Reporting Pakistan
Page 14
In the affidavit to the court, Dr McLennan had warned that the probability of him attempting to take his own life was significant and might increase if he remained in prison, while recommending a comprehensive treatment and rehabilitation plan. Sure enough, Asghar tried to commit suicide, on 8 January 2012, and had to be hospitalized. While he was recovering, a hastily constituted medical board with one psychiatrist was sent to evaluate him in hospital. The doctors received threatening calls and the hospital wanted to send Asghar back to jail. The medical report said he suffered from ‘major organic affective depression’. Under law, a mentally ill person cannot be convicted.
By then the judge had changed and the new person did not hear the evidence. For the final judgment, Asghar’s legal team was not even informed. The lawyers feared homicide and that’s what happened in October 2014 when a policeman shot Asghar in the back, injuring him. There have been many appeals by his daughter, and signature campaigns to release Asghar. While awarding the death sentence on 23 January 2014, the sessions court which conducted the trial in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi disregarded his medical records from Scotland.
This was not the first case where a mentally challenged person had been convicted for blasphemy. Young Rimsha Masih was sentenced to death for blasphemy, though she was finally acquitted by the court in 2012 and granted asylum in Canada. I met her Christian neighbours who had been forced to flee their homes in Meherabad, and who now live in a precarious condition in Islamabad. Rimsha Masih’s persecutor, a cleric, was acquitted in 2013; he had been accused of filing false charges.
Former US Ambassador Sherry Rehman faced threats after she proposed a bill banning the death penalty for blasphemy. Media reports estimate that over 1200 people had been charged with blasphemy from 1986 till 2010. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) World Report 2014 says that abuses are rife under the country’s blasphemy law, which is used against religious minorities often to settle personal disputes. Dozens of people were charged with the offence in 2013. At least sixteen people remained on death row for blasphemy, while another twenty were serving life sentences.
The HRCP in its report on the state of human rights in 2012 says that while Pakistan did not execute anyone under Section 295C, many of the accused were killed by extremists outside the courts or in prisons. The HRW World Report of 2015 estimated that since 1990, at least sixty people had been murdered after being accused of blasphemy.
Sawan Masih, a conservancy worker, was sentenced to death for blasphemy soon after Asghar. The case against him was filed after an argument with a neighbour where he was accused of defaming the Prophet. A mob attacked Joseph Colony where he lived, in March 2013, and nearly 100 homes and some churches were torched. According to his lawyer, Masih said that the attack on the colony was a move to evict the residents from the area. The case against over a 100 arsonists filed in an anti-terrorism court doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere and it is unlikely that his appeal will get quick results. After Masih, it was the turn of a couple in Toba Tek Singh to be sentenced to death. Again a bizarre case. Shafqat Masih, who was paralysed from the waist down, was thrown out of his wheelchair and made to confess that he had misused the Prophet’s name. He and his wife, Shagufta, who was also sentenced to death, were accused of sending text messages against the Holy Prophet, and a case was filed against them by a lawyer and a cleric. Farrukh H. Saif, the executive director of World Vision in Progress which is defending them, said the organization was looking after the couple’s four children—three sons and a daughter between the ages of twelve and six. All of them were in custody initially. The case was filed by some local cable operator who had a dispute with Shafqat, and the latter was forced to confess to his crime after being tortured. The couple earlier lived in Gojra and had to be moved to Toba Tek Singh after there were huge protests over the alleged blasphemy incident.
Opposing blasphemy laws can be fatal. It’s the smiling, unrepentant face of Malik Mumtaz Qadri that crops up when it comes to a lack of remorse for hate crimes. Qadri gave himself up after pumping over twenty bullets into Salman Taseer at Kohsar Market in January 2011, and in 2015, the Supreme Court reaffirmed his death sentence and he was executed. The execution could be thought of as an honour for Taseer’s killer, not a punishment, going by the multitudes who reportedly came out in his support. Taseer had spoken up against blasphemy laws and defended Aasia Bibi who was the first woman to be convicted under it, in 2010. Friends told me that no one was willing to read the funeral prayers for Taseer, and his own party members didn’t support a condolence motion in Parliament, and went and sat in the visitor’s gallery. While Aasia Bibi was finding it difficult to get legal help, Qadri was celebrated with rose garlands and processions in the streets. (Though she finally got a lawyer, when her appeal against her death sentence came up in the Supreme Court in October 2016, Justice Iqbal Hameed-ur-Rehman recused from the bench because of a ‘conflict of interest’.) There was a mosque named after him in Islamabad which became public news after a tweet in 2014. More recently, in February 2017, a mosque in Maryland, USA, eulogized Qadri on his death anniversary, provoking much protest.24 A library in the Lal Masjid, after all, has already been named after Osama bin Laden.
A small minority of journalists, human rights activists and other individuals struggle to keep the country sane by raising their voices against extremists, terrorism, the plight of the minorities, the curbs on freedom, and rising crimes; but the fight is unequal. In 2014, I attended a small memorial service for Taseer with his family in attendance at the very spot where he was killed under a large tree at Kohsar Market. The judge trying Qadri had to leave the country, and I read there were support marches taken out to mark the day Qadri killed Taseer. At that time there was little hope of justice.
