Babar Awan says no one can change blasphemy law

	Friday, November 26, 2010, Zilhajj 19, 1431 A.H.
Babar Awan says no one can change blasphemy law

Friday, November 26, 2010
By Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD: Law Minister Babar Awan has categorically said that no one should think of repealing the blasphemy law. “In my presence as the Law Minister, no one should think of finishing this law,” he said while declaring himself to be a “Shaheen” (eagle). He was talking to a senior member of the Jang Group on Thursday.

The minister came out with these unequivocal remarks in the wake of the latest media debate over the blasphemy laws, which started once again by the recent award of a death sentence to a Christian woman on blasphemy charges.

The categorical stance by Minister Awan, arguably one of the closest aides of President Zardari and one with a role in many controversies, is in direct contradiction to that taken by Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer, who while being critical of the same law is all out to secure the release of Aasia Masih, sentenced to death by a district and sessions court of Nankana Sahib in the Punjab. Taseer has already declared that the convict was innocent and according to observers his view is shared by many commentators who in a majority of cases may not even have gone through the details of the evidence and judgment.

While appreciating the comment that any effort to amend or repeal the blasphemy law would lead to chaos, the Babar Awan emphasised that in his presence as law minister no one would be allowed to change or repeal the law.

“In order to remove ambiguity pl (please) also write 2moro (tomorrow) that I told U (The Jang Group) (that) in my presence as Law Minister no one should think of finishing this law,” this is what the law minister precisely said in his written statement. On this, the law minister was asked if he should be quoted, he said, “Sure.” Babar Awan added that he was servant of servants of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

He said, “I’m khadim of khadmaan-e-Rasool.” He prayed that candle of ishq-e-Rasool (love for Prophet (PBUH)) is lit in every heart. The law minister, instead, said that all religious nobles must be respected in order to save world from crisis like the publication of caricature.

It is not clear if the law minister has the blessings of President Asif Ali Zardari, who is under pressure to pardon the convict Aasia Masih but it shows serious cracks within the ruling elite about its policy on the blasphemy law.

Babar Awan claims to be a religious scholar; he gives lectures on Islam but at the time faces serious accusation of corruption in the Harris Steel Mill case of Bank of Punjab scandal. Additionally, he continues to claim to be a PhD and uses the prefix of Dr with his name despite the fact that the Monticello University, which awarded him the fake degree, has already been declared unauthorized both by the American and Pakistani authorities to have been entitled to issue such a degree at any stage.

Babar Awan is also generally believed as the man responsible for the government’s confrontational mode with the judiciary. All controversies notwithstanding, on the issue of blasphemy laws he has opted to detach himself from all those who are demanding the repeal of these laws.

URL: www.thenews.com.pk/26-11-2010/Top-Story/2293.htm

Pakistan’s Persecuted Minority

---Asia Sentinel, Hong Kong

Pakistan’s Persecuted Minority

Written by Jo Baker
Wednesday, 30 September 2009

Ahmadis face serious danger and death, some of it possibly fomented by the government

Last month Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari observed the country’s National Minority Day by calling minority groups “a sacred trust for Pakistan” and lamenting the ‘extremist elements’ responsible for their insecurity in the country. But his words fell flat for Pakistan’s Ahmadis, for whom a fresh surge of hostile incidents, some linked to the state itself, is capping decades of persecution.

The issue was taken up this month by Iqbal Haider, the co-chair of NGO, The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan: “Ahmadis are the worst victims of such discrimination and deprivation, mainly because they refuse to regard themselves as non- Muslims,” he said to Daily Dawn’s political magazine, the Herald. “The state and the society are unwilling to let them have any rights, let alone the freedom to practice their religion. Pakistan has most oppressive laws when it comes to Ahmadis and the suspicion runs deep.”

Ahmadis are arguably the most vilified minority across the Islamic world. They are not considered Muslims by mainstream branches of the religion. Founded in the 1880s by a religious figure named Ghulam Ahmad, Ahmadis differ with the mainstream on the death and return of Jesus, the concept of jihad and, most controversially, the question of whether the Prophet Mohammad was the last messenger from Allah. Ghulam claimed to have received messages himself from god, making him a later prophet.

Pakistan is hardly alone in discriminating against Ahmadis. In Indonesia, where they are known as the Ahmadiyah, they have been terrorized regularly, with their places of worship attacked by fundamentalists and members being banned from taking part in the Haj in some parts of the country. Laws were passed in Indonesia last year restricting their activities and prohibiting them from proselytizing. In many parts of Kyrgistan, they have been told to cease worshiping.

