Egypt follows Pakistan - arrests 9 and 10 year old for Blasphemy

The BPCA has learnt of a new case in Egypt with disturbing echoes of the situation in Pakistan.  Like so many (but not our starry-eyed politicians) have prophesied, the 'Arab Spring' is anything but.  Someone in the town of Beni Suef went to authorities claiming that two Coptic boys, one aged 10 - Nabil Rizik, and another called Mina Farag for alleged tearing up papers which included Koranic verses.  Egyptian authorities have arrested the boys.  Since the Revolution, there have been 18 cases of alleged 'religious defamation' in Egypt, including a Coptic school teacher who has been imprisoned for 6 years for cartoons allegedly put on his Facebook account.  In addition, a Coptic schoolboy has been beaten to death by two classmates and his teacher for wearing a cross and refusing to cover up the traditional Coptic cross tattoo on his arm last year.

Source

BBC interviews Rimsha's family

Unfortunately we are unable to embed the video, but the interview is currently showing at this link. Here are first hand accounts of what happened on that fateful day.  They are adamant that Rimsha never had any Islamic textbooks, and that she was at home, not out on the street.  In other words, the entire case is a fabrication from start to finish.

Rimsha prosecution lawyer calls for extra-judicial killing, blames victim for medical report

Lawyer calling for law-breaking : Rao Abdur Raheem,  Photo Faisal Mahmood / Reuters

The lawyer representing the cleric who is charging Rimsha has done everything in his power to keep Rimsha in prison.  Not surprising for a prosecution lawyer, you might think.  Except this lawyer has been openly calling for her to be killed if she was released.   The medical report stated she was a minor, aged about 14, with learning disability, and thus eligible for bail.  At the remand hearing, at which apparently no lawyer turned up to represent Rimsha, Rao vigorously challenged the report, claiming that the medical report - 'has been managed by the state, state agencies and the accused' - in other words, just like the bigoted and hate filled imam he represents, he is blaming the Downs syndrome victim for 'conspiracy' - this time with the state!  Rao Abdur Raheem also claimed the report was illegal, as it was ordered by a civil servant and not a court, and exceeded it's remit, which was, he claims, to establish her age.  (Rimsha's family insist she is actually 11).

The lawyer has been making extremely inflammatory statements.  The Guardian quoted him as saying :

 'If the court is not allowed to do its work, because the state is helping the accused, then the public has no other option except to take the law into their own hands'

and he also incited violence in regard to Rimsha by saying outside court

'There are many Mumtaz Qadris in this country'

Mumtaz Qadri is the bodyguard who assassinated Governor Taseer last year for standing up for Asia Bibi, and who is much praised by many - including lawyers - in Pakistan.  In other words he is calling for people to murder Rimsha, just like the cleric he represents, who wanted her burned alive.

The Telegraph also reported him as saying :

'If you burn me, I will forgive you, but if you burn our Koran, then I will fight a legal battle to seek maximum punishment for anyone doing this act'

disturbing rhetoric in light of his client calling for her to be burned alive on the spot.

The judge has remanded Rimsha in adult jail along with terrorists and murders for another 14 days while he 'considers the matter further'.  While the BPCA is no expert on legal matters that may require 'further consideration', we are extremely concerned that what is in fact happening is that with such rhetoric the judge is folding, perhaps out of fear of his own life - a real fear, given past blasphemy cases.

Sources : 1, 2, 3, 4

Police and army shoot and gas Christians in Karachi, one dead, pastor critically injured

Abbassi Shaheed Hospital - shot pastor taken here

Further to our recent story about the situation in Essa Nagri, Karachi, the situation has now escalated out of control, with riots and fighting in several Christian areas of Karachi, and the police refusing to arrest the Muslim violent mobs but instead firing tear gas and live rounds at the peaceful Christian demonstrations, killing one and leaving two Christians, including a pastor, critically injured and many others injured, with the police arresting at least a dozen peaceful Christians.   We have latest details and some more background.  

To recap, the story as we told it was that the whole Christian community had been charged with blasphemy by the local Jirga - council of elders - and fined. Things were already tense.  Two Christian boys  

The background is that Muslim extremists - described by local sources as Pashto speaking (which may indicate Taliban affiliation) - have been intimidating the Christian community and extorting money from Christian shopkeepers for 3 years - demanding an illegal tax known as bhatti.  They are coming into the Essa Nagri Christian enclave and firing at Christian homes when Christians are paying late.  This has been repeatedly reported to the police and the army rangers unit, but they took no action - what a surprise!  

