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Pakistan Christians ‘helpless’ after slaying

 


Pakistan Christians ‘helpless’ after slaying

 

June 10, 2004                                    

 

By Anto Akkara

Ecumenical News International

 

THRISSUR, India — Pakistani church leaders report feeling “helpless” following the death of a Christian jailed under Pakistan’s blasphemy law after he was hit by a policeman guarding him in a hospital. 

 

“We are very sad about what has happened,” said the Rev. Arthur James, moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan. “I can only say we are feeling helpless. Churches can do nothing but raise slogans about this.”

 

Speaking from his office in Gujranwala, James was commenting on the death of Samuel Masih, 32, a Roman Catholic, who died on May 28, five days after he was hit with a blunt object by a police guard who said he killed Masih to fulfill the duties of his faith. 

 

Masih had been hospitalized with tuberculosis in an isolation ward following his incarceration a year ago after being arrested for committing “blasphemy” when, while trying to make an area tidy, he allegedly placed some rubbish near the wall of a mosque. 

 

“This shows the danger of the shadow under which we live,” said Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha of Lahore, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan, who presided over Masih’s funeral on May 29 in Lahore Cathedral. 

 

Immediately after the funeral, Saldanha sent a letter to Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf lamenting that “it is with sadness and sorrow that the Catholic Christians of Lahore laid to rest today another victim of fanatical hatred.”

  

Pointing out that Christians are “very much disturbed and demoralized by this violent death,” the head of the Pakistani Catholic Church reminded Musharraf that “this tragic incident brings out the urgent necessity of reviewing the Blasphemy Law.”

 

According to World Methodist Council statistics, the Methodist Church in Pakistan has a membership of 13,000 and serves a larger constituency of 38,000.

 

Article 295 C of the Pakistan penal code renders the definition of blasphemy as a crime and it carries a punishment of death or life imprisonment. Several Christians have been sentenced to death by trial courts and said to have been framed with flimsy blasphemy charges, but these verdicts have later been turned down in higher courts.

 

·(646)369-3759·New York· E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org

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