This is my first post on something that has been in the news for several days now on the latest outrage in Pakistan, where local Muslims use the country's harsh blasphemy laws in defense of Islam to persecute Christians on the slightest pretext. Aasia Bibi, who was notoriously jailed in 2009 and condemned to death, still languishes in jail, despite actions by the international community and local Pakistani groups to set her free...
The tale of Rimsha, latest victim
of Christian persecution in Pakistan
August 29, 2012
Her name is Rimsha Masih. She is between 11 and 13 years old. She is a Christian and comes from a poor family of street sweepers. She is from Pakistan. As of Wednesday, August 29th, Rimsha has spent 13 days in a high-security jail in Rawalpindi, far from home, because Muslim protesters claim she burned pages from an Islamic holy book.
Rimsha is the one of the 1,100 victims of Pakistan’s infamous blasphemy laws and its youngest to date. Emer McCarthy has this report:
“Thirteen days in jail is inexcusable, its incomprehensible” says Peter Jacob, President of the Pakistani bishops National Commission for Justice and Peace. “It’s a punishment without any judgment”.
On the insistence of the mob who surrounded the child on Aug. 6th and fearing violence, the police arrested Rimsha and immediately filed blasphemy charges against her. If she is found guilty, she faces life in prison.
Her family and human rights activists say she is 11 years old and mentally impaired, which would make her exempt from the blasphemy laws. On Tuesday, court-appointed medical experts ruled instead she was 14, but that that her mental condition “does not match her age and physical condition”.
But the mob’s anger has not been quelled by Rimsha’s arrest. Jacob reports that 250 families Christian families have been forced to leave there homes in the area. Rimsha’s parents are reportedly in the protective custody of the minister for national harmony, Paul Bhatti. Last year his brother, Shahbaz Bhatti, was shot dead outside his Islamabad home.
Shabaz, the former minorities minister, together with assassinated Punjab Governor Salman Taseer championed the battle against the Blasphemy law and the release of Asia Bibi , the first Christian woman to be sentenced under the law and who still remains in prison.
“There is a lack of political will on the part of the government to do anything while the country is in crisis.
[Pakistan has yet to recover from the political consequences of the assassination of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2009.] We need urgent reforms, juridical, political and civic reforms. Above all we need to remove hate material from the [school] curricula. That is what is needed to bring peace to this country”.
Speaking at the Rimini Meeting last Saturday on “International politics and religious freedom”, the President of the Vatican Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, French Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran called for dialogue and transparency in her case, stating : "This is a girl who can neither write nor read, who collected garbage for a living, and may have found the fragments of the book among the rubbish. These facts must be checked before claims are made that she desecrated a sacred text. "
Free Rimsha now and end the Blasphemy Law
used for anti-Christian witch hunts
by Manzer Munir
August 28, 2012
The writer is the Kansas City international affairs correspondent of the Examiner and president of a group called Pakistanis for Peace.
Pakistan’s latest victim of the notorious blasphemy laws, is an 11 year old girl suffering from Downs Syndrome. Rimshah Masih was taken from her mother by an angry mob intent on killing her.
Burnt religious texts mysteriously appeared in a bag she was carrying, suspected by rights activists to have been planted by members of the mob. Worldwide condemnation and demands by the Pakistani Government to take action to stop this ongoing discrimination, persecution and hatred towards minorities living has done little to change the situation. Christian advocacy groups have called on the US and British Governments, the EU and the UN to intervene on behalf of this poor child and to bring about her immediate freedom.
In order to help bring an end to hatred towards minorities in the conservative nation of Pakistan and to defend these otherwise helpless victims like Rimsha, we are asking people worldwide to please sign the petition below:
www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/freerimshamasih
Once enough signatures are collected, the plan is to send this petition to the Pakistan Government at the highest levels possible to secure her immediate freedom.
“While the Burmese’s treatment of the Rohingya Muslims has indeed been appalling and deserves condemnation, the religious minorities that are living inside Pakistan face their very own Burma within Pakistan on a daily basis.
“As the rest of the country goes about its way, having just celebrated another joyous Eid, spare a thought for a little girl with special needs, languishing in a juvenile jail", lamented a Christian outside her home.
“She is probably all alone, and scared. With her condition, she very well might not even know the reason she is in there.
“But ask her neighbors, some who are frothing at the teeth to have a go at her, and they will tell you that she deserves to die" he said wanting to remain anonymous out of fear for his life.
Perhaps the first bit of good news, if one can call it that came on Tuesday when a medical examiner confirmed that she is indeed a minor, offering some hope that if her case proceeds, at least she will be tried as a minor and not an adult.
Regardless, the blasphemy law and charges against her are undoubtedly false and majority of the time, they are used to intimidate and settle vendettas against the scared Christian minority in 98% Muslim and increasingly Talibanized Pakistan.
“The girl and her mother were severely beaten by an enraged mob that had converged outside their house, while the rest of her family managed to flee. If the police had not intervened, there is no telling what else could have happened”, reported a neighbor.
Please sign the petition and help free Rimsha and Aasia Bibi and put an end to Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws.
An informative background to Aasia Bibi's case is on
mail.tlaxcala.es/article.asp?reference=3149