WASHINGTON, DC / ISLAMABAD — The International Religious Freedom Roundtable (IRF-RT) Pakistan has issued a formal statement welcoming the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s order directing that trial proceedings against those responsible for the devastating 2023 anti-Christian attacks in Jaranwala be concluded within six months. The order — issued in Crl. PLA No. 883-L of 2024 — also instructs law enforcement to immediately arrest all suspects who remain at large. IRF-RT Pakistan called the ruling “a critical and long-overdue step toward justice” for the Christian families and churches that were targeted in one of the most horrifying episodes of mob violence in recent Pakistani history.

The statement was coordinated by IRF Roundtable Pakistan’s key leadership figures — Anila Ali, Co-Chair for Pakistan and President of AMMWEC; Muhammad Kashif Mirza, Director of IRF Roundtable Pakistan; and Samuel Payara, the lawyer and lead petitioner who has represented the Christian community throughout the Jaranwala legal proceedings — alongside documentary journalist Wajid Ali Syed, whose film Faith Under Fire chronicled the attacks and their aftermath.

The IRF Roundtable’s Statement in Full

The organization’s statement praised the ruling as a watershed moment while making clear that the real measure of justice lies in implementation, not the order alone. Each member of IRF-RT Pakistan’s leadership spoke directly to the significance of the court’s intervention and what must now follow.

IRF-RT Pakistan’s Four Demands Going Forward

Beyond welcoming the court’s order, IRF Roundtable Pakistan used its statement to lay out four concrete benchmarks it says must now be met if the ruling is to translate into genuine accountability.

The Context: A Pattern of Impunity Under Scrutiny

IRF Roundtable Pakistan’s statement came with a pointed reference to the well-documented failures that preceded the Supreme Court’s intervention. Amnesty International’s findings that only a fraction of the thousands allegedly involved in the Jaranwala attacks faced any legal consequences — and that many of those arrested were subsequently released or had charges reduced — form the backdrop against which the organization framed its welcome of the court order.

The top court’s ruling comes, IRF-RT Pakistan noted, “after sustained concerns over delays in prosecution, weak investigations, and a broader climate of impunity.” The organization made clear that the order must now be understood not as a conclusion but as the beginning of an accountability process that has been far too slow in coming.

Wajid Ali Syed, whose documentary work gave national and international audiences a ground-level view of the Jaranwala devastation, framed the challenge in terms of public trust — a resource that has been depleted by years of deferred justice. Restoring it, he stressed, requires that accountability extend all the way to the masterminds of the attacks, not only those who carried them out on the streets.

What Comes Next

The six-month countdown the Supreme Court has set is now in motion. IRF Roundtable Pakistan has made clear it will continue to monitor developments closely and maintain public pressure on courts, law enforcement, and the government to honor both the letter and the spirit of the ruling.

The organization urged the Pakistani state to treat this moment as an opportunity — to demonstrate that the rule of law, in Anila Ali’s words, can “prevail over fanaticism,” and that equal citizenship for all Pakistanis is not merely a constitutional aspiration but a lived reality. For the families of Jaranwala, who have waited nearly three years for meaningful accountability, it is a test long overdue.