DroneAcharya
BANNED
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2012
- Messages
- 226
- Reaction score
- 0
Threat of genocide looms in Pakistan
By Geoffrey Johnston, kingston Whig-Standard
Thursday, March 21, 2013 2:42:50 EDT PM
While Pakistans archaic blasphemy laws seem to enjoy support among the Sunni Muslim-majority population, the South Asian nations religious minorities live in constant fear of being bludgeoned by them.
Religiously motivated violence is common in Pakistan. And much of the violence is driven by the countrys blasphemy laws, which make it a capital crime to insult Islam. Under section 295-C of the penal code, blasphemy is punishable by life in prison or death. According to Human Rights Watch, dozens were charged in 2012 and at least 16 people remained on death row for blasphemy, while another 20 served life sentences.
Pakistans blasphemy laws send a signal to society that certain religious groups are so inappropriate that theyre deserving of death, says Knox Thames, policy director of the Washington, D.C.-based United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. While the state has never carried out the death penalty for someone found guilty of blasphemy, certainly mobs and individual actors have killed people whove been accused of it.
Charges of blasphemy are often trumped-up, used to settle scores or to incite vigilante violence. Earlier this month, an allegation of blasphemy levelled against a young Christian man in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, incited mayhem. Mobs laid siege to a Christian enclave, known as the Joseph Colony. The allegation was fake and stemmed from a personal disagreement between friends, says a Presbyterian Church of Pakistan official, who doesn't want to be named because he fears for his own safety.
According to an evangelical Christian pastor based in Lahore, the mob numbered more than 3,000. And he says that when besieged Christians called the police for help, they were told the mob was too big to control.
Fearing for their safety, hundreds of Christian families fled the area on Friday, 8 March, 2013, says the Presbyterian official. These innocent and frightened people were forced to flee for their lives, leaving behind their houses and possessions unprotected. The mob returned on Saturday, 9 March, and began to ransack Christian homes and set them on fire.
According to the pastor, more than 200 homes were destroyed. And rain has hampered emergency relief efforts, says the Presbyterian official, making life really difficult for the affected people of Joseph Colony, many of whom are now living in tents.
Tragically, Pakistans Christian community has suffered massive arson attacks before. On Aug.1, 2009, the Christian enclave at Gojra in northeastern Punjab was engulfed in flames. Incited by another false blasphemy allegation, a Muslim mob rampaged through the town, setting fire to more than 100 homes owned by Christians.
The latest violence in Lahore is just another example of the government being unable, or unwilling, at the local level, but also at the criminal level, to intervene to stop mob violence, Thames says. And that has created a climate of impunity for terrorists and vigilantes. Until that ends, Thames says, I think the Christian community will feel besieged, as will other religious minority groups in Pakistan, like Shia Muslims and Ahmadi.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht - the Night of Broken Glass, the Nazi-incited anti-Jewish riots of Nov. 9-10, 1938, that destroyed 200 synagogues in Austria, Germany, and the Sudetenland (Nazi-occupied western Czechoslovakia). According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human-rights organization, the Kristallnacht foreshadowed the Holocaust and underscored for Jews "the terrifying realization that political anti-Semitism can lead to violence." That terrifying lesson should resonate with religious minority communities in Pakistan.
Speaking at a genocide prevention conference last month, Canadian Senator Romeo Dallaire stated that mass atrocities are not only carried out through mass murder. Drawing on the seminal writings of Polish Lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who lost 49 family members in the Holocaust, Dallaire explained that before mass murder is undertaken, the dominant group launches a variety attacks meant to weaken society. They can also be carried out in the political field and in the social field; in the cultural field and in the economic field; and, in the religious field and the biological field.
Frequent attacks on Christian neighbourhoods and Shia mosques could be setting the stage for genocide in Pakistan.
To Dallaires way of thinking, preventing mass killing and rebuilding after an atrocity has been perpetrated are inextricably linked. In many ways, prevention flows from rebuilding, he said. We cannot prevent the atrocities of the future without also helping survivors and their neighbours recover from those in the past.
Faced with the reality that Pakistans religious minorities could one day be wiped out, the community of nations has both a legal and moral obligation under the United Nations Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, known commonly as R2P, to intervene in the escalating sectarian conflict in Pakistan. However, this does not mean sending NATO troops to fight religious fundamentalists or terrorists.
The community of nations should deploy special diplomatic teams to Pakistan to work at the grassroots level to promote interfaith tolerance, establishing local committees composed of Sunnis, Shias, Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadis. The committees would serve as forums for the discussion of issues before they erupt into mob violence.
In the meantime, the UN should immediately dispatch humanitarian teams to rebuild the Christian and Shia communities devastated by mob and terrorist violence, employing impoverished members of those minority communities. The UN should also enlist the assistance of Sunni workers, to foster a broader sense of community.
According to the Presbyterian official, the Christian community is demanding that the perpetrators of the attacks on the Joseph Colony be brought to justice. We also demand amendment in the blasphemy law which is used against the religious minorities.
Similarly, Canada swiftly condemned the attacks and called upon Pakistani authorities to fully investigate and prosecute those responsible. However, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird didnt call for the immediate repeal of section 295-C. Instead, he urged Pakistan to implement safeguards to ensure that their blasphemy laws are no longer abused. Bairds statement implies that the blasphemy laws can be rendered innocuous.
Yet, whenever Pakistan and like-mined Muslim-majority countries attempt to internationalize Pakistans blasphemy laws at the United Nations, Canada has always voted against such resolutions in both the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council. History shows that blasphemy laws are weapons of hate and should be scrapped. And Baird should say so.
