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PakistanPakistan provided one of persecution's worst headlines in 2011 with the assassination of Cabinet Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, the highest ranking Christian ever to be killed in this lawless country. A Roman Catholic, the forty-two-year old was the Minister for Minority Affairs in the federal government and one of the highest profile advocates for the removal of the notorious blasphemy law. As the only Christian minister in the cabinet, he was unusually influential. Four gunmen approached him in broad daylight in Islamabad when he was returning in his car from a visit to his mother on March 2. They sprayed his car with bullets and fled the scene, and have not been heard of since. The investigation - like so many in Pakistan - has been described as tepid" by human rights activists. A letter found at the scene from the Pakistani Taliban said that he had been executed for his attempts to amend the blasphemy law: We will not spare anybody involved in acts of blasphemy," it read. Pakistan's Christians are a beleaguered minority of about 2.5% in a country of 176.7 million, which is 96% Muslim, and the killing of Bhatti was one of the most demoralizing acts for us of recent years," according to a church leader in Karachi. Bhatti's death came after the slaying of the Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, a Muslim sympathetic to the Christian plight. He set out to change the blasphemy law by supporting Asia Noreen (also known as Asia Bibi), the first woman sentenced to death on blasphemy charges. One of his bodyguards turned his gun on the Governor, while five others of the security detail merely watched. Thousands of militants turned out in the streets to support the assassin and protest that he even be charged with murder. The central government, with characteristic weakness, quickly stalled any move to deal with the offending laws. Indeed, Bhatti's cabinet post was abolished, and the position downgraded to the state governmental level. Four other Christians were also killed in the reporting period, two of them gunned down outside their church in Hyderabad, Sindh Province on March 22. Death threats are routine for church leaders; beatings are common and damage to church property occurs on a monthly basis. Pakistan's Christians are caught between Islamic militant organizations that routinely target Christians for violence, and an Islamizing culture that makes Christians feel less and less a part of Pakistan. Add into the mix a weak and corrupt central government unwilling to confront injustice, and a military that has been found complicit in fuelling Islamic militants to gain leverage in Afghanistan and Indian held Kashmir, and it is clear that Christians have few allies in their fight to flourish in the land of their birth. These persecution dynamics have been in place for many years however, and the country is set to surpass Indonesia as containing the world's largest Muslim population by 2030 (256 million), according to a Pew Research Report released in January 2011. The news is not all bad however. The laws of Pakistan give Christians considerable freedom to run their churches; the Christian population is growing, and a steady but significant trickle of Muslims join churches. In the future, the rising superpower of China may force the military to stamp out internal Muslim militants as it intends to build a trade superhighway through the country down to Sindh province where they are building a warm water port. The USA also retains leverage over the state due to its US$2billion annual grant to the military. But in the shorter term it is becoming harder to be a Christian in Pakistan. |
