Release International

How quickly arguments can get out of hand – especially where children are involved. And a squabble between kids can become a spat between families, when parents get drawn in and heated words are exchanged. But it’s not every day that a squabble leads to a neighbourhood riot and a family facing a possible death sentence.

Recently, a spat between schoolboys ratcheted up until a rioting mob had to be dispersed by baton-wielding police. Bizarrely, it was the victims of the riot who found themselves behind bars. But this is Pakistan, a country with notorious blasphemy laws that are wide open to abuse.

The 1986 blasphemy law calls for life imprisonment or the death penalty for defiling the name of the Prophet Muhammad. The law has been invoked against religious minorities and even Muslims, and by warring parties as a means of settling scores.

That’s what happened when 11-year-old Daniel Masih refused to join in a game with some Muslim schoolmates.

Daniel told his Mum they’d hit him. So she and the family trooped round to see the other boys’ parents. They had a row. Next thing, an 80-strong mob attacks the Christian district with stones.

The police arrive and break it up. But the Christians are accused of tearing up religious stickers and pounding them with their shoes – a blasphemy that could be punishable by death.

One of the accused, 16-year-old Rashid Masih, went into hiding, and has been cared for by partners of Release International, which serves persecuted Christians. ‘They gave me a vehicle, so I’m now earning and supporting my family,’ he said.

The blasphemy charges against Rashid and four other Christians were finally thrown out on January 19 - after hanging over them for almost two years. So has the shadow of death now lifted?

There have been other such cases. Back in 1994 a court dismissed similar blasphemy charges against a 14-year-old schoolboy, whose name was Salamat.

Salamat had a squabble with a Muslim schoolmate over a pigeon. Mums and Dads got involved. It got heated.

It led to Salamat being sentenced to death for scrawling obscenities on the wall of a mosque. Impossible – because Salamat was illiterate. The courts later threw out the case against him and two others – but vigilantes gunned down the three defendants outside the court that acquitted them.
They murdered one and wounded the others, including Salamat. Militants later shot the judge in his own office.

Release International’s patron, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, himself from Pakistan, has pressed the country’s president to abolish Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws.

And Pakistan’s Minorities Minister has just pledged to wipe them from the statute books. If he succeeds, it won’t be a day too soon.

For more information, please visit: www.releaseinternational.org

ENDS

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