PAKISTAN: Panel appeals latest Pakistan blasphemy death sentence

JUNE 30, 2002

A Pakistan human rights group said Sunday it was seeking a repeal of a death sentence handed down to a 25-year-old convert to Christianity convicted under controversial blasphemy laws.

 The private Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said it closely followed the case of Aslam Masih, who was fined 50,000 rupees (833 dollars) on top of capital punishment for making "blasphemous" remarks about Islam.

 "We are taking up with the family of this man to appeal the conviction because we know that previous cases like this were eventually discarded by higher courts," the Commission's head, Afrasiab Khatak, said.

 In the latest case, Aslam Masih, a resident of Faisalabad district in central Punjab province, is alleged to have made "blasphemous remarks" when questioned about his switching faiths more than 2 years ago.

 Khatak said the Commission was campaigning for the scrapping of the 1985 law introduced by then military ruler, General Moahmmad Zia Ul Haq, and regarded as dranocian by foreign and local rights groups.

 According to the English-language paper, The News, the district court judge who heard the case, Chaudhry Muhammad Rafiq, said he was fully satisfied with the guilty verdict.

 Human rights activists say Pakistan's blasphemy law is abused, making the accused a victim of an otherwise victimless crime.

 Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf has promised to rein in religious extremists but he has made little headway.

 The Human Rights Commission's Khatak said the President was under pressure from the clergy not to deliver on his pledge.

 Shortly after the bloodless October 1999 coup that brought him to power, Musharraf was forced into an embarrassing climb down over plans to make blasphemy cases more difficult to register.

 Pakistani hard-line religious organisations have bitterly opposed any changes in the law and threatened street agitation.

 Several blasphemy-related incidents have attracted international condemnation and calls to amend the law. Christian minority leaders say their community is the main target.

 A Catholic bishop, John Joseph, committed suicide in May 1998 outside a court in Sahiwal, near Lahore, in protest at the death sentence handed down to a Christian accused of blasphemy.