Pakistan minister warns of Christian discrimination
PAKISTAN — The position of the Christian minority in the overwhelmingly Muslim nation has come under the spotlight in the past two weeks with the arrest of Rimsha, a young Christian girl accused of blasphemy for allegedly burning papers containing Koranic verses.
Anti-terrorist police with automatic rifles guard the large Islamabad home of Paul Bhatti, the minister for National Harmony whose brother and predecessor Shahbaz was gunned down last year for speaking out against Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws.
Bhatti, the only Christian Cabinet minister in Pakistan, where the population is 97 percent Muslim, felt a rush of fear two weeks ago when Rimsha was arrested in a poor Islamabad suburb.
When furious Muslims threatened Christians in the area the next day after Friday prayers, Bhatti contacted imams to try to calm things down, saying if they had encouraged the worshippers, “it would have been possible to have another Gojra.”
Seven people died in the Punjab town of Gojra in 2009 when a Muslim mob burned Christian houses after a rumor that a Koran had been desecrated during a wedding service.
From Gojra to the 2011 murders of Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who also backed reform of the blasphemy law, and the death sentence handed to Christian woman Asia Bibi in 2010, blasphemy cases have multiplied in recent years.
“What is happening is the misuse of this law,” said Bhatti.
Under the legislation, insulting the prophet Mohammad can be punished by death, while desecrating the Koran can earn a life sentence.
Bhatti said even if the law were changed, allegations of blasphemy provoke such visceral fury that people would take the law into their own hands.
In July a mob of 2,000 snatched a mentally unstable man from a police station in Punjab and beat him to death after he was accused of burning pages from the Koran.
Liberals in Pakistan are concerned that people use the law to make false accusations to satisfy their bigoted religious impulses or settle personal scores. (AP)