New call to end Pakistan blasphemy law
-14/05/05
The Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church in Pakistan has joined other global human rights organizations in a renewed plea for the repeal of its country’s blasphemy law, according to Ecumenical News International in Switzerland.
The law carries a range of penalties up to and including death for those found breaking it. It particularly effects Christians and other minorities.
In a study by the J & P Commission of the 647 blasphemy cases reported in the Pakistani media since 1988, it was noted that nearly 90 cases were against Christians.
Christians account for less than three per cent of Pakistan’s estimated 162 million population – 95 per cent of whom are Muslim.
In April 2005, Dominicans for Justice and Peace, Franciscans International and Pax Christi International in conjunction with the mainly Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox World Council of Churches submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, says Anto Akkara in New Delhi.
The writers of the report to the UN commission said they “strongly consider that religious intolerance and discrimination on the basis of religion remain one of the root causes of a number of conflicts, wars and ongoing violence”.
Higher courts in Pakistan have acquitted those accused of blasphemy in 102 cases on appeal after lower courts sentenced them. Twenty people accused of blasphemy, including six Christians, have been murdered during their trials, says the new study.
The report has been released to mark the seventh anniversary of the death of Catholic Bishop John Joseph of Faislabad, which caused shock around the world.
Bishop Joseph took his own life to highlight the plight of Christians in Pakistan. It was a move that he and his supporters described not as suicide but as a “necessary but painful sacrifice”.