Court ‘warns’ on blasphemy
Twenty indicted
ISLAMABAD, Oct 29, (AFP): Pakistan’s Supreme Court has called on the state to ensure that hundreds of people facing imprisonment and even execution under controversial blasphemy laws have not been falsely charged, often by enemies wanting to settle personal scores.
Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Pakistan, an Islamic republic of some 200 million, with even unproven allegations provoking mob lynchings and violence.
Critics including European governments claim the country’s laws against blasphemy are misused, with hundreds languishing in jails under false charges that could see them face fines, life imprisonment or death by hanging.
On Tuesday the Supreme Court issued a detailed judgement warning that in Islam a false accusation can be as serious as the blasphemy itself.
The judgement came just weeks after its historic ruling upholding the death sentence for Mumtaz Qadri, a former bodyguard who was feted by Islamists after he gunned down a politician who had been calling for blasphemy law reform.
Qadri
Hailed Moderates had hailed the Qadri ruling as a blow against religious extremism, and on Tuesday the Supreme Court appeared to take another step in that direction.
Blasphemy is “abhorrent and immoral”, the judgement said, “but at the same time a false allegation regarding commission of such an offence is equally detestable besides being culpable”.
“It is, therefore, for the State of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to ensure that no innocent person is compelled or constrained to face an investigation or a trial on the basis of false or trumped up allegations regarding commission of such an offence,” the ruling continued.
Qadri shot the liberal governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, in broad daylight in the capital Islamabad 2011.
Taseer had called for reforms to the blasphemy legislation and promised to help Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who has been on death row for five years for blasphemy after an argument with a Muslim woman over a bowl of water.
In its judgement Tuesday the Supreme Court also said that calls for blasphemy law reform “ought not to be mistaken as a call for doing away with that law”.
A Pakistani court on Wednesday indicted 20 Christians over the lynching of two Muslim men following suicide bombings on a pair of Lahore churches in March, a lawyer said.
Seventeen people died as a result of the suicide bombings in the Youhanabad district of the eastern city, with more than 70 wounded.
The attack sparked two days of rioting by thousands of Christians who clashed with police, blocked roads and forced a partial shutdown of the city’s public bus system.
Two men were lynched by the Christian protesters who suspected they were militants.
Police later arrested 20 Christians with the help of video clips after protests by Muslims against the lynching.
Judge Mohammad Qasim of the anti-terrorist court in Lahore indicted the Christians and ordered the prosecution to produce witnesses on next hearing fixed for Nov 5.
Residents and a guard opened fire at a Pakistan school Thursday after six men tried to scale the walls, sparking panic less than a year after a Taleban massacre at a Peshawar school, police said.
The incident took place in the town of Shabqadar which borders the Mohmand, one of seven lawless tribal districts where Taleban militants are active.
“Some men were trying to climb the boundary wall of a private school and on seeing them, the school guard opened fire after which the men fled,” district police chief Shafiullah Khan told AFP.
Nearby residents also took out their guns and fired gunshots in the air to scare the intruders away from the screaming children, he said.
It was not clear if the men were armed.