The depredations in Pakistan have been particularly distressing. Since the mid 1980s, the Ahmadis have been dying in droves. Some 104 have been murdered in targeted attacks or lynchings and 117 others have escaped murder attempts, according to the community’s records. Other forms of harassment are also common: mosques have been demolished, set on fire and forcibly occupied and Ahmadi corpses have been dug up from Muslim graveyards.

Statistics tend to run from 1984 because that’s when a column started to appear on all official forms, asking whether or not a person believes in the ‘finality of the prophet;’ part of dictator Zia ul Haq’s ’Islamization’ drive that cordoned off Ahmadis and other minorities from mainstream life. But recently things have become markedly worse, with at least eight Ahmadis murdered in the last year alone in Pakistan, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), and many more falsely arrested. Doctors are a popular target, possibly because Ahmadis tend to be well educated (the group claims a 100 percent literacy rate for women) and at least seven have been murdered in the last three years.

Bouts of anti-Ahmadi or anti-Qadiani sentiment have long seemed to kick in with a ruler’s loosening grip on power.

“In Pakistan religion has been used by the political leadership to sustain their political agenda for a long time,” notes Khawaja Zafar Iqbal, a non-Ahmadi journalist and founder of the Kashmiri-based NGO, Press for Peace (currently in hiding due to a fatwa). “Even our former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was considered very liberal, received considerable public support during his rule by declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslims.”

Similarly, seven years into the reign of dictator Zia ul Haq in the 80s, when his power base was seen to be slipping, he strengthened specifically-anti Ahmadi legislation with an ordinance and a couple of amendments to the penal code. And these days a struggling President Zardari appears to be making no concrete commitment to combating public aggression against the sect, much of it linked to the Punjab Provincial Chief Minister, Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif and his ambitious brother and opposition party leader Nawaz Sharif.

In 2008 and 2009 a spate of vociferously anti-Ahmadi conferences (known as the Khatme-E-Nabwat movement) have gone ahead in Punjab, with street processions and two-storey billboards in town centres proclaiming ‘Friendship with Mirza (Ahmadis) is like the enmity of Allah’ (see image). One of the official sponsors in a number of these events was the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), the provincial ruling party; their insignia appears on the billboards and members of parliament attend. Ahmadi groups also point out that frontline PML-N politicians — including current Chairman Raja Zafura-ul-Haq and Pakistan’s former president Rafiq Tarir have belonged to aggressively anti-Ahmadi parties such as Jamaat Islamiah. For sect members in this province in particular, these conferences are a time to keep their heads down.

This seems particularly necessary when looking at the lack of help Ahmadis tend to get from the legal system; in a country already notorious for police corruption, violence against them can appear state sanctioned.

Late last year a guest on the religious program ‘Alam Online’ (hosted by the former federal minister for religious affairs) repeatedly and freely urged Muslims to kill Ahmadi sect members as a religious duty.

The next day a 45-year old Ahmadi doctor was shot 11 times on his hospital floor by six men, and a day later a 75 year old community leader was shot in the street in Sindh. In the former case although the shooters were seen sauntering casually out of the hospital’s front entrance, no one has been arrested and no official moves were made to hold the program accountable (a weak apology was made after much NGO lobbying).

No one has been arrested for the murder of a trader earlier this year, who died when three men asked him to identify his religion, then peppered his car with gunfire. Ahmadi groups say that little progress has been made in the prosecution of two madrassa students who tried to behead a sect professor this June, but were successfully fought off.

In fact the law for Ahmadis appears to be working inversely, blasphemy laws in particular being misused — it is estimated by the AHRC that 500 Ahmadis are currently charged with offences that vary from ‘impersonating a Muslim’ to desecrating the Quran, which is punishable with death, and in most cases little evidence is used to book them.

In Punjab early this year four teenagers and a teacher of theirs were arrested for writing the name of the Prophet on the walls of a toilet at a mosque in Layaah, though no evidence was given to link them to the mosque or the area itself; police later lamented pressure from fundamentalists groups to make the arrests and the judge trying the case himself became a target of street protests by Majlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islam lobbying for strong punishment. Media reports this week noted a fresh wave of police operations in Lahore to pull down Quranic verses or plaques from above Ahmadi shop doors. This official line has done little to set a positive example in the community.

“People are very loyal and lovely,” insists Munawar Ali Shahid, the General Secretary for Amnesty International in Lahore, an Ahmadi. “The problem is the politicians and political parties and their underground alliances with religious groups.” Nevertheless he talks of discrimination against his son at school — he was told not to drink from the same tap as other students by his teacher — and of reluctance to tell people of his religion.

The feeling extends to the press, which commonly prints fatwas issued by religious groups against minorities (see image) yet refused across the board last year when Ahmadi group tried to place an advertisement explaining that they were boycotting the general election because of religious discrimination.

“All these beautifully constructed articles take a 180 degree turn while considering the status of religious minorities, especially Ahmadis in Pakistan,” says human rights lawyer Rao Zafar Iqbal, of the laws in the penal code that protect the right to religion. “The Zardari government [are] unable to do such things because they are playing in the hands of unseen powers who have their own priorities.”

Iqbal himself narrowly escaped assassination earlier this summer and is in hiding, after fatwas against him were published by the Daily Pavel newspaper, decrying his legal defense of minorities. “I think it’s the failure of the government that religious minorities, activists and human rights defenders protection is still a vague thought in Pakistan,” he says.

A start, says Munawar Ali Shahid, would be the repeal of the ordinance that enforces religious declarations on official documents. Next, he says, Ahmadis must have their right to vote along with the rest of the country, rather than in a separate electoral role (Muslims with Christians, Hindus and other minorities were united electorally under Musharraf, but not Ahmadis). At 46 years old Munawar has never been able to bring himself to vote as a ‘non-Muslim’.

At face value the Zardari government agrees. “This is a Pakistan People’s Party’s Government that is deeply committed to the protection of minorities and to accord them rights a full criticizes” said parliamentarian Sherry Rehman earlier this month. Yet it’s likely that the teenagers with the near-lethal graffiti convictions, the fatwa-burdened lawyer, the disenfranchised father and the professor who nearly lost his head this year, would all like to see a little more bite behind the bark.

Jo Baker is a Hong Kong based journalist and program coordinator for the Asian Human Rights Commission

URL: www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?o...2078&Itemid=189

Pakistan committed to ensure equal rights to minorities: Zardari

--- AAJ TV, Pakistan

Tuesday, 11 Aug, 2009 1:06 am

Pakistan committed to ensure equal rights to minorities: Zardari

ISLAMABAD : President Asif Ali Zardari has said Pakistan stands committed to ensure equal rights to all minorities, as enshrined in the Constitution, and all measures will be taken for their complete freedom and security.

In a message on the ‘Minorities Day’, President Asif Ali Zardari said “Minorities are a sacred trust for Pakistan,” and pointed that father of the nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah made this solemn pledge at the time of creation of Pakistan in categorical and unequivocal terms.

Quaid-e-Azam also made it clear that the policy of equality, freedom and security for all communities shall be ensured.

The President said, the constitution, through various provisions lays down that the minorities can freely profess and practice their religious and culture and envisages to safeguard their legitimate interests for which the People’s government stands fully committed.

He said the government has made necessary institutional arrangements, which guarantees safeguards for political participation and welfare of the Minorities.

President Zardari said the present government has taken a historical step of reservation of 0.5 percent quota in government jobs and services for minorities which will ensure their due representation at all level.

He said the government is making all-out efforts to impart sense of equal citizenship so far as fundamental rights, safety, security, honour, life, liberty and properties of the minorities are concerned.

“Unfortunately, some extremist elements with a view to advancing their own narrow and bigoted agenda have targeted the minorities, as happened recently to members of the Christian Minority in Gojra,” President Zardari said. The government is committed to foil the designs of these extremist elements, he added.

He said, August 11 was being observed to reaffirm solidarity with the minorities. The day coincides with the vision of the great leader of the nation Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who on this day in his historic speech laid down the foundations of a modern, tolerant and progressive Pakistan where every one will have rights regardless of creed, caste and gender.

The President said, the government stands committed to ensure equal rights for all minority communities as enshrined in the constitution and the UN declaration of Human Rights.

“The minorities’ day is an opportunity that reminds us to reaffirm our solidarity and to work hard for the betterment of humanity and for a prosperous Pakistan”, he observed and added that “let us on this day dedicate ourselves to continue our journey along this road”.

URL: www.aaj.tv/news/National/143737_2detail.html
© APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2009