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A.C.N - Aid to the Church in Need Italian Office |
Religious Freedom in
the Majority Islamic Countries |
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Pakistan Population
136,183,000
Pakistan is an Islamic Republic. Christians represent around 1.5 per cent of the population, with a total of approximately 750,000 Catholics and 850,000 Protestants. Article 20 of the Constitution of 1973 states that every citizen has the right to profess, practise and speak about his own religion, while Article 36 declares that the state safeguards the interests and the rights of the minorities. The reality is different, however, for the Christians are forced into a ghetto-like existence. Article 41 of the same Constitution states that the President of the Republic must be a Muslim. There have been instances of intolerance relating above all to the blasphemy laws promulgated by General Zia in 1985. They state that whoever insults the Koran can be punished by life imprisonment and that anyone who blasphemes against Mohammed is liable to the death penalty. Mixed marriages are permitted only if the man is a Muslim and the woman a Christian, and not vice versa. The schools, created in large measure by the Christian culture, are under Islamic control and the Christian teaching has been marginalised, while their own religion and personalities are discredited in the school books. No Christian preaching is permitted. The law of Pakistan envisages that the religious minorities should have separate political representatives. Peter Jacobs, executive secretary of the national Justice and Peace Committee of the Pakistan bishops’ conference, has denounced the continuing acts of violence and discrimination against the religious minorities in a document entitled Observations on Human Rights - a study on the present situation. Recently "anti- terrorist tribunals" have been set up. They have the power to adjudicate even in cases of blasphemy. The police have the power to enter houses without a magistrate’s warrant and to shoot at those suspected of terrorist activities. The anti-terrorist law also obliges the tribunals to issue a verdict within a week. At Faisalabad many Christian families have been forced to abandon their own homes, following charges made by the police against a young man of 30 of violations against the blasphemy law. This case took place in the village of Sahiwal, 500 kilometres south of Islamabad, where some 14 of the 140 families are Christian. The supporters of Ayub Masih, the young man accused, maintain that the charge levelled against him, which carries the summary death penalty, is the Government’s response to the request by Christian families for the construction of new houses. These witnesses have declared to the UCA News press Agency (7-8 November 1996) that an argument between Ayub and a young Muslim was used as the pretext for the charge which led to his arrest on October 14. The mother of Ayub states that on that day a crowd of 50-60 people gathered near their house and that Ayub, his brother Sampson and his sister were brutally beaten. After this, Ayub and his brother were arrested: "They took away my boys and I escaped," his mother stated. "We are poor people; we cannot defend our children and not even ourselves." According to the testimony of her mother, published in UCA News of November 13-15 1996, Gloria Bibi, aged just 14 years, was kidnapped on August 20 by a young Muslim who forced her to convert to Islam before marrying her. This event took place in a village in the district of Sahiwal and none of the inhabitants has seen the girl since the day of her disappearance. The girl’s mother has denounced the inaction of the police, who, having arrested the members of the young man's family, released them again in exchange for a sum of money. The girl’s family too was forced to pay, but the promises that they would see their daughter again were not kept. The Christians number just 12 out of the 250 families in the village and many are dependent on Muslim landowners. Thus even the local Christians are reluctant to help Gloria’s family, for fear of the consequences from their Muslim employers. In February 1997 at Shantinagar, some 800 houses were destroyed, along with 13 churches and even the villages and the poor quarters of the surrounding area. Some 35 Christians were wounded and it appears, according to the report of Amnesty International in 1998, that some police were also involved in the violence. According to information obtained from Christian organisations, a number of Christians - unknown but estimated at between 50 and 70 - were abducted. Some were raped and forced to become Muslims. Also numerous are the forcible conversions of minors, such as that of a boy of 13 by the boss of the farm where he worked, who placed the Koran on his head and said: "Now you are a Muslim. If you call yourself a Christian again I will kill you. I have written your name on this bullet." There are 40,000 people now homeless. At the beginning of the year the Muslims raided other villages, burning the churches and houses of the Christians. Around 1,000 families are still living in tents, and many of them are accused of insulting Islam. At Toba Tek Singh on September 15 1997, a meeting was held between a group of young Christians workers and Rita Tan, the co-ordinator of the YCW International. The workers, who came from various fields of employment, denounced the great difficulties they had encountered because of their membership of