The Christian community had organized young men to act as guards to deal with the constant drug-pushing, robberies, shooting and intimidation by Islamic extremists who acted in collaboration with local police, local sources say.  Our original article concerned tensions resulting from two Christian young boys who beat two Muslim boys who were hanging around or trying to rob Christians in Essa Nagri.  However, things further escalated when at around 7:15pm 29h August, two of the fundamentalists entered the Essa Nagri  slum and demanded money from Faisal Masih.  He refused and they shot him dead on the spot.  Several of the young Christian guards managed to apprehend the two murderers.  Initially it appears the police arrested the two Muslims.  In the morning, however, the local Pashtun community started to mob the police station, so the robbers were released, and the two Christians were arrested on charges of 'maltreating respectable Muslims'.   Two activists, Raja Yousuf Bhatti, and Liaquat Munawir, who is the leader of the Social Justice group MASS, went to the police station to ask for the release of the Christians.  The police promptly arrested them and then demanded that the Christians pay 100,000 rupees to the Muslim 'victims' before they could be released.  

At some point in the situation, the Christian community of Essa Nagri gathered to protest about this and the Muslim mobs attacking them.  They blocked  next-door Hassan Square for several hours.  The police and the army rangers chose not to arrest the Muslim attackers, but instead fired on the Christians and launched tear gas against them.  Pastor Cornelius was hit in the spine by a police or army ranger bullet as he crossed the road to enter Essa Nagri, and Shahzad Riaz was also critically injured.  An unknown number of other Christians were injured, but sources say 'many'.  In addition, the police arrested over a dozen more Christians who were protesting against the Muslim mob attacks.  

A local Karachi pastor has advised that there is also confirmed reports of fighting in another big Christian area in Karachi, in the Pahar Gunj area, with attacks by Pashtuns.  He calls for prayer for the church in Karachi and says the situation is very serious now, as now it will turn into a religious / blasphemy case.  

Sources : 1 and two local Christian pastors via FB

New blasphemy low - downs syndrome girl arrested!

Replacement of representative picture - Rimsha after release on bail.

Sign our petition here:

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/freerimshamasih

We have received reports of a new and appalling low in the ongoing abuse of blasphemy laws.  Allegedly, a Quran was found with some of its pages burned by Muslims in a Christian area of Islamabad - in previous cases the burning has nearly always shown to have been done by Muslims, or by mentally unstable people - and worse, they have had an 11 year old Christian girl with downs syndrome called Rimsha Masih arrested and charged with the crime.  Rimsha was arrested on the 17th August 2012.

Muslim extremists are threatening to burn down every Christian house in the community.  Several thousand Christians have fled the suburb and are in hiding, along with the family of the victim.  Mobs of over a thousand Muslims have surrounded the community and are burning tyres.

At the last account, Christian human rights workers have persuaded local Mullah's not to authorize the threatened attacks after Friday prayers.  Some went to the local police station and report the situation on the ground is very bad.  It is quite evident that the police they talked to have already assumed her guilt.  They refused to allow the workers to see the FIR, placed by a Muslim called Alsyed Muhammad Ummad.  The police were aggressive and hostile, and appear to have immediately called Muslim youths to the police station to harass the Christian workers.  The police said 'She has burned our holy book and you are here to protect her'.  It is quite clear that the police are hostile to the accused, presume her guilt and have no regard for her status as a minor or as one with Down's Syndrome.

Please pray for her and her family.

The Christian rights workers are planning to apply for bail for her immediately after the Muslim Eid celebrations currently ongoing

Source, also information from International Christian Voice on FB

Pakistan is ruled by mob justice

We would like to thank Nasir Saeed for allowing us to use his article from the Catholic Herald.


Pakistan is ruled by mob justice. And the authorities are too scared to do anything about it
The setting on fire of a man who had supposedly desecrated the Koran shows again that extremists are in charge

People in Karachi protest at the inadvertent burning of the Koran at a US military base (Photo: PA)

The abuse and killing of innocent Pakistanis because of the country’s ill-conceived blasphemy laws is something I am, as part of my work supporting persecuted Christians, confronted with on a regular basis. But the report of a mob dragging a man from a police station and setting him on fire because he had supposedly desecrated a Koran is staggering in its despicableness.

