The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan chairwoman, Ms Asma Jahangir, has called on the government to take notice of the death in custody of a Christian accused of blasphemy in Sialkot. Fanish Masih, 25, was arrested to satisfy the blood lust of the mob in Sambrial that had attacked and burned a church in a Sambrial village.
The district jail superintendent explained the death: “Masih, being accused of blasphemy, was put in a separate cell where he committed suicide by using a string”. So much for procedure. Knowing full well that the boy was framed, he was treated as an ordinary death-row prisoner. He was also probably also treated shabbily, which may have forced him to lose hope.
People who are treated by the state as pariahs are losing hope. Punjab’s Minister for Minority Affairs, Mr Kamran Michael, says the police in Sialkot mishandled the case: “I have seen the body and there were torture marks on it”. The local Christians are now scared to death about their own future, and claim Masih was “tortured to death by the jail staff”. This has happened before.
Christians killed in the name of Islam never get justice. The only way an accused can be saved is to bundle him out of the country after releasing him on bail. The Muslims of Pakistan are killed like flies by the Taliban warlords and Al Qaeda. Instead of uniting against the curse of Muslim-kills-Muslim they turn around and target the most impoverished community among the minorities of Pakistan.
The latest death has burdened the conscience of Pakistan with one more collective crime. The state, forewarned, has instead relied on its old reflex of looking away and letting an innocent man die. *
(Daily Times, September 17, 2009)
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