The Vatican was one of the few western bodies to react adequately to the murder of a Pakistani minister
I THINK we are all agreed it is very difficult to come up with a programme for government. Could the programme for government be " My Big Fat Gypsy Economy"? No, too cheerful. Could the programme for government be " The Too Late Late Show"? Nah, too clumsy. Or – I have it, I have it – "Dancing On Ice"? That is the programme for government; and you know, Dancing On Ice is a pretty popular show.
But fears are growing, as they say, that our national bankruptcy is blinding us to (even) more serious developments in other countries. Like the fact that Shahbaz Bhatti was murdered last Wednesday, for example. It seems to me amazing that this savage killing has received so little coverage here. I know I’m getting old, but I believe I can remember a time when such an outrage would have been the subject of public discussion in this country, not just by ordinary people but by politicians as well. Now I can’t even find a condemnation of it on the Department of Foreign Affairs website. Surely there should be something there?
This is all the more surprising because Bhatti, Pakistan’s minister for minorities, who was shot outside his parents’ house in Islamabad, is a Christian martyr. A very modern Christian martyr, who was murdered because, as Pakistan’s only Christian government minister, he would not keep quiet about that country’s blasphemy law. “I am leading this campaign against the sharia laws,” he said in 2009.
The blasphemy law has caused the death of dozens of Pakistani citizens, not only in the burning of a Christian enclave in the town of Gojra in 2009, but in individual murders also, not least of Ahmadi Muslims, who are a division of Islam and now the hapless targets of certain Islamic extremists who consider them heretics. In an interview in October 2009, Bhatti made it clear he had made common cause with non-Christian victims of Pakistan blasphemy laws. He explained that “For speaking for the oppressed and marginalised persecuted Christians and other minorities, these Taliban threaten me . . .” In December, he recorded the video which he wanted sent to news organisations in the event of his assassination.
The blasphemy law in Pakistan is a licence for petty local grievance and murder, and in the same 2009 interview Bhatti said one of the ways in which he wanted the blasphemy laws altered – he was realistic enough to know he could not have them abolished – was to make sure there would be the same punishment for falsely alleging blasphemy as there was for actually committing it.
He also wanted complaints of blasphemy submitted to Pakistan’s courts, rather than to its police force.
The case of Asia Bibi, a Christian agricultural worker with five children, who is in jail as a result of the allegations of her fellow villagers, illustrates precisely the reasons Bhatti wanted these changes to the blasphemy law. Last week it emerged Bibi is cooking her own food in prison for fear of being poisoned. It is interesting that the authorities take threats to her life seriously enough to permit her to do this.
As we know, the most senior Pakistani man to defend Bibi and to criticise the blasphemy laws, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was assassinated by a member of his own bodyguard on January 4th. The Pakistani government seems to have been surprised by the support shown for the man who murdered Taseer. Mumtaz Qadri, who was photographed after the killing smiling broadly, was showered with rose petals as he arrived at court. Now Bhatti has also been killed, as he knew he would be.
One of the few western bodies which knew how to react to this latest murder was the Vatican, and it issued a statement on what it called this “terribly grave new act of violence”. Bhatti, a Catholic, had met Pope Benedict last year. The Vatican statement continues: “Our prayers for the victim, our condemnation for this unspeakable act of violence, our closeness to Christian Pakistanis who suffer hatred are accompanied by an appeal of the urgent importance of defending both religious freedom and Christians who are subject to violence and persecution.”
You know, back in the days before our programme for government was Winning Streak, Ireland was pretty good at this sort of thing. There was a touch of the Skibbereen Eagle keeping its eye on the Tsar of Russia about our engagement with the outside world, but for a small country we were surprisingly effective at dealing with the complicated politics of other post-colonial countries, and being helpful to them. Our problem now is not so much money, or the lack of it, but our self-obsession.
Luckily there are Irish people like David Turner, who runs the organisation Church In Chains. It was Turner who conducted the interview with Bhatti quoted above, at a Christian Solidarity meeting in London in October 2009. “He was a very personable, quiet man with a calm demeanour,” remembers Turner. “He was not a naive man. I think he knew what he was up against.”
Church In Chains is funded by individual Irish evangelical Christians. It campaigns for Pakistan’s four million Christians, most of whom are Anglican or Roman Catholic. It is contactable on www.churchinchains.ie and 01-2825393.