Like a pack of animals, a group of men broke into the police station in the Chani Ghoth area of Bahawalpur, in Punjab Province, and hauled Ghulam Abbas out on to the street, before dousing him in fuel and setting him alight. According to a report from the BBC World Service, crowds of people stood by and watched as Ghulam screamed for help.

Never mind the fact that Ghulam was reported to be mentally handicapped, nor the fact that he had only been accused of blasphemy – not found guilty – and that police had not even started their investigation into the allegation.

Even if Ghulam, a Muslim, had been found guilty of desecrating the Koran, he could not under Pakistani law have been sentenced to death, as the maximum sentence for this crime is life imprisonment.

This, I’m sorry to say, is the frightful reality for those who fall short of the lofty standards of righteousness imposed by extremists. Police may wear uniforms and courts may pass down their judgments, but let no one be in any doubt that when it comes to blasphemy, it is others who wield the power in this virtually lawless land.

Christians experienced this when extremists went on the rampage in Gojra in 2009 in full view of the police and burnt eight Christians to death, among them a child. The trigger was a blasphemy accusation.

While I am used to receiving calls from terrified Christians, what makes Ghulam’s case slightly more unusual is that he was a Muslim.

His brutal murder reveals the extent to which the blasphemy laws continue to be misused to harass and steal from innocent people. Most of the accusations are levelled against Christians, but Muslims are not immune and it takes brave men to exonerate the accused.

While that happens occasionally, more often than not the radicals start to heap pressure on to the police and on to the courts to uphold the blasphemy charges and imprison the accused – or even worse, sentence them to death.

Even when people are acquitted, they are not safe. They are released from prison only to enter a prison of another kind, forced into hiding because extremists are baying for their blood.

And behind it all are the radical preachers and imams, abusing their holy mosques and their loudspeakers, abusing the name of God and their own faith to call for hate and murder instead of love and forgiveness.

This is the world of mob justice, a world in which extremists deem the desecration of a book – albeit a holy book – an unforgivable crime but not the destruction of a human life made in the image of God. A world in which the criminals make politicians cower into looking the other way, while the innocent are locked up for years in miserable prison cells or brutally murdered while others stand by and watch, too afraid that they will share the same fate if they step in to help.

The murderous extremists have no respect for human life and no fear of the law because they have not been given any reason to. What is there to fear when, after the assassination of Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, no politician will touch the blasphemy laws with a barge pole? Why fear when those who hound or kill people on the basis of blasphemy accusations are not made to feel the full force of the law for the “justice” they mete out to others?

It is interesting that July 5 – the day Ghulam Abbas was killed – was also the anniversary of the day that General Zia ul-Haq threw out Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s democratically elected government and imposed martial law. The general would later go on to impose a mandatory death sentence on insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The shadow his rule has cast over Pakistan is long and dark, and there is little sign of any will to break it among those with the power to do so.

The murder of Ghulam Abbas is one of the most horrific in recent years and yet there is only silence from the government and the authorities. Where are the statements of condemnation? Where are the public declarations vowing to catch the perpetrators and make them answer for their crimes? Where is the pledge from the government to review the blasphemy laws behind this and so many other callous and unjustified murders?

There should be no doubt after Ghulam Abbas’s death that extremists are taking things into their own hands in a way that should be stopped immediately. The laws of this land must be changed to end this lunacy.

The popular adage goes: “Where there is a will, there is a way.” But equally true is: where there is no will, there is no way. For now, the extremists and their “mob justice” are ruling the roost in Pakistan.

Source

False charges, false police, real victims

Pastor Victor Samuel Maseeh (left), kidnap victim

In the last month there have been numerous cases of false charges against Christians.  In one disturbing case, a pastor (seen above last year after helping some destitute Christians gain a home after the rains washed the old one away) was kidnapped by people masquerading as police officials and with a falsified official court order (from a court and a judge who on investigation, didn't exist).  7 armed men arrived at his house in the Christian colony of 300 Christians in Tota Tek Singh, Faisalabad in vehicles similar to those used by the Punjab police, and three of them wore police uniforms, and one said he was a police inspector from Lahore, and showed search warrants from a Lahore judge, complete with official court stamps.  After abusively questioning the pastor, looking at files on his laptop, the imposters took the pastor and his brother for further questioning in a local police station as well as confiscating, documents, the laptop and mobile phone.  However, they dropped off his brother by the Gojra bypass.  It later turned out that the local police station never had any colleagues from Lahore, and the Lahore police never sent any group out.  In addition, the Judicial Magistrate named in the 'court documents' was found not to exist.  Police are now searching for the pastor and the abductors - let's hope and pray the fraudulent use of police and court documents means this will be a thorough and uncompromising search.

