Former Prime Minister and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Raja Parvez Ashraf proudly took credit of persecuting a minority Muslim group while speaking at a political rally on Saturday April 29th. Ashraf served as the 17th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 2012 to 2013 and is a senior figure of the Pakistan People’s party.

The rally which which was held in Kotli, Azad Kashmir was also attended by the PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and another former Prime Minister from the PPP Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani. While addressing the attendees Ashraf boasted that his political party, the Pakistan People’s party ‘shut up the Ahmadis’ and ‘broke their neck’, He said:

“No one has been able to compete with Pakistan People’s Party, If someone has served Islam ! Only the Government of Martyr Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto did it. 90 Year Old Problem, the Problem of Qadianis [Ahmadis] who challenged the Prophethood of Prophet Muhammad PBUH, (The PPP) shut them up, broke their neck and buried the [Ahmadi] Problem”

The former PM’s statement comes at at time when the attacks against Ahmadis are on the rise not just in Pakistan but also in countries like the UK. 40-year-old Ahmadi Asad Shah was stabbed to death by another British Muslim in Scotland last month. In the past Pakistan has been accused of exporting extremism.

Reacting to Ashraf’s statement prominent Ahmadi rights activist Kashif Chaudhry urged PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto to condemn former PM’s statement.

Dear @BBhuttoZardari, will you condemn this anti-Ahmadi hate speech by senior PPP leader & former PM of Pakistan? https://t.co/AN8HNuF1g7 — Kashif N Chaudhry (@KashifMD) April 30, 2016

In 1974, PPP founder and then Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto pushed a law which declared the minority Ahmadiyya Islamic sect to be non-Muslim. The law made the Ahmadis the most persecuted community of Pakistan. In 1988, daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and then Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, refused to meet Pakistan’s only Nobel winning scientist Dr Abdus Salam because he belonged to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam.