2004, has requested police protection after receiving death threats for refusing to drop charges against his sons alleged attackers, BosNewsLife monitored Sunday December 25.
Christian news agency Compass Direct said the father, Pervez Masih, and his lawyer have appealed for protection from radical Muslim clerics. Islamists apparently increased pressure on Masih following last month’s re-arrest of Maulvi Ghulam Rasool, one of the suspects charged with torturing his son, Javed Anjum.
Rasool was a Muslim prayer leader and security guard at the local ‘madrassa’, or Muslim school, in Chak village of Pakistan’s Toba Tek Singh District where the son was tortured. He had his bail revoked by Pakistan’s Supreme Court November 23.
Compass Direct quoted Masih and his lawyer, Khalil Tahir Sindhu, as saying that members of a radical Islamic group have targeted them three times over the past three weeks.
MUSLIM CROWDS
Crowds of about 50 clerics armed with pistols allegedly gathered outside the courtroom several times yelling that they would not "spare the lives of liars," and jostling the plaintiff as he exited trial hearings, Sindhu told Compass Direct.
The next hearing was scheduled for January 2.
In a videotaped statement, 19-year old Anjum said that he had been nabbed by members of the madrassa, including the principal when he stopped to get water from the seminary’s water tap on his way to a wedding.
After learning he was a Christian, the seminarians allegedly beat him and applied electrical shocks to his ears for five days, until he eventually repeated the Muslim creed.
WATER SEARCH
"I was searching for water near the Islamic madrassa when the Maulvis [Islamic teachers or mullahs] took me inside and told me that I was a thief and was trying to steal the water pump," he said according to a transcript released by religious rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).
"I rejected the charge and told the Islamic leaders that I am a Christian youth and a student [who] had come here to attend a marriage. As soon as the Islamic extremists came to know that I am Christian, they asked me to convert to Islam," he added.
But "I refused and they started torturing me. They would continue the torture from night ’til morning. They tortured me badly and during the torture they continuously asked me to accept Islam."
He reportedly told his family he had not renounced his Christian faith.
With a broken right arm and fingers, fingernails ripped off, skin burns and serious injuries to his bladder, Anjum was eventually transferred to Faisalabad’s Allied Hospital 96 kilometers (60 miles) away after both his kidneys began to fail.
Before completely losing consciousness, the Christian student gave a formal testimony to the police, claiming he had been tortured for refusing to convert to Islam, investigators said.
POLICE ARREST
Rasool was arrested by the police only hours after the Christian died in the hospital on May 2, 2004. Following nine days of police interrogation, the cleric apparently gave the names of two accomplices, Mohammed Tayyab and Umar Hayat.
Police however "seemed to be cooperating with the madrassa after they failed to apprehend Tayyab and Hayat over the next weeks and then doctored evidence to claim that Masih had testified that his son was insane," Compass Direct quoted a report from the Center for Legal Aid and Settlement (CLAAS) as saying.
Hayat has yet to be apprehended by police while Tayyab was reportedly freed after the Punjab High Court granted bail to both him and Rasool in December last year. Police officials could not be reached for comment. The Pakistan government has however said that it will crackdown on Muslim militants.
CONTROVERSIAL LAWS
However human rights groups say controversial blasphemy laws and attitudes towards Pakistan’s Christian minority hamper the efforts.
Even "lying in a hospital under police protection is not safe if you have been accused of blasphemy in Pakistan," said CSW in remarks obtained by BosNewsLife.
Last year "Samuel Masih, 32, accused of blasphemy and suffering from tuberculosis, was being watched over by a policeman who turned out to be much more dangerous than the disease. On May 28 Samuel died from his injuries after the policeman attacked him with a brick cutter," CSW said.
"A fact-finding team investigating the incident was told by police that the constable had said his faith compelled him to try to kill Samuel," the group claimed. In a separate incident this month, December 9, a 27 year-old Christian cobbler, Pervaiz Masih, from Awami Colony in Lahore was shot dead at midnight by unknown assailants, CSW said. Christians comprise less than 3 percent of Pakistan’s predominantly Muslim population of over 162 million, according to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from Pakistan).