Source

An earlier story about the pastor helping out destitute Christians so desperate that the father resorted to putting 'children for sale' signs up - and a video interview with the pastor and the father he helped.

PRIEST  ACCUSED OF  KILLING AFGHAN WOMEN IN PROPERTY ROW

A priest, Rehmat Hakim Michael, in Islamabad, pastor of the Fatima church, is at the centre of false accusations and a decade old property row.  The priest, who came to the church in 2007 was accused with another individual of kidnapping and killing the wife and two daughters of an Afghan man in 2001, even though at the time Father Michael was serving in Gujrat.  The claim was that after the women refused to convert to Christianity, they were kidnapped by Father Michael and his 'gang' and never seen again - presumably murdered and their bodies disposed of.  

(The BPCA notes that this kind of activity is typical of Islamicists - and that often they falsely accuse Christians of doing the very things that Islamicists do, in a kind of projection.  An example is the recent false accusations that Coptic Christians in Egypt kidnapped women and stored explosives and weapons in monasteries and churches, acts that Egyptian Islamicists regularly carry out on Christian women and in their own mosques - false accusations that led to fatal attacks on churches in Egypt and a massacre at a church service in Iraq.) 

A FIR was in the process of being made against him with the police.  However, it appears that the police this time decided to investigate before acting.  A telling and rather unsurprising background began to emerge.  Firstly, in 1991, a previous priest at the church had allowed a sick and jobless Afghan man to move into a church owned house and to rent out another one to get money for his own upkeep for a while.  Successive priests have tried to eject them, but the occupants, now apparently a strong and influential family in the locality, refused, claiming that the man in question had purchased the property for $30,000 and had full ownership.  The case went to court recently and on the 28th of May the court upheld the churches case for a second time on appeal.  It was after this that another Afghan man suddenly starts claiming that the incumbent priest kidnapped his family after failed conversion attempts in 2001.  An NGO that interviewed the alleged husband said that when questioned, he couldn't remember the name of his supposedly kidnapped wife, and had to go and 'consult documents' before giving a name.  

The Christian community is agitated and afraid that, even though he has not been arrested yet, their priest may well be arrested on these blatantly spurious, yet very serious charges.  

Please pray for this case, that this blatant attempt at holding the entire Christian community to ransom in a property dispute by extortion would fail and massively backfire on the lying accusers, and that true justice would be done and become an example in similar cases.  

Sources  one, two, and three.

VULNERABLE ISLAMIC CONVERT USED TO OPPRESS CHRISTIANS

As we said before, it is typical of Islamicists to accuse their victims of the very crimes they themselves commit against their victims in a perverse projection.  In a recent case 150km from Lahore, a recently banned Islamicist group - Sipha-e-Sahaba.  They registered a blasphemy complaint against 25 year old Ramzam Masih, an only son (only the father is still alive). (BPCA finds it telling that in Pakistan a complaint registered by a banned terrorist group can be accepted - maybe it helps if the victim is from a powerless Christian background?)  An NGO went to investigate, and found the colony where the victims family lived was virtually empty as Christians (and possibly other residents - the reports are not quite clear on this point) had fled in fear of the group using the charges as an excuse to take over property or make other attacks.  The NGO team questioned the few neighbours willing to talk.  (The NGO also approached the local police who were very angry, allegedly because the NGO endangered their lives because the security situation was so bad, with the banned group following the situation very closely.  Eventually the group managed to get a copy of the FIR).  

