Glasgow: November 19, 2015. (PCP) Global Minorities Alliance (GMA), A Glasgow based minority rights organisation has urged the UK government to recognise that minorities in Pakistan face a genuine risk of being persecuted. GMA alongside at least twenty UK based human rights organisations gave evidence on the situation of Pakistani minorities at a two day parliamentary hearing on the 10th and the 11th of November which was organised by UK All Parties Parliamentary Group (APPG) on international religious freedoms and beliefs. Representatives of Christian, Hindu, Sikh and the Ahmadiyya and Jewish community attended the APPG hearings. The APPG convened the hearings after the UK Supreme Court ruled in the case of a Pakistani Christian couple (AK& SK Christians: risk) 2014, that Christians in Pakistan face discrimination rather than persecution. Following the Supreme Court ruling the UKBA in its latest Country of Origin report took the position that the Christians in Pakistan face discrimination instead of persecution. The APPG is going to compile a report based on the evidence it has heard during the hearings. The APPG report will be shared with the governments of 60 countries. Shahid Khan, the Vice Chairperson of GMA in his evidence at the APPG hearings urged the UK government to recognise that the Christians in Pakistan as well as other religious minorities face persecution. He urged the UK government to give asylum to genuine minority asylum seekers from Pakistan. Mr Khan said that the UK government being a party to the Geneva Refugee Convention of 1951 should not shy away from its obligation to give refuge to genuine minority asylum seekers from Pakistan. Mr Khan in giving his evidence criticised Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws and cited several examples including that of Aasia bibi, a mother of five on death row in Pakistan. Lord Alton who chaired the hearings said: “The evidence with which we presented during these hearings held at Westminster revealed systematic and widespread persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan. We heard harrowing personal accounts from Christians and Ahmadis and others who had watched loved ones murdered in a culture of impunity. We heard the story of Pakistan’s last remaining Jew and we were moved by the bravery and courage of other minority communities who face the same destiny of annihilation. Pakistan is Britain’s biggest recipient of overseas aid – more than £400 million this year alone – but it was impossible to see how our aid policy or our asylum policy have done anything to ease the desperate plight of Pakistan’s beleaguered minorities. We hope that the Report which will emerge from this evidence will force our policy makers, along with those of other Governments, to reassess the way in which we engage with Pakistan.” Rev. Rana Youab Khan, a priest in the church of England and a former adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury on international interfaith dialogues, in his evidence at the APPG termed the genuine minority asylum seekers from Pakistan as “the most beleaguered and ignored people” the world over. Talking to GMA Rev. Khan said that Christians all over the world should welcome immigration because the concept of immigration is inbuilt in mission history. He said the Christians of Pakistan were deprived of a genuine religious and political leadership. “Christians all over the world should welcome genuine refugees and asylum seekers from all over the world because Jesus and Mary were also asylum seekers.”, said Rev. Khan Rev. Khan also highlighted the plight of Pakistani Christian asylum seekers who are stranded in Thailand after having applied for asylum there. Rev. Khan said his wife recently visited the Christian asylum seekers in Thailand and told the APPG group hearing that their plight was awful. Jan Doerfel, a London based Immigration Barrister told Global Minorities Alliance ‘"We welcome the APPG initiative. It is very important that the UK Government and international community insist on the protection of vulnerable religious & other minorities in Pakistan. What is needed is a real change for individuals on the ground who live their lives at risk of serious human rights violations."