a religious minority. From the testimonies they gave it emerges that in the commercial sector Christians are heavily penalised by the fact that only Christians will buy from other Christians because of a widespread spirit of intolerance. For those who work for others, however, life is marked by a series of injustices and discrimination. The Muslim workers refuse to eat with the Christians and leave them aside. Their pay is lower and sometimes their monthly wages are held back without reason. The tasks reserved for the Christians are the most menial and tedious. And likewise stressed was the impossibility for Christians of obtaining positions in state or public bodies. "Reading the Bible helps us to keep going, to do our work and to struggle for our rights", was the comment of one worker to Rita Tan, as reported by UCA News of October 20-22 1997. At Multan, human rights activists and Christian groups protested against the establishment of the new anti-terrorist tribunals, empowered to judge on cases of blasphemy. "If cases of blasphemy are judged by the anti-terrorist tribunals, acquittals will become impossible," said Johnson Shahid, a Catholic human rights activist. In particular they fear the special powers given to the police under the new anti-terrorist measures envisaged by the government, such as entering houses without a warrant and even killing suspected terrorists. The Christian minorities condemn the vulnerability to which the new law will expose them in the face of charges of blasphemy - fabricated charges moreover - of which they are the victims. The protest, according to UCA News of September 29 - October 1 1997, was directed principally against Section 295-C of the penal code, in which the offence of blasphemy is defined in extremely vague terms that leave plenty of scope for false and trumped-up accusations. One Muslim who converted to Christianity, survived prison and was disowned by his family, is now helping others along the path of conversion. UCA News of April 20-22 1998 relates his story. Born in Multan, Ijaz Zaidi became interested in other religions while still a student. Struck by Christianity, he publicly declared in 1964 that he had embraced the new Faith. As a result of this gesture he was imprisoned for two years and, after his release, was disowned by his family after having been beaten so badly that he required hospital treatment for multiple fractures. However, his sufferings were not yet over, because all the Christian churches contacted by him, including the Catholics, refused to accept him for fear of the possible consequences. Only thanks to his patience and tenacity, Ijaz finally succeeded in receiving baptism and being accepted in the Anglican Church. Today he devotes himself to helping and guiding Muslims interested in conversion, and 1,700 people have since turned to him. Meanwhile, Ijaz continues to work and has remained a bachelor ever since the family of his former fiancée rejected the suggestion that the girl should convert in order to marry him. The Pakistani Catholic Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad, an authoritative critic of the severe Pakistani laws against blasphemy, committed suicide on May 6 1998. The police have stated that the Bishop shot himself in front of the tribunal of Sahiwal, 270 miles south of Islamabad, after having visited the family of Ayub Masih, the young Christian condemned to death under the blasphemy law. The Pakistani laws have been vehemently criticised as discriminatory against non-Muslims and as a carte blanche for abuses on the part of Muslims against their non-Muslim neighbours. During an inter-religious seminar held last summer, Bishop Joseph had denounced the profound injustice of this law and had declared himself ready to give his own life in order to change it. On the morning of May 6, the bishop had organised a meeting to pray for the victims of the blasphemy law and had reiterated the need to make some significant gesture against the application of this law. Bishop Joseph had been President of the Justice and Peace Commission and had also translated the Roman Missal into the Urdu language. Bishop John Joseph had always denounced the situation as impossible, giving interviews and making appeals, such as that on behalf of Anwar Mash, accused of blasphemy and awaiting sentence who was passing his life in solitary confinement without ever seeing the light. Or that of Samina Inayat, abducted from her family, the only Christian in a small village, and at just 15 years of age becoming an object of barter. Bishop John Joseph did everything he could to secure her freedom, contacting Islamic leaders and the police, and he succeeded in his attempt. Now the young girl is in a safe place where she is trying to forget her ordeal and start a new life. Or Salamat Masih, condemned to death at just 12 years and then acquitted, afterwards fleeing abroad. The teacher Catherine Shaheen, by contrast, was accused of blasphemy and deprived of her salary. Now she lives in secret because the Islamic extremists have threatened to kill her. Bishop Joseph had listed nine cases of violence perpetrated by the police and by terrorists against Christian religious and laity - tortures, abuses and killings. The Dominican Sister Susanne, assassinated by a terrorist on August 11 1988, the French Cyprian Dias, who suffered the same fate on September 11 1988; Nazir Masih, tortured and killed in a police station; an entire Christian family, women and children included, cruelly maltreated in 1997. The death