The picture that emerged was one of a mentally retarded and vulnerable man whom the group had cajoled into converting to Islam several years ago, and gained his thumbprints as evidence of conversion.  The group has now named many unknown people in their FIR, and the residents fear that the charges are an excuse to take over Christian lands.  The victims father is terrified and only met the NGO a long way from his house.  He says the police took him to the police station and demanded he hand over his son or else he too would be charged with blasphemy (the son is now in prison).  He says he has now idea if his son committed 'blasphemy' a lot, but rightly asked how could a mentally retarded child who didn't know right from wrong 'endanger the dignity of Islam'. He also noted that the S-e-S terrorist group was monitoring his daughters movements as well - so he is concerned for the safety of both his children.  

To give a flavour of what Christians face in these situations, here is the account of a Christian woman about what happened, with mobs of Muslims and clerics arriving with burning torches and threatening another Gojra, and the terrible fear such terrorist tactics engender  :

we are only eighty houses here and are doing our own work, we are independent and are working hard to survive, these people (Muslims) do not let us live. We are poor but are working hard to survive. On the night of the incidence a mob of Muslim clerics gathered our colony to burn us all because of the Blapshemy Ramzan have committed. Everyone was very scared. We all have small children in our houses and we didn’t know what to do. The Mob surrounded our colony and raised a slogan to burn all the houses, they had torches in their hands and petrol in the cans. We called police and thank God Police arrived just in time. The police distracted their attention from us and we found some time to leave the houses. We left the houses quickly and thus saved our lives. People saved their lives and the lives of their children, Now we all are living in different places of our relatives and our homes are empty like graves. We pray to God not to put us in graves and also to protect the family of Ramzan Masih and his sister who also have small children in her house. We are very scared; I came to my house at this hour to pick up some clothes and personal belongings so that we can stay in the relative’s house. Once this matter is cooled down we will come back to our house

Source

REFUSE TO BECOME MUSLIM?  THIEF! TORTURE!

Finally, in yet another 'surprise, surprise, here we go again' case, two Christian employees are being charged with theft after refusing to convert to Islam.  The wealthy and influential employer in Karachi had 5 employees working as domestic workers in his household.  For a year he aggressively tried to get the two Christian employees to convert to Islam.  Some gold ornaments went missing in early June, and 10 days later the employer lodged an FIR about it, which surprisingly enough only named the Christian employees and not the Muslim employees as suspects.  The two Christians volunteered themselves to the local police station when they heard of the accusations.  They were transferred to another police station, and their relatives were told by police that if they did not pay a bribe of £238, then the two Christians would be beaten.  The poor families could not pay the bribe, and so the two Christians were severely beaten and tortured, and one was left unable to walk.  

Lawyers have now taken up the case, the Karachi police district has apologized and said the victims families can register an FIR against police staff if they want.  Let's hope this is a real gesture that will result in real change and real justice.  BPCA is not particularly holding it's breath, but you never know....

Please also pray for the victims, for healing and provision, as well as justice

Source

Memories and echoes of past injustice - and present fears

Two old incidents have recently reared their ugly heads again. The first case is that of Arfan Gill, a Christian shopkeeper who in 2007 was falsely accused of burning pages from the Koran and was rescued from a mob by the skin of his teeth after being beaten unconscious and his shop burned to the ground. He has been in hiding ever since. Muslim extremists are still searching for him, and in July of this year, because they couldn't find him, they attacked his brothers wife, causing her to have a miscarriage.

The second incident is the infamous Gojra incident, where in 2009 hundreds of Islamic extremists attacked a Christian section of Gojra, claiming that they had burned pages of the Koran at a wedding. The extremists, mainly from a group in North Waziristan who were linked to Al Qaeda, were brought in by bus and truck, and set a number of churches and houses on fire, burning 8 Christians alive in their home and killing several others. All 70 suspects who still remained have been acquitted due to lack of evidence and witnesses.. Other suspects had been released earlier by the police, and local Christians believe this was due to political pressure. There were 185 witnesses, but many of them, especially Christian witnesses, have withdrawn, due to pressures placed on them. At least one family has fled to Sri Lanka. Others have left the city for good.

In addition, 4 years after the incident, despite government promises to rebuild all the affected properties, a number of houses and buildings destroyed in that attack and another one in the nearby village of Korian, remain incomplete

Sources

http://www.worthynews.com/10333-pakistan-court-acquits-suspects-of-christian-massacre

http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2011/06/pakistan-all-70-suspects-in-gojra.html

http://churchinchains.ie/node/432

http://masihifoundation.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/irfan-gill-blasphemy-case/