The Friday Times: They only came to pray. They paid with their lives. Friday Prayers on 28th May 2010 for the Ahmadis of Lahore will always be remembered in blood and tears. It was supposed to be a day like any other. The Friday congregation of the community gathered as usual to offer their devotion. Immaculately dressed, heads bowed before God, serenity in the air. Then terror struck. Armed men with suicide vests and grenades descended like demons on two of the major Ahmediyya mosques in the city, proceeding to systematically target and kill those present at a leisurely pace over the next few hours. CCTV footage showed the policemen installed for security fleeing the scene. Punjab Police contingents arrived and stood by.
As the hellish afternoon darkened into twilight, the prayer rooms of the mosque at Model town and Garhi Shahu's Dar-ul-Zikr echoed with the silence of the dead and the moans of the dying. 86 worshippers had been killed, more than 100 injured. Out of the 7 terrorists that had targeted the mosques, 2 were overpowered by some of the younger worshippers and handed over to the police. An attempt to capture another ended in more death as he activated his suicide jacket. Those arrested have not yet even seen the inside of a courtroom.
Two years later, life goes on in Lahore, but those who survived that fateful day can't forget the ones that didn't. They still remember their loss. They still wait for justice.
The mainstream media of Pakistan seemed curiously silent on what has been deemed the "worst massacre in Lahore since the Partition of India"
28th May 2012 marked Memorial Day for the Ahmediyya community in Pakistan. The massacre of 2010 was one of the top trending topics in Pakistan on Twitter that day. But other than a few articles and a filtered TV show or two, the mainstream media of Pakistan seemed curiously silent on what has been deemed the "worst massacre in Lahore since the Partition of India" by Bradley Cooper, the Asia Director of Human Rights Watch. It reminded me of the day of the terrible incident when I was anchoring and witnessing the event live from the studios of a major Pakistani news channel. My most vivid memory is the voice of caution in the midst of the calamity by one of the news producers.
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