London: October 6, 2015. (PCP) The UK Home Office agreed to at least review its guidance around the situation facing Pakistani Christians and to consider the latest report from the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) entitled Education, Human Rights Violations and the Scandal involving UNHCR and Asylum Seekers in Thailand. In a formal response to a question in the House of Lords tabled 19 September 2015 by Lord Alton, Lord Bates, responded on behalf of the Home Office. Lord Alton had asked what assessment the government had made of the findings of the BPCA report and review the risk of persecution of Christians in Pakistan and update their guidance document Pakistan : Christians and Christian converts. Lord Bates responded that the Home Office would be considering the report "alongside a range of other material to make a full assessment of the situation of Christians in Pakistan, and will revise its country information and guidance if necessary" whilst noting issues in Thailand were primarily the responsibility of the Thai government. Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the BPCA, a campaigning and human rights NGO founded in 2009 which is now a charity, said "We have long been saying that the Home Office position does not reflect the facts on the ground. We note that Foreign Office material on Pakistan includes Christians amongst those who are persecuted, which matches independent annual reports and rankings which most recently say that Pakistan is 8th worst in the world for persecution of Christians, yet the Home Office has maintained that Christians generally are merely severely discriminated against, but not persecuted. We hope and pray that there will be a radical revision in guidance, particularly as the situation grows worse, with the Pakistani armed forces now warning that ISIS is highly likely to launch a wave of attacks on Christians and churches across Pakistan. I want to point out that also the USA’s Congressional body dealing with International Religious Freedom has asked for Pakistan to be made a country of particular concern for some time in regard to issues such as this. We would ask that people write to their MP’s or the Home Office in support of a review that reflects reality, quoting question HL2312". Nathanael Lewis, a researcher for the BPCA further commented: "When dealing with asylum rejections done under past and current Home Office guidance, we have consistently found that there is a gross overestimation of the ability and willingness of police or the authorities to protect Christians or treat them fairly, the so called ‘sufficiency of protection’ question, as well as of the room for successful internal relocation, and a gross underestimation of the severity of the situation on the ground. When we are talking about discrimination in Pakistan, it is not a few snide comments, it is very severe discrimination indeed, something equivalent to the treatment of African-Americans in post-slavery pre- 60’s USA. There are even areas where there are separate drinking fountains, one for Muslims only, the other for non-Muslims. Asia Bibi, the mother of five on death row, is there after a row started precisely because she drank from the water she was carrying to her fellow Muslim co-workers. The Home Office guidance is important because a number of other countries, and even the UN, tend to look to the UK guidance to formulate their own position, and is causing huge suffering in places like Thailand because Pakistani Christians are deemed not a priority, and also because the guidance seems to tie in with Pakistani government claims that Christians will be safe and can be deported back to the country. This needs to change extremely urgently.’