In 2011, apart from Taseer, a former federal minister and Roman Catholic, Shahbaz Bhatti, was killed for opposing the blasphemy law. Two eyewitnesses to Bhatti’s murder faced death threats from some terror groups after they appeared in court. Bhatti, who founded the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), was killed in the I-8 sector of Islamabad in March 2011; his car was stopped and he was shot. Bhatti had stood up in defence of the Christian community and spoke out against both the blasphemy law and Aasia Bibi’s death sentence.
In September 2013, two suspects, Hammad Adil and Umer Abdullah, were arrested in the Bara Kahu area and later charged with the murder of Bhatti. Adil was picked up after a car full of explosives was found at his house. He later confessed to being involved in Bhatti’s killing. On 22 January 2014 at the trial in Adiala Jail, the two eyewitnesses claimed that they saw the two accused, one of them was driving the car, and the other was throwing pamphlets on the road after Bhatti had been shot.
Over a week later, when one of the eyewitnesses came to his office, there was a printed letter signed by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an extreme sectarian group, and the TTP threatening the two witnesses and their families with death if they continued to give evidence. A case of criminal intimidation was registered and they were given some security, but they skipped one hearing, fearing for their lives.
Worse was yet to come. In April 2014, Rehman Rashid, a lawyer defending Junaid Hafeez, a blasphemy accused, was shot dead in his office. Before his death both Rashid and another lawyer, Allah Dad, were threatened for defending Hafeez in Multan Central Prison. Rashid was threatened in open court by three persons who said: ‘You will not come to court next time because you will not exist any more.’ Rashid, HRCP’s Multan Task Force coordinator, drew the judge’s attention to the threat but the judge is reported to have remained silent, according to an HRCP statement. The killing drew strong condemnation and protests from the HRCP and lawyers across the country. Rashid was a committed human rights activist and lawyer, and associated with HRCP for over twenty years.
Living in tents
It was some Christian activists who spoke to me about a tent settlement in the capital. They refused to escort me there and I went on my own. I couldn’t believe such a place existed
in the capital—it was tucked away in a remote sector, unseen and unwashed. This was a colony of about 400 Christian families who were forced to flee Meherabad after the infamous Rimsha Masih case. They lived as refugees in their own country. Though the mentally challenged girl was acquitted in November 2012 of all charges after it was found that the cleric who filed the case against her had planted evidence, the residents of her former neighbourhood were terrorized and forced to leave.
While she and her family have found asylum abroad, the cleric was acquitted of all charges. The state was unlikely to appeal, said Masih’s lawyer Tahir Naveed Chaudhary. That isolated tent camp in many ways, spoke of hate and discrimination. Its people were running scared and willing to live in squalor and anonymity. There were no walls there, only bed sheets and old clothes strung up for privacy. Mosquitos were everywhere, and many residents suffered from malaria. The whole place was full of stagnant water and wet mud. There was a small bore well for water, and a giant red cross in a square of sorts where the people plan to build a church. Everywhere bright-coloured cloth was used to screen off houses.
Bilkis Bibi was standing outside a muddy pool in front of her tent house. When I went up to her, she invited me inside and was open about the pitiful nature of her life. In her forties, she moved here a year ago after Rimsha Masih was falsely accused of burning the pages of the Koran. She said she was threatened and the men in her family were beaten. The landlord suddenly hiked the rent to PKR 5000 a month and the electricity charges as well. They had no choice but to leave. Her daughter dropped out of school, and Bilkis’s husband sold vegetables to survive. Her elder daughter and grandchildren had come back to live with Bilkis after her (the daughter’s) husband left her. There was no light or cooking fuel, and toilets were the nearby forest. Living in Meherabad had become impossible after the constant abuse. The shopkeeper used to throw things at them, and once the landlord threw all their belongings on the road and ordered them to leave. The residents complained to the police who did nothing. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) agreed to resettle them in another sector but the local people didn’t even allow that. The signal was clear—they were not wanted anywhere.
Bilkis would weep every day in her new home. She had lived in Meherabad for fifteen years and worked as a house help. She was weakened by Hepatitis C. Her tent had a single low bed and behind it, there was a pile of sodden beds and bedclothes drenched by the rain. Her daughter was washing vessels in what looked like muddy water. I walked around the colony talking to people. On one side of the tents was another small row of makeshift homes. Outside one of them, sitting in the slush, another resident, Maria, was cooking rice on a wood-fired stove. She, too, had run away from Meherabad and was surviving on a pension after her husband died. She had five daughters, and one of them sitting next to her, Rubina, suffered from cancer. There was no money for treatment, she said.
