Controversy continues to swirl around Pakistan's blasphemy law after the arrest of a young Christian girl for defiling words from the Quran.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has asked the country's Interior Ministry for a report about the Aug. 16 arrest of Rimshah Masih, described as an 11-year-old with Down syndrome in various media reports.
Even so, Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and a former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, suggested an ominous fate for the girl, in a National Review Online blog Aug. 21.
Any person accused of blasphemy -- disproportionately Christians and other religious minorities -- faces murder by vigilantes, even if he or she is merely accused or even acquitted, Shea noted.
"In July in Punjab province, a mob whipped into a frenzy by radical leaders hunted down a man thought to have blasphemed against Islam, beat him to death, and burned his body outside a police station," Shea wrote. "In other cases, defendants awaiting trial, or even those who have been released or acquitted, along with the acquitting judge, have been murdered or threatened with murder."
The high rate of vigilantism surrounding the law makes it an easy way to persecute religious minorities with false accusation or settle personal scores, various media noted. Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment