Earlier this month, Pakistan celebrated its eighth National Minorities Day. The day’s significance originates from a speech in which Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jimnah, envisioned a Pakistan that would be respectful of all religious backgrounds. “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state,” he stated on August 11, 1947, sixty-nine years ago.

Though originally intended to foster better relations between the majority religion of Islam and those of minority religions, many have expressed disappointment at the lack of actual progress in bettering treatment towards minorities. To most, the national day’s existence only serves as a painful reminder of the continued abuse and degradation of Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs, several of a number of religious minorities in Pakistan.

That many have spoken out against National Minorities’ Day attests to the fact that Pakistan is far short of what Jimnah intended. Considered as second-class citizens, minorities are often denied job opportunities or are relegated to completing “dirty work,” such as cleaning bathrooms. They often are trapped in bonded labor, such as brick kiln slavery. An estimated 76% of minority women are sexually harassed, and many abducted and forced to convert to Islam. Though law requires that the government hire five percent minority employees, the quota goes largely unheeded. Further, the law does not allow them to elect representatives to parliament, nor a minority hold the office of prime minister. Social and cultural norms further restrict what apartments or houses they can live in.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has directed the government to a number of measures to improve minority religion relations, but the process of working against a narrative which intensifies non-Muslims as “other” is slow, which the large number of attacks on minority religions demonstrates.

The Ahmadiyya community, a minority sect, saw attacks in 1995, when two were stoned to death, and in 2000, when five were killed at one mosque, and five at another mosque. In 2005, eight were killed and 20 injured, in 2008, three murdered, and in 2010, three incidents left over 91 dead. In 2014, eleven were killed.

In 2009, the homes and livelihoods of 35 Sikh families were confiscated. In fact, this past April, a Sikh temple was reopened in Peshawar after many years. However, they still risk attack.