By Geoffrey Johnston, kingston Whig-Standard
Thursday, March 21, 2013 2:42:50 EDT PM
While Pakistans archaic blasphemy laws seem to enjoy support among the Sunni Muslim-majority population, the South Asian nations religious minorities live in constant fear of being bludgeoned by them.
Religiously motivated violence is common in Pakistan. And much of the violence is driven by the countrys blasphemy laws, which make it a capital crime to insult Islam. Under section 295-C of the penal code, blasphemy is punishable by life in prison or death. According to Human Rights Watch, dozens were charged in 2012 and at least 16 people remained on death row for blasphemy, while another 20 served life sentences.
Pakistans blasphemy laws send a signal to society that certain religious groups are so inappropriate that theyre deserving of death, says Knox Thames, policy director of the Washington, D.C.-based United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. While the state has never carried out the death penalty for someone found guilty of blasphemy, certainly mobs and individual actors have killed people whove been accused of it.
Charges of blasphemy are often trumped-up, used to settle scores or to incite vigilante violence. Earlier this month, an allegation of blasphemy levelled against a young Christian man in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, incited mayhem. Mobs laid siege to a Christian enclave, known as the Joseph Colony. The allegation was fake and stemmed from a personal disagreement between friends, says a Presbyterian Church of Pakistan official, who doesn't want to be named because he fears for his own safety.
According to an evangelical Christian pastor based in Lahore, the mob numbered more than 3,000. And he says that when besieged Christians called the police for help, they were told the mob was too big to control.
Fearing for their safety, hundreds of Christian families fled the area on Friday, 8 March, 2013, says the Presbyterian official. These innocent and frightened people were forced to flee for their lives, leaving behind their houses and possessions unprotected. The mob returned on Saturday, 9 March, and began to ransack Christian homes and set them on fire.
According to the pastor, more than 200 homes were destroyed. And rain has hampered emergency relief efforts, says the Presbyterian official, making life really difficult for the affected people of Joseph Colony, many of whom are now living in tents.
Tragically, Pakistans Christian community has suffered massive arson attacks before. On Aug.1, 2009, the Christian enclave at Gojra in northeastern Punjab was engulfed in flames. Incited by another false blasphemy allegation, a Muslim mob rampaged through the town, setting fire to more than 100 homes owned by Christians.
The latest violence in Lahore is just another example of the government being unable, or unwilling, at the local level, but also at the criminal level, to intervene to stop mob violence, Thames says. And that has created a climate of impunity for terrorists and vigilantes. Until that ends, Thames says, I think the Christian community will feel besieged, as will other religious minority groups in Pakistan, like Shia Muslims and Ahmadi.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht - the Night of Broken Glass, the Nazi-incited anti-Jewish riots of Nov. 9-10, 1938, that destroyed 200 synagogues in Austria, Germany, and the Sudetenland (Nazi-occupied western Czechoslovakia). According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human-rights organization, the Kristallnacht foreshadowed the Holocaust and underscored for Jews "the terrifying realization that political anti-Semitism can lead to violence." That terrifying lesson should resonate with religious minority communities in Pakistan.
Speaking at a genocide prevention conference last month, Canadian Senator Romeo Dallaire stated that mass atrocities are not only carried out through mass murder. Drawing on the seminal writings of Polish Lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who lost 49 family members in the Holocaust, Dallaire explained that before mass murder is undertaken, the dominant group launches a variety attacks meant to weaken society. They can also be carried out in the political field and in the social field; in the cultural field and in the economic field; and, in the religious field and the biological field.
Frequent attacks on Christian neighbourhoods and Shia mosques could be setting the stage for genocide in Pakistan.
To Dallaires way of thinking, preventing mass killing and rebuilding after an atrocity has been perpetrated are inextricably linked. In many ways, prevention flows from rebuilding, he said. We cannot prevent the atrocities of the future without also helping survivors and their neighbours recover from those in the past.
Faced with the reality that Pakistans religious minorities could one day be wiped out, the community of nations has both a legal and moral obligation under the United Nations Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, known commonly as R2P, to intervene in the escalating sectarian conflict in Pakistan. However, this does not mean sending NATO troops to fight religious fundamentalists or terrorists.
The community of nations should deploy special diplomatic teams to Pakistan to work at the grassroots level to promote interfaith tolerance, establishing local committees composed of Sunnis, Shias, Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadis. The committees would serve as forums for the discussion of issues before they erupt into mob violence.
In the meantime, the UN should immediately dispatch humanitarian teams to rebuild the Christian and Shia communities devastated by mob and terrorist violence, employing impoverished members of those minority communities. The UN should also enlist the assistance of Sunni workers, to foster a broader sense of community.
According to the Presbyterian official, the Christian community is demanding that the perpetrators of the attacks on the Joseph Colony be brought to justice. We also demand amendment in the blasphemy law which is used against the religious minorities.
Similarly, Canada swiftly condemned the attacks and called upon Pakistani authorities to fully investigate and prosecute those responsible. However, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird didnt call for the immediate repeal of section 295-C. Instead, he urged Pakistan to implement safeguards to ensure that their blasphemy laws are no longer abused. Bairds statement implies that the blasphemy laws can be rendered innocuous.
Yet, whenever Pakistan and like-mined Muslim-majority countries attempt to internationalize Pakistans blasphemy laws at the United Nations, Canada has always voted against such resolutions in both the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council. History shows that blasphemy laws are weapons of hate and should be scrapped. And Baird should say so.
