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Pakistani Christian sentenced to life in prison
Faisalabad Court finds Ranjha Masih guilty of blasphemy
by Barbara G. Baker
Compass (28.04.2003)/ HRWF Int. (30.04.2003) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net -- A Pakistani Christian in his 50s has been sentenced to life in prison for committing blasphemy, allegedly by damaging a Muslim signboard during a bishops funeral procession five years ago.
An estimated 100 onlookers jammed the Faisalabad Additional District and Sessions Court on April 26 to hear the lower court verdict against Ranjha Masih, read out by Judge Mohammed Shahid Rafique.
He just announced the judgment against Ranjha in two short sentences and then abruptly he went away, Masihs defense lawyer Khalil Tahir told Compass today. As of this morning, Judge Rafique still had not signed the verdict, Tahir said. I dont know why, but he is receiving threats.
Although the final defense arguments for Masih had been completed before the court in the last week of March, Judge Rafique had postponed the verdict several times. When the judgment was finally announced two days ago, the courtroom was reportedly filled with local Muslim activists and journalists.
Contrary to a Dawn newspaper report that a large number of Christian leaders also came to the court to hear the verdict, Tahir said he was the only Christian present when the judgment was announced. No one else came there, no priest, no one, he said.
Masihs life-prison sentence was accompanied by a fine of 50,000 rupees ($830).
According to reports published in yesterdays Daily Times and Dawn newspapers, the plaintiff who opened the blasphemy case against Masih was Mohammed Jahanzeb, son of former Faisalabad mayor Malik Mohammed Ashraf.
Jahanzeb had alleged that Christian youths pelted stones on Koranic verses written on a signboard at a Railway Road pawn shop, and also committed blasphemy, the Dawn report said.
The prosecution accused Masih of participating in a violent Christian procession and smashing a neon sign bearing the Muslim statement of faith on May 8, 1998, during funeral processions for Bishop John Joseph. Then Catholic bishop of Faisalabad, Bishop John committed suicide in front of the Faisalabad courthouse in a dramatic protest against the victimization of Christians under Pakistans harsh blasphemy laws.
According to Tahir, Masih conducted himself very boldly at his trial, declaring confidently to the court, I am innocent. I never did that.
Masih was tried under Section 295-C of the blasphemy law, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted. Inexplicably, Judge Rafique instead handed down a life-sentence verdict to Masih.
Tahir said he would file his clients appeal before the Lahore High Court as soon as he can obtain a certified copy of the lower court judgment, which the judge has yet to sign. The appeal process could be expected to take another 18 months, he admitted, saying he would try to move the case more rapidly.
Now 55, Masih has been jailed without bail since his arrest nearly five years ago. We have been keeping regular contact with Ranjha, to keep up his spirits, Catholic Bishop Joseph Coutts confirmed today from Faisalabad, where Masih is incarcerated in the Faisalabad Central Jail.
A simple bus hawker by occupation, Masih was a long-time personal friend of Bishop John. He and his wife, Rashidaan Bibi, have five sons, one daughter and several grandchildren.
In addition to Ranjha Masih, seven other Christians are currently jailed on blasphemy charges in Pakistan: Ashiq Kingri Masih, age 26, on death row in Faisalabad; Aslam Masih, 71, appealing double life-sentences in Faisalabad; Amjad and Asif Masih, 30 and 29 respectively, appealing 25-year sentences in Jhang; Pervaiz Masih, 35, on trial in Daska; Anwar Kenneth, on death row in Lahore; and Shahbaz Masih, 25, on trial in Faisalabad.
Three Pakistani Christians have been acquitted of false blasphemy charges in the past year, but all served long years in prison before their release. Ayub Masih spent nearly six years in jail, four of them on death row, before the Supreme Court overturned his conviction last August. Two brothers, Saleem and Rasheed Masih, were imprisoned nearly four years until the Lahore High Court announced their acquittal and release in March.
Hardline region tries to impose sharia law
By Rory McCarthy
The Guardian (31.01.2003)/ HRWF Int. (03.02.2003) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Politicians from Pakistan's most radical Islamic parties, emboldened by an unprecedented election success, are preparing to impose sharia law on the country's already conservative northern province.
In general elections in October - the first since a military coup three years earlier - an alliance of religious parties riding a wave of anti-American sentiment swept to a majority in the parliament of the North West Frontier, next to the Afghan border.
In the national assembly in Islamabad, the religious parties, which had traditionally won barely a handful of seats, became the third - largest party and a significant opposition force.
Since the Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (United Action Front) took over in the frontier, some provincial banks have been told to stop charging interest on loans, and music has been banned on buses.
Now the provincial government is planning a ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, an unwelcome reminder of Afghanistan's religious police force under the Taliban.
But these politicians are markedly different from the poorly educated religious students of the Taliban, whom they appear to be emulating.
Several, like Siraj-ul Haq, the provincial cabinet's deputy leader, are highly educated and careful to appear conciliatory.
"Sharia means the supremacy of law, the provision of justice, the provision of healthcare facilities," Mr Haq said, speaking at his sparsely decorated official residence in Peshawar. "It means education, providing food and shelter, and satisfying people spiritually. We can claim to have in the frontier province the most ultra-modern and democratic government in the world."
However it also offers an ideological support base for Taliban and al-Qaida remnants.
