THE INSISTANCE yesterday by Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari that his government will stand up to the extremists who killed minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti is rich indeed. We have to fight this mindset and defeat them,” he insisted. “We will not be intimidated nor will we retreat.” Fine words indeed, but, given his government’s ready capitulation to religious extremists, they will certainly not be reassurance to Sherry Rehman, the liberal parliamentarian from Karachi who is next on the Taliban’s hit list.
Rehman has stood alone with Bhatti and Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, to demand repeal of the country’s medieval blasphemy laws and to champion the case of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death under them in November. Taseer was assassinated in January, to the applause of the religious right, Bhatti, on Tuesday. Rehman, determined to continue the fight, is holed up at home under guard, unable to attend parliament, and unwilling to follow others into exile. Her life hangs on the government’s sincerity. Not a comforting prospect.
Bhatti’s death is a another tragedy for the beleaguered cause of pluralism in Pakistan and the ideals of the country’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah. A mild-spoken Christian – less than 5 per cent of the 180 million population – Bhatti had been one of the very few in the ostensibly secular ruling PPP who campaigned for tolerance for both his coreligionists and Hindus. He had been willing to challenge the blasphemy laws which have been cynically abused to persecute hundreds of people over what are often minor family disagreements – since its introduction by the military government in 1986 some 500 Muslims, 340 Ahmadis, 119 Christians, 14 Hindus and 10 others have been charged under the laws. No one has been executed legally, but 32 blasphemy accused have died as victims of the street justice of Muslim vigilantes.
Bhatti also knew his life was on the line, and had unsuccessfully asked his “deeply concerned” government for a bullet-proof car and a larger protection detail. In an interview given in anticipation of his death, he spoke of it and movingly of how he was driven in part by his faith: “I know what is the meaning of [the] cross and I’m following the cross and Im ready to die for a cause. Im living for my community and suffering people and I will die to defend their rights so these threats and these warnings cannot change my opinion and principles.”
In the immediate aftermath of Taseer’s death, for fear of a backlash from extremists, Zardaris government insisted, and has repeatedly said since, that it will not change the blasphemy law. Rehman was told by prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani last month to withdraw a Bill she sponsored that called for its reform. Bhatti’s death, Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch argues, with justice, represents “the bitter fruit of appeasement of extremist and militant groups”. And this is the same government, promises to the contrary notwithstanding, that has allowed its intelligence agency, the ISI, free rein to continue to play footsy with the Taliban both in Pakistan and over the border in Afghanistan.