sentence passed on Ayub Masih was referred for appeal in June 1999. The young man had been accused of expressing views favourable towards the book Satanic Verses by the English author Salman Rushdie, whereas the defence was able to demonstrate that Ayub harboured no hostility towards Islam. The case acquired a degree of attention after the suicide of Bishop Joseph in protest against the death sentence. Ayub is the fourth Pakistani Christian to have been condemned to death on the charge of having blasphemed against the Koran. The other three were later acquitted by the High Court of Lahore, but they have been forced to live abroad because of the continued threats against them. Five Christians accused of blasphemy were murdered while their trials were still in progress. Three of them were still in custody when they were murdered. Judge Arif Iqbal Bhatti, who had helped to secure the acquittal of two of these Christians, was himself murdered last October (Catholic News Service, May 13 1998). One month after the death of Bishop John Joseph, the Christian community gathered together in the parish of St Peter and St Paul at Faisalabad in the Punjab region. The Italian journalist Ettore Botti of the Corriere della Sera compiled the impressive testimonies of some of those present. Many of these are converts from Hinduism, the casteless and untouchables, the despised and poorest of the poor. In Lahore they call them bangi - the toilet cleaners - because they are the only ones who will do this work. Faruk Zahid tells how he had worked for some time in a furnace which produced bricks, but then he was dismissed because a Muslim was given his job. Often the Christians of the country form little colonies, which have the appearance of ghettos from which they are forbidden to emerge. A plan to amend the Constitution and to adopt the Islamic law as the state law has been submitted to the Pakistan national assembly on August 28 1998. Some representatives of the religious minorities and the opposition parties have sent official protests and organised demonstrations against this. Pakistan already acknowledges Islam as the state religion, but the present proposal to adopt Islamic law into the legal system is another matter altogether. The amendment in question has been sponsored by the current Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. On September 5, the Italian daily Avvenire published an article by Marco Moriconi which stresses the fact that a number of representatives of Sharif’s own party who belong to the Christian and Hindu minorities have disassociated themselves from this initiative by their Prime Minister. Bishop Alexander John Malik of Lahore has likewise expressed serious concern, especially in relation to the fact the minorities would be left at the mercy of the 72 or so Islamic religious sects present in the country, each of which has its own interpretation of the Koranic law. The Pakistan national assembly approved the provision on October 9 1998 with a majority of 151 votes to 16, and now it awaits deliberation by the Senate, where the Pakistani Muslim League does not have the required two-thirds majority for it to pass into the national law. The prime minister has welcomed the vote, maintaining that it is "the beginning of a new Islamic order for Pakistan". In his speech to parliament he has promised the religious minorities that he will "take care of their rights", but no one seems inclined to believe his protestations. Christians, Muslims and Hindus are continuing to protest. On October 15 at Lahore, over 2,000 people gathered in the city square for a demonstration organised by the Christian-Muslim Committee for the rights of the people. Among the leaders of the protests were the Muslim Senator Ajmal Khattak, Cecil Chaudry and the activist Bishop Joseph Francis. The same day the Commission for Inter-religious Dialogue of the Pakistan bishops’ conference organised a seminar in which all the religious leaders condemned the document. Sharif could get around this obstacle by calling an extraordinary session with a combined vote in both houses. The effect of this law could even be to oblige all Pakistanis, whether Muslims or not, to pray five times a day and to contribute annually a tenth of their income for the maintenance of the Muslim community - in addition to making the Constitution, the laws and the sentences in tribunals of every kind depend on Islamic principles. The Christians of Pakistan fear genocide but they will not leave the country. This was stated to Fides on November 6, 1998 by Cecil Chaudry, aged 58, principal of the of St Anthony’s secondary school in Lahore and leader of the Christian Liberation Front, an organisation of socially and politically committed Catholics and Protestants. Chaudry maintains that Christians must expect "a veritable genocide on the part of the right-wing religious extremists, just as happened to the Jews in Nazi times". He continues: "That is why we are opposing this proposal with all our forces. Thanks to God we have established a powerful opposition platform in the Senate and we are hoping that the Bill will not pass into law. The National Christian Action Front, with its president Clement Shahbaz Bhatti, has established a real organised lobby which will block the approval." Even Muslim groups are opposed to this proposal, because they believe that it will plunge the country into a state of anarchy. The extremists, however, are overjoyed and support it. They have even begun to openly threaten those who are opposed to