Of the FBI presence in the region, Mr Haq said: "Pakistan considers operations conducted in the name of the hunt for al-Qaida as false operations.
"We hope that no one will displease us, otherwise it will be very harmful for everyone. It could become more serious."
Many of those elected belong to the powerful Jamaat-e-Islami party, which has close links with the Hizb-ul Mojahedin, the largest militant group fighting in Kashmir.
In a series of interviews, several new politicians admitted they had fought with Hizb-ul Mojahedin in Kashmir, and before that against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The national assembly politician Mohammad Usman was one of them. "Jihad means to struggle for the glory of Islam," he said. "It was difficult, we were guerrillas, but that comes in the spirit of jihad. Now, that life for me is finished. Now we must serve the people."
The religious parties can count on their powerful relationship with the military, which still dominates Pakistan's government. The Jamaat-e-Islami also has thousands of followers in Pakistani society.
But to succeed, the religious parties will also need to tackle the frontier's pressing need for services such as education, water supplies, and healthcare.
Pakistan authorities silent on church attack investigation
Police claim Culprits caught, but none have been identified
by Barbara G. Baker
COMPASS DIRECT (30.01.2003) / HRWF Int. (04.02.2003) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Five weeks after grenade-throwing assailants attacked a village church in Pakistan's remote northern Punjab region, local police officials remain tight-lipped concerning their promise to take "quick and stern action" to arrest and prosecute the culprits.
It was nearly three weeks after the deadly Christmas night attack before Gujranwala's deputy inspector general (DIG) Malik Iqbal announced, on January 12, that one of two accused suspects had been taken into custody. Citing security concerns, Iqbal refused to name the captured suspect or his counterpart still at large, although he stated that under police interrogation, the man under arrest had "confessed his involvement" in the attack.
Five days later, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told reporters in Lahore that he had just been informed that the culprits who carried out the Daska church attack had all been arrested.
Three young girls were killed and another 13 worshippers injured in the December 25 attack near Daska in Chianwali village, where Christian families had gathered for their annual Christmas program in a small Presbyterian chapel.
Local Christians directly implicated a local Islamist cleric, Mohammed Afzal, filing a formal First Investigation Report (FIR) against him at the police station. Afzal is accused in the FIR of instigating the attack in recent months by the violent anti-Christian rhetoric in his mosque sermons, which repeatedly called on "every good Muslim" to kill
Christians.
Over the next few days, police officials announced that the mosque leader, his sons and several other associates had been put under arrest. All are said to be open supporters of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed), a banned group of Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir. But it remains unclear whether they are still in custody or will face charges over the deadly attack.
The actual attackers, who were unmasked and identified by eyewitnesses as two young men named Rashid and Dildar, reportedly fled the scene by running into Afzal's "madrassah" (Islamic school) nearby.
After his second fact-finding visit to the Daska area on January 22, coordinator Joseph Francis of the Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) noted that the police chief heading the investigation was "not confirming anything," including the identity of the alleged culprits in custody.
"When we met him last time, he was not giving any solid answers," Francis said. "He is still saying, 'Oh yes, we have arrested the two sons of the maulvi [mosque leader],' but he is not really mentioning anything."
Even more disturbing, local Christians publicly testified at an Islamabad press conference January 20 that they were being "warned that Christians should not press the police to carry on with the investigation," Reuters news agency reported on January 21.
"We have been receiving calls from people harassing us with a message: shut your mouth, or we will shut your mouth," local activist Jonathan Rehmat Gill told the assembled press.
Although Pakistani authorities claim to have arrested or killed all of the perpetrators of six terrorist attacks launched against Christian churches and institutions in Pakistan in the past 15 months, few suspects have been named and none formally charged and put on trial.
To date 42 Pakistanis have been killed and another 88 injured in the attacks, apparently mounted by Islamist militants opposing Islamabad's support of the U.S.-led offensive against the former Taliban regime and the al-Qaeda movement.
Teenage survivor re-hospitalized
A month after the Christmas church attack, the Pakistani government fulfilled its promise to provide monetary compensation to the victims' families and the injured survivors. In a joint ceremony in Chianwali attended by both the federal and Punjab ministers for minorities and youth affairs, checks totaling 300,000 rupees ($5,000) were given to each of the three victim's families, with 150,000 rupees ($2,500) allocated for each person injured.
During the January 22 presentation, Federal Minister Rais Munir Ahmad was quoted in "The Nation" newspaper as saying that the minorities in Pakistan were "freely enjoying their religious rights without any fear and pressure. The worship places of all minorities are safe," the minister declared, reiterating that the Chianwali culprits had been caught and would be "punished under the law."
By this time, all the wounded had been discharged from the hospitals, although the following day teenager Shakila Masih was re-admitted to the neurology ward of Lahore's Mayo Hospital.
"Shakila is in a very critical condition," a CLAAS representative said last week. Due to severe head wounds, the 14-year-old girl remained in a coma for an extended period, and is still "not in her senses," the representative said. "The government has said that they will allow Shakila to come back to the hospital for further treatment."
Doctors have confirmed that three of the injured Christians will be permanently disabled by the loss of one or both of their eyes in the blast. Afzal Masih was totally blinded, while his brother Aslam lost one eye and is still fighting infection in his other eye. Despite surgery, Asiya Masih is expected to lose her sight in one eye as well.
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