-manually-cleaning-sewers\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan: Christians Relegated to Manually Cleaning Sewers"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpakistan-christians-relegated-to-manually-cleaning-sewers%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1425619&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p class=\"subheading\">Pakistan\u2019s predominantly Christian sewage workers regularly risk their lives to unclog sewers with their bare hands while enduring daily public discrimination for partaking in the dangerous labor, the <em>South China Morning Post <\/em>(<em>SCMP<\/em>) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sExsvMAtHEs\">reported<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Citing an original <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1683481\/sewage-workers-risk-lives-to-manually-unblock-sewers\">report<\/a> by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the <em>SCMP<\/em> on April 6 detailed the daily toil of a Christian sanitary worker in Lahore named Shafiq Masih.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n[embedded content]\n<p>\u201cEach day, the 44-year-old has to go down into the sewers to clean up dark, stinking sludge. He has to contend with toxic gases and various pollutants,\u201d according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>Masih is a Christian in Pakistan, which observes Islam as its official state religion. In addition to facing severe discrimination from his Muslim countrymen due to his religious beliefs, Masih has been practically forced into working a degrading job by Pakistan\u2019s anti-Christian society.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Pakistan\u2019s federal government regularly funds job advertisements specifying \u201cmenial cleaning jobs are reserved for \u2018non-Muslims\u2019, with the Centre for Law and Justice (CLJ), a local NGO, identifying nearly 300 such announcements over the past decade,\u201d AFP reported on April 5.<\/p>\n<p>Islamic purity beliefs lie at the root of Pakistan\u2019s discriminatory practice of funneling non-Muslims, including Hindus, into the nation\u2019s sanitation sector.<\/p>\n<p>Most Pakistani Christians descend from lower-caste Indian Hindus who converted to Christianity \u201cduring the British colonial era in the hope of escaping a system that frequently forced them into a life of toil almost from birth,\u201d according to AFP.<\/p>\n<p>The minority constitutes less than two percent of Pakistan\u2019s population of 227 million, though it accounts for \u201cmore than 80 percent of jobs involving refuse collection, sewage work and street sweeping\u201d in Pakistan, according to data from the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR).<\/p>\n<p>The remainder of Pakistan\u2019s sanitation jobs is filled mainly by Hindus, who account for an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/religion\/2015\/04\/02\/hindus\/\">estimated<\/a> 1.9 percent of the national population.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>At least ten people have perished in Pakistan\u2019s publically maintained sewers since 2019, according to CLJ figures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn October [2021] in Sargodha, two Christian sewage workers died rescuing a third who had been forced by his Muslim supervisors to enter a sewer he knew to be full of poisonous gas,\u201d AFP recalled on April 5.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTheir families filed a complaint of criminal negligence \u2014 a first in the country \u2014 but agreed to an out-of-court settlement,\u201d according to the news agency.<\/p>\n<p>The October 2021 incident was reminiscent of a previous sewer tragedy in Pakistan involving three Christian workers in July 2017.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_20578304\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/media.breitbart.com\/media\/2022\/04\/christian-sanitation-workers-pakistan-mar22-getty.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">In this picture taken on March 10, 2022, workers of the Christian community from Lahore Waste Management Company clean a street in Lahore. (Photo by ARIF ALI\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Saleem Masih, 50; Danish Masih, 20; and Nadeem Masih, 18, all worked as janitors at a public school in Pakistan\u2019s Punjab province when they were ordered to clear a blockage in a local sewer system. All three men <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/national-security\/2017\/07\/12\/three-pakistan-christian-servants-killed-by-sewage-works\/\">died<\/a> during their attempt to unblock the drainage system after being overtaken by a wave of toxic fumes. The men reportedly anticipated the sewer\u2019s danger before descending but were denied protective equipment by their publically-funded employers.<\/p>\n<p>One month earlier, in the Pakistani province of Sindh, a 35-year-old sewer worker died after he fell ill while working and was denied treatment by Muslim doctors. The physicians <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/national-security\/2017\/06\/08\/pakistan-toxic-sewage-kills-unclean-christian-after-muslim-doctors-refuse-treatment-citing-ramadan\/\">refused<\/a> to treat the victim \u2014 who had been exposed to toxic fumes emanating from a sewer \u2014 because the episode occurred during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The medics claimed it would have been impure to come into contact with a sanitation worker at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pakistan\u2019s predominantly Christian sewage workers regularly risk their lives to unclog sewers with their bare hands while enduring daily public discrimination for partaking in the dangerous labor, the South China<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1425619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}