Blasphemy mobs, mad behaviour

Over the last month there has been a number of cases illustrating the double or triple jeopardy faced by those accused of blasphemy.  None of them are Christians as far as we know, but their cases show the ease in which inappropriate charges are made, and the dangers of mob rule, vigilantism and of innocents being killed.
These incidents are getting so common, with so many common features, it is sometimes hard to tell whether we are dealing with an incident we've already reported on, perhaps with corrected details, or an entirely new incident.

Pakistani mob (photo AP)

DRUG ADDLED MAN LIVES IN FEAR IN PRISON AFTER QURAN DESECRATION
A Muslim man who had indulged in drugs in the past in the face of difficult circumstances now lives in fear in prison.  Every time someone comes in to his cell, he cries out 'Don't kill me', fearing it is one of the Muslim extremists who are his fellow prisoners in Karachi central jail has come to kill him, after he obeyed voices in his head telling him to 'do things'.   He was brought to the police station by concerned neighbours, and the police were dubious about his mental state.  However, mobs, stirred up by hate-spewing mullah's and religious extremists, advanced on the police station one night to try and lynch him.   They demanded the police hand him over so he could be killed.  The police have put him in a separate cell with officers standing guard to protect him from fellow inmates.  Psychiatrists say he should be examined for psychotic illness before any possible trial, with human rights activists saying the blasphemy laws don't apply to those who are mentally ill.


Source

MOB BEATS UP BLASPHEMY ACCUSED, EXTREMISTS REGISTER ACCUSATION
In another case, this time in Faisalabad, the police had to rescue a man accused of blasphemy who was being beaten and tortured by a mob.  The mob then staged a demonstration and blocked roads, demanding the man be handed over to them.  An FIR was registered by a member of Tehreek Dawat-e-Islami, an extremist organisation whose workers have been involved in several acts of terrorism over the years.  Police say the man later confessed to blasphemy.

Source

2 CHILDREN KILLED AS MOB ATTACKS POLICE STATION TO GET BLASPHEMY ACCUSED
Finally, there was a case last month in Quetta, when a mob stormed a police station to try and lynch a man - whom the police said appeared mentally retarded -  accused of blasphemy.  The man was mentally retarded, and is supposed to have burnt pages of the Koran.  The protesters were mostly Afghan refugees, who threw stones, torched vehicles and blocked the highway with burning tyres.  They chanted that the man should be stoned for blasphemy, stormed the police station and started firing.  19 were wounded by gunshots, 8 of them police officers, including the bodyguard of a senior police officer as he was hustled to safety.  The police had to resort to volleys of tear gas and gunfire to restore order, and in the melee 2 children were killed.

Source

The BPCA notes these cases and deplores them, in particular the fact that the hate-filled Mullah's and the extremist allies deem it fit to send lynch mobs after mentally ill people.  Better on judgement day to be mentally ill than morally wicked and sick.....

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