Gojra, Punjab, 2009:
"It was my daughter's wedding.
The mehndi (henna) was brought on the 25th, and we decided to have a quiet celebration.
There were no loud, disturbing sounds coming from us. Young Muslim boys
crumpled up pages from the Quran, threw them over the wall and then accused us
of blaspheming. We know these people. They are Jats [a Punjabi caste].
For eight days, no one said anything to us, but when my daughter arrived with
her in-laws to meet her own family, they called us and then attacked. They beat
us. We were barely able to walk or run, and in the chaos, we left my small
child there. She was 14 months old. By the time we got there and brought her
back, our houses had been burnt. My 3 sons and 3 daughters were left with
nothing."
Recounted by Mukhtar Masih to the Jinnah Institute (PDF).
--
There was a solar eclipse in Pakistan a few hours
before Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer was shot dead by his bodyguard Mumtaz
Qadri. Pakistanis were warned to stay indoors and not look at the sun without
protective eyewear. Darkness descended, and a few hours later, shots rang out
in Islamabad.
Taseer's assassin, who grinned for the cameras, confessed that his motive was the
former's criticism of the country's blasphemy law.
The shots that rang out in the
air on January 4 in Islamabad, and again on March 2 when the Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated, showed that while the sun may have emerged, Pakistan remains shrouded
in the darkness of discrimination, extremism and hatred toward minorities. And
events of the past week in Taseer's home province
of Punjab demonstrate how minorities are treated in Pakistan,
highlighting not just the extremism in society but the state's inability and
unwillingness to protect minorities, as well as the role of political parties in
perpetuating discrimination.
News emerged this week that the
ruling government in Punjab, led by the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), or
PML-N, planned to refuse its Christian cabinet member Kamran Michael the opportunity to present the province's budget in the assembly, due to internal
opposition in the party and fears of how a Christian presenting the budget
would play out in the minds of its conservative vote bank.
The Punjab
government changed its mind after the initial report
led to "national and international pressure," but the dark shadow of
discrimination showed itself in other ways. An anti-terrorism court hearing the
case of the 2009 carnage in the city of Gojra,
evoked in the beginning of this piece, deferred proceedings for a year and acquitted 70 suspects. The riots at
the heart of the investigation saw eight Christians burned alive along with 40
houses and a church, after a mob was incited to attack the Christian
community over a case of alleged blasphemy.
In Faisalabad,
one of Punjab's largest cities and the textile
capital of the country, the minority Muslim Ahmaddiya community found its members listed
on flyers that called for them to be murdered. It is part of a several
decades-long campaign of hatred and violence that has seen scores of Ahmadis
gunned down on the streets and in mosques. It is also why Pakistan
has failed to extend even a small degree of recognition to its sole Nobel
Laureate, Dr Abdus Salam, who was an Ahmadi. The pattern of hatred and violence
has seen Ahmadis flee the country for safer shores where
the specter of state-supported intolerance cannot haunt them anymore.
There has been no effort to rid
Pakistan
of these demons. The country's Anti-Terrorism Act outlaws hate literature
and speech, yet the law is openly flouted on a daily basis as the groups like
the Tehrik-e-Tahafuz Namoos-e-Rasalat
spreading these messages enjoy patronage from powerful politicians and are
untouched by the security apparatus, even after some, like the virulently
anti-Shi'a Sipah-e-Sihaba Pakistan (SSP) are formally banned. Leading political
parties promised to protect minorities in their 2008
election campaigns, a pledge that remains unfulfilled three years later.
Efforts at reforming the country's draconian blasphemy laws fell victim to the prevalent culture of
appeasing the right-wing political parties and groups. In a cruel twist of fate, it was that
very culture of appeasement that led to Ahmadis being declared non-Muslims in
the constitution, followed by laws introduced by military dictator Zia ul-Haq forbade Ahmadis
to refer to themselves as Muslims.
That this culture endures in Pakistan is
undoubtedly shocking. But what is inherently worse is that it will continue to
live on until a political party finds the backbone to introduce and implement
proper reforms. It is only then that the eclipse will finally be over.
Saba Imtiaz works for The Express Tribune newspaper in Pakistan and can be reached at saba.imtiaz@gmail.com
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