Nadeem used to be a sanitary worker in a private company. He was sacked after the Rimsha incident and didn’t have a job. His child had to drop out of school. The CDA was also threatening the eviction of the colony. People who moved here find it difficult to get work, like Shamim, a tailor. Arif John who claimed to be Rimsha’s neighbour, said she was a poor girl who was mentally challenged; she did not burn anything and it was all false. Arif was clear that the Muslims wanted to evict the Christians from the area, and they had even announced it once during prayers in Meherabad. Before that, they had attacked a Christian convention and broken the mikes. Arif and the others tried to look for houses to rent but everywhere they were refused. In this untidy settlement, they could pray safely. In Meherabad, they were not allowed to play music during the prayers and once some people tried to burn the church.
Social activists said that Christians were discriminated against in jobs, promotions and housing. In the eleven slums, or kachchi abadis, as they are called in Islamabad, where mostly Christians live, there was no water or light, and sanitation was non-existent. In one of these kachchi abadis, Hansa Colony, water was a big issue and schoolchildren could be found filling cans in their free time. Standing on a slippery slope next to a deep and fast-flowing gutter, Saima and her brother Haroon filled plastic bottles, watched over by their father. Not surprisingly, some children would fall into the gutter.
Faisal Zulfiqar’s classmates roundly abused him at school after the Danish cartoons on Prophet Mohammed. In the government schools, Christian children were called the children of ‘chudus’, or sweepers. Many of the Christians were converts from the Dalit community and they were still outcaste in some ways. Salamat Masih worked as a sweeper, but the day I met him, he was standing outside his house, chopping huge logs for the day. Sometimes he wandered around to fetch firewood. Many Christians had also moved from Sialkot, Narwal and Gujranwala, fearing persecution. Here in Islamabad, they took odd jobs and lived in a relatively safe environment. You could see people filling small cylinders with LPG from a strange contraption in a most unsafe manner, for PKR 100 at a time.
Some attempts were being made by activists in Hansa Colony to improve matters and there was some bonhomie with the local Muslims who gifted a water cooler to the church; there would also be joint iftar parties. But lasting peace or even justice for the community could be elusive. It was not the case that only Christians were persecuted under the blasphemy law, but it was a handy tool. Pastor Boota Masih was conducting choir practice in the new Pentecostal church. A handful of people were singing in that small, damp room with a big cross. He had kept the church going since 1991, unfazed by threats and the murder of Christians.
In April 2014, while launching the HRCP report on the state of human rights in 2013, veteran activist I.A. Rehman said the condition of minorities was worsening and it was nearly impossible for those accused in blasphemy cases to have a trial in Pakistan. The HRCP’s Kamran Arif said that human rights was in a state of regression and 2013 was no exception. Sectarian clashes were on the rise and the administration of justice was far from satisfactory. There was a heavy backlog of cases across all tiers of the judicial system, and the report said 20,000 cases were pending in the Supreme Court alone.
Sectarian violence claimed the lives of over 200 Hazara Shias in Balochistan in the first few weeks of 2013. The report documented more than 200 sectarian attacks, which killed 687 people. Seven Ahmadis lost their lives in targeted attacks and in the deadliest assault ever against Pakistan’s Christian citizens, over 100 people were killed in a Peshawar church. A Muslim mob torched a predominantly Christian neighbourhood in Lahore after a Christian man was accused of blasphemy; 100 houses were burnt as residents fled. Individuals charged with offences relating to religion included seventeen Ahmadis, thirteen Christians and nine Muslims.
In November 2013, the HRCP released a report25 that assessed the improvement in the level of respect for the political rights of minority religious communities, especially in relation to their participation in the elections as voters and candidates. The General Election of May 2013 was the third one since the abolition of separate electorates in 2002 and except for the Ahmadiyya community, everyone else had equal rights to vote or seek election to general seats. The HRCP chose six constituencies in Sindh for observation which had a substantial minority presence. The constituencies are located in Mirpur Khas-Umarkot, Tharparkar and Lahore—the last has a sizeable Christian population. The minority group in the area under observation was Hindu, and both voters and candidates faced discrimination because of this. A large number of the Hindus worked as daily wagers in the farms of the feudal landlords, and most followed their employer’s diktat. The report found some positive outcomes—despite their failure to win a general seat in the National Assembly in the past elections, members of religious minorities continued to stand, and in five constituencies in Sindh, there were eleven minority candidates in 2013 as against five in 2008. Majority community candidates, who, in the past, had largely ignored them, actively sought their votes and even asked them to manage their campaigns in some cases.
While women voters from the minority community turned out in large numbers in Sindh, often outnumbering Muslim women, there were problems in places. In the Mirpur Khas-Umarkot constituency, the only non-Muslim candidate, Santosh Kumar, got just sixty-five votes even though there were 85,000 voters who were non-Muslim. Kumar told the HRCP that during the campaign, he feared attacks by religious groups, but was scared of naming anyone.
In a National Assembly constituency in Tharparkar, during the May 2013 General Elections, a pamphlet was circulated warning Muslims against voting for an ‘infidel’ or a candidate belonging to a religious minority. While ten seats of the 342 in the National Assembly are reserved for non-Muslims, only one non-Muslim candidate was elected from the 272 general seats. Minorities were not accorded protection during elections, and complaints were not taken seriously. They lost out in the democratic process as well after being deprived of their fundamental rights.