KARACHI Strongly condemning the brutal murder of Federal Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti on Wednesday, the Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) has said that the blasphemy laws issue presents an open challenge to the stability of Pakistan.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the PPC observed that Bhatti was killed merely two months after the assassination of Governor Punjab Salman Taseer, who too was silenced for his open remarks about the blasphemy laws.
“The blame for Shahbaz Bhatti’s murder cannot just be attributed to the government alone. There are serious questions regarding the role of political parties, parliament, media, judiciary and the security establishment – all having created an environment where fundamentals relating to the right to live, minorities protection, freedom of speech, rule of law, parliament’s right to debate and amend laws are being challenged, and mobs and street forces are being manipulated to take law into their own hands,” read the statement.
The PPC emphasised that the issue of blasphemy laws is for the parliament to debate, not for religious forces to decide. Religious parties neither have an electoral base nor do they have any relevance in the vision of a progressive national order. Likewise, the judiciary has a responsibility to uphold the sanctity of the constitutional provision of the right to live, freedom of speech and other fundamental constitutional guarantees.
Time and again, the religious right has incited masses to murder and to threaten the safety and well-being of individuals over issues that are a prerogative of the public representatives to decide. The statement further said that religious forces neither have the electoral mandate nor do they represent a wider section of the population. The concerned authorities’ failure to take note of the series of violations of the rule of law by “religious mobs” have made a direct contribution to the murder of Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, while the life of another parliamentarian Sherry Rehman remains in danger for the same reason. Declaring the Minorities Affairs Minister’s murder as another attempt to derail the democratic process, the PPC also criticised the role of progressive political parties in the parliament over the issue of the blasphemy laws.
“Today’s parliament carries the combination of the most progressive and democratic forces the country has ever had, yet their deafening silence over an issue that has been claiming one life after another is disappointing. We have seen that all those who sought to rationalise the debate on the blasphemy issue, including Governor Salmaan Taseer, MNA Sherry Rehman and Minister Shahbaz Bhatti were not only isolated by the state, their fellow public representatives too did nothing to support their stand either in the house of representatives or in the public domain,” read the statement.
The PPC observed that Shahbaz Bhatti’s murder took place in spite of the government’s public assertion, repeated ad nauseam, that it has no intention whatsoever to amend the blasphemy laws. “If the Prime Minister himself rules out any amendment to the law that has blatantly threatened citizens’ protection, and yet a Minorities Affairs Minister is murdered, there are clear signals that people who wish to take over the country would suppress all voices that stand in opposition to their regressive views,” the statement added.
The PPC cautioned that a situation similar to 1977 is developing in the country. The recent chain of events point to the empowerment of the religious forces by the security establishment of the country, while various religious parties and sectarian groups seem to have set aside their traditional hatred of each other and are trying to cobble together a politico-religious platform from which to participate in the next elections with a violence-prone agenda of religious extremism.
‘Blasphemy laws issue an open challenge to stability of Pakistan’