the Bill, such as Bhatti and Chaudry. The latter adds: "The document will strengthen the powers of the Prime Minister, but at what cost? The price could even be the destruction of the country! In a state like Pakistan, religious intolerance is already a powerful force. People are already murdering in the name of Islam; the Christian town of Shantinagar was completely razed to the ground in a matter of a few hours; 50 Hindu temples were destroyed in a single day. They even burn the churches; they shoot at each other and throw bombs into the mosques of rival Islamic groups; they use the blasphemy laws to oppress the Christians. If this document is approved by the Senate, the religious minorities will be deprived of everything in a few years, and women will be persecuted. Bishop John Joseph sacrificed his life to awaken the Christian world and the people of Pakistan. However, I think that the West is still asleep! We are hoping for the maximum possible international reaction - for us this is a matter of life or death." A new outbreak of murder against Christians came to public notice on November 18 1998 when the police, after seeing blood flowing out under a door, discovered the bodies of a family of nine people who had been massacred at Nowshera, 25 miles from Peshawar, a frontier town between Pakistan and Afghanistan which provides refuge for a million-and-a-half Afghan refugees. The father of the family, John Bhatti, had formerly worked for the army, but before the murder - for which no one has yet been arrested - he was working as a waiter, although he was still living in military accommodation with his wife, his daughter and several grandchildren, including a baby of eight months. The message discovered on the walls of his house after the attack was to the effect of "Enough of the black magic!". The reason for this bloody attack could well have been the climate created by the declaration of Nawaz Sharif, who has publicly stated that he draws his inspiration from the "model of the Afghan Taliban". Again, speaking at a meeting in the north of the country, he announced that he would take every step necessary to introduce a legal system which includes among other things the hanging of rapists on the day of the arrest, the amputation of limbs for thieves, stoning for adultery and flogging for a series of minor offences, claiming that today in Afghanistan "crime does not exist". According to Amin Saikal, director of the Centre for Oriental and African Studies at the Australian National University, "Sharif wants to establish a regime dominated by his own Punjabi people, similar to the theocracy of the Pashtun Taliban". Fides of December 4 1998 reports that a week before the massacre, Prime Minister Sharif had visited the province, accompanied by Senator Sami-un Haq, the representative of the Maulana party, an extreme Islamic faction very powerful in the region. The Maulana have issued a fatwa against anyone who opposes the 15th amendment to the constitution. During a public meeting this Senator incited the crowds against the Christians with a cry of "death to the infidels!" The Christians continue to vigorously demand the withdrawal of the proposal which would make the Islamic law the basis of the state. In an interview given to the local monthly Newsline, Bishop Bonaventure Paul, emeritus bishop of Hyderabad in Pakistan and president of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Episcopal Conference, questions whether the measure is in any case necessary for the country. "In the constitution it is already stated that ‘there will not be any law other than the Koran and the Sunna’," he says. "The state already has a religious character; there is a federal court of the Sharia which has the power to impose a veto on laws contrary to the spirit of Islam". According to the bishop the amendment will do nothing other than to "open the door to intolerance" and "sharpen the distinction between the majority and the minority". He insists: "We are all citizens of Pakistan, but in this way we will become second class citizens." The Christian Liberation Front (CLF), following the massacre of November 18, has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister, describing the amendment to the Constitution as "a threat to the 20 million non-Muslims living in Pakistan". The organisation calls upon the government to immediately withdraw the proposal in order to safeguard the lives of non-Muslim citizens. If this proposal is approved "the constitution will cease to exist", the letter states, and "the basic rights of the citizens will be trampled underfoot". Despite these appeals, President Sharif has declared that "the Senate does not have the right to prevent the approbation of this proposal" and that "the people should punish those senators who vote against it", and he adds that "they must be forced to approve it because it is the unanimous wish of 130 million Pakistanis". Bhatti is certain that the Prime Minister will not achieve the two-thirds majority of the senators and that this will "vex him profoundly". The people, moreover, are not so enthusiastic about this proposal, which is opposed also by many Muslims. Former premier Benazir Bhutto, in a declaration to UCA News of November 30, 1997 accuses the government of "provoking religious madness" and of seeking to introduce into the country "the Taliban version" of Islam. And she denounces the growing death threats against non-Muslim parliamentarians and other citizens. |
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