By Michael Ireland, Senior Reporter, ASSIST News Service (ANS) answritermike@gmail.com
PAKISTAN (ANS, June 12, 2015) – A recent book -- ‘Blasphemy Law and Religious Freedom” by Prof. Shahid Mobeen -- reports that at least 13 Christians (including Asia Noreen Bibi) are on death row in Pakistan on blasphemy convictions.
Moubin, of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, says the Pakistani blasphemy law criminalizes all behavior considered offensive to the Koran or the Prophet Muhammed.
The academic says that over the past 25 years, this law was applied more than 1,000 times and Christian minorities have suffered from this more than others, according to Asif Aqeel, writing for World Watch Monitor www.worldwatchmonitor.org.
This week, 20-year-old Yaqoob Bashir Masih was accused of desecrating the Koran in Mirpur Khas in Sind province on June 4, even though he has been treated for his mental health, according to a Catholic priest.
World
Watch Monitor reports that after Bashir (a Christian, known locally as
‘Kaka’) is said to have told a crowd who threatened to set fire to him
that he burned and buried a Koran, a further mob gathered and locked him
into a house.Local Christians fled, fearing a riot.
Police later took Bashir into custody and are reported to be currently investigating charges against him.
Mushtaq Masih, Bashir’s next-door neighbor in the Mehmoodabad area, told World Watch Monitor how the incident unfolded.
He said: “It was around 7 p.m. and I was sitting with my wife on our camel cart. We were discussing how earning our daily living had become so tough when we started hearing the noise of a group of a people.
“I heard Yaqoob’s’s elder brother asking him ‘Where is the copy of the Koran which the cleric gave you this morning?’
Doused with kerosene
“Yaqoob was not telling them, and he kept naming a few other neighbors… The mob were severely beating him, but Yaqoob did not tell them where the Koran was. In the end, some of them doused him with kerosene oil and told him that they would set him on fire if he would not tell them. Then he told them that he had burned it in the morning and then buried it.”
Some locals reported that “Yaqoob used to go to the cleric, who had told him that his mental condition would improve if he recited the Koran.”
Mushtaq went on: “That morning Yaqoob requested the cleric to give him the copy of the Koran, saying that his two sisters would read it to him. But rather than bringing it home, he burned it.”
World Watch Monitor said it was reported that a few students of a nearby madrassah (an Islamic seminary) had seen him burning the Koran, after which they informed a cleric.
Mushtaq explained: “About two years ago Yaqoob had started learning ‘black magic’ and since then, he sometimes acted quite erratically. Most of the time he was fine but sometimes he behaved as if he had no control over himself.
“For instance, his mother told the crowd that only three days before the incident, Yaqoob had torn the Bible into four pieces and thrown it on the floor.
“The police were informed of Yaqoob’s confession and they arrived to arrest him. But still a mob was gathering.”
Mehmoodabad Police Station House Officer Muhammad Dawood told World Watch Monitor, “After Yaqoob confessed to committing the crime, the mob locked him in a house and informed the police. He also confessed to us and sought forgiveness. But I told him that he should seek Allah’s forgiveness as no man could forgive him…”
Christians fled the area
“(Later) three police vans were installed there. But, fearing an attack, all the Christians had fled the area.”
Neighbor Mushtaq who fled to Karachi, from where he spoke to World Watch Monitor, added: “At about 1 a.m. that night, the police told us to leave our area because more than 200 people were still chanting slogans, demanding that they should burn our colony -- so then we fled the area."
World Watch Monitor said Catholic priest Father Abid Habib confirmed to the news agency that Yaqoob had received treatment for mental illness from a mental health facility in Hyderabad.
“A local cleric had promised him that he would be cured through the recitation of the Holy Koran,” he said, adding: “Some say that he was also a drug addict and was under the influence of hashish when he committed the act of desecration.”
“A mob was chanting slogans against Christians -- but we thank the police and the Rangers, who brought the situation under control. I visited the area next day, but all the Christians had fled it by then.”
The priest continued: “The first information report [no. 41/15] had been registered against Yaqoob and he behaved normally, and even told the magistrate that he was sorry for committing the crime.”
World Watch Monitor explained that in Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, under which comes desecration of the Koran, there is allowance of exemption if an offender can prove ‘lack of mental capacity’ as there would be in many other countries.
The Sind provincial government strengthened this law in April, making it mandatory for a psychiatrist to assess anyone accused of blasphemy, or who tries to kill him/herself.
Two weeks ago, World Watch Monitor reported on another case in which Humayun Faisal was accused of desecrating the Koran in Lahore, in Punjab province. He was well-known in the area as having severe mental health problems, and as a drug addict.
Even though the 30-year-old Faisal was (like Yaqoob) taken into police custody, a crowd of about 300 gathered in the small Christian neighborhood to protest against his alleged act. The Rangers and the police were called in to bring the tense situation under control. Police later charged Faisal with desecration of the Koran, punishable with life imprisonment (in Pakistan that means 25 years).
Christian sentenced to death for murder, aged 15, hung after 22 years on death row
Meanwhile on Wednesday, June 10, Pakistan hung a 37-year-old Christian, Aftab Nazir Bahadur, who had allegedly confessed to double murder when he was 15-years-old in 1992. He was convicted on the evidence of two witnesses, both of whom recently retracted their accounts, saying they had implicated Bahadur after police tortured them.
"This is a truly shameful day for Pakistan's justice system. Aftab was subjected to almost every injustice conceivable," said Maya Foa, director from the international human rights group Reprieve.
She added:"To the last, Pakistan refused even to grant his lawyers the few days needed to present evidence which would have proved his innocence. This is a travesty of justice, and tragedy for all those who knew Aftab."
Photo One: Senior poloce officers discuss the situation after quelling protesters. (Via World Watch Monitor). Photo Two: Michael Ireland.
Michael
Ireland is a Senior Correspondent for the ASSIST News Service, as well
as a volunteer Internet Journalist and Ordained Minister who has served
with ASSIST Ministries and ASSIST News Service since its beginning in
1989. He has reported for ANS from Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Israel,
Jordan, China, and Russia. Click http://paper.li/Michael_ASSIST/1410485204 to see a daily digest of Michael's stories for ANS.** You may republish this or any of our stories with attribution to the ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net.)
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