Insecurity In Pakistan

Existential Insecurity in Pakistan

Three different areas of Pakistan saw attacks on Sunday. The fanatical extremism of Islamists resulted in the targeting of a Shiite mosque in Quetta, the capital of southwest Baluchistan province, where 28 people were killed, a number that included nine women and several children. As always happens in these gruesomely vicious attacks, many more people worshipping at the mosque were wounded.

Sunni Muslims are hugely invested in communicating in this manner their hatred of Shiite Muslims whom they consider to be heretics, their worship an insult to Islam, and utterly intolerable. The City of Peshawar was also targeted and there a car bomb killed 17 people, wounding dozens of others. And, in the northeast, government soldiers in the North Waziristan tribal area were targeted. This is where the Taliban and al-Qaeda find sanctuary.

And then, there are the Christians of Pakistan, a distinct and threatened minority for whom there is no tolerance in the greater Muslim community of Pakistani Muslims. Towns which host Christians are uncertain places to live. If a Muslim neighbour is irritated, or an argument takes place and a grudge ensues, that neighbour can and will go to the authorities claiming that the Christian insulted Islam. This is a punishable offence of capital dimensions.

Several years ago a Christian woman abused by her co-workers was accused by them of having insulted the Prophet Mohammad. Asia Bibi was sentenced to death for her act of blasphemy in 2010. Because of international condemnation her case is under review. Punjab provincial governor Salmaan Taseer took up her cause, and for his pains he was assassinated by a trusted member of his own security team, in 2011.

Canada takes particular note of these horrendous human rights abuses. In 2009 a ministerial intervention occurred in an attempt to give safe haven to a family of Pakistani Christians. The Munir family's two-year-old little girl had been raped. The family was under extreme pressure to convert to Islam, and they refused. They were then under a death threat and went into hiding. They now live in Canada, free of oppression.

"There are things going on that we just don't talk about. There are certain countries where, if it came out what we were doing, in doing things like this, there would be more than just protests. If there are no normal parameters, then our system just completely breaks down. But when we hear of clearly extraordinary cases, when someone is clearly facing imminent death, we do everything we can to get them permission to come to Canada", explained Canada's Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney.

"We do a lot of these cases, like gays facing imminent death in places like Yemen and elsewhere. We don't want to give the false impression that exceptions are the rule. They're not. But there is, let's face it, a great range of risk that people face. I tend to only exercise this discretionary authority when we are absolutely certain that it is a question of life and death."

Approximately a thousand people have been charged and incarcerated as a result of Pakistan's blasphemy laws since 1986, most in the last five years alone. Minister Kenney had a personal acquaintance with Shabaz Bhatti, a Pakistani MP who was famous for speaking out against Islamabad's blasphemy laws. For her troubles,k she was assassinated by the Taliban in 2011.

Her brother, Peter Bhatti, is president of Toronto's International Christian Voice, and he developed a communication between Ottawa and an Islamabad family whose mildly mentally retarded daughter had been accused by a cleric who lived nearby the family home, of tearing pages out of a Koran. The thirteen year-old girl was arrested and charged under Pakistan's blasphemy laws. Her case too drew international outrage.

Rimsha Masih, now living with her family in Canada

"The folks I was working with to keep Rimsha Masih in that safe house were literally risking their lives to do so, and that's why all of this transpired with great discretion", explained Mr. Kenney.  When Mr. Bhatti approached Mr. Kenney asking him to intercede, to rescue the threatened family, he agreed.

"I said of course we would. Her family was living underground in a safe house for several months. From the moment she was released from prison she was still living under multiple death threats. It took some time because of the danger for them to procure passports for her and her family, but as soon as that happened we ensured that our High Commission processed permits for them to come to Canada."