Fear and shame of Gojra

Editorial:DAILY TIMES
After a week of simmering Muslim-Christian dispute over the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran in tehsil Gojra in Toba Tek Singh district in Punjab, violence has broken out simply because the local administration ignored orders from Lahore to control the situation. The Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, has suspended the persons responsible for letting this very familiar type of incident get out of hand. Seven Christians have been burnt alive and their houses torched. There may be more casualties.

As usual a “banned organisation” — Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti says it was Sipah Sahaba — came in from outside the town and took over and used acid and petrol bombs to destroy property and kill Christian women and children, while the local government and police simply did nothing. The federal government has taken serious note by sending in the Rangers and the Punjab government has ordered an inquiry into what really transpired. Compensation for the destroyed property has already been announced.

There is a pattern of violence against Christians in Punjab that cannot be ignored. First of all, let us ask why it happens mainly in Punjab? Some facts are illustrative. The Christians of Pakistan are the largest religious minority in Pakistan. The total number of Christians in Pakistan was at least 2 million in 2008, or 1.1 percent of the population. An examination of birth records yields a total number of Christians at 2.8 million. More than 90 percent of the country’s Christians reside in Punjab, making them the largest religious minority in the province. And 60 percent of them live in the villages, and in most cases are more indigenous to their areas than the Muslims.

Charges of blasphemy and desecration of the Quran are “used” against them, but the latter is used against them collectively, followed by organised dispossession and destruction of property. In 1997, the twin villages of Shantinagar-Tibba Colony 12 kilometres east of Khanewal, Multan Division, were looted and burnt by 20,000 Muslim citizens and 500 policemen acting together after an incident of alleged desecration of the Quran was reported. The police first evacuated the Christian population of 15,000, then helped the raiders use battle-field explosives to blow up their houses and property. Sipah Sahaba was also blamed by the Christians for that holocaust.

In 2005, the Christian community of Sangla Hill in Nankana district in Punjab experienced a most hair-raising day of violence and vandalism. After allegations of desecration of the Quran, a mob of 3,000 led by the local elected politician and police burnt down three churches, a missionary-run school, two hostels and several houses belonging to the Christian community. Lahore’s archbishop stated that the attackers had been brought there by buses from outside. The Punjab government once again acted quickly to compensate for the neglect and complicity of the local administration, but was prevented from proceeding fairly by a renowned Sunni cleric of Lahore who took his own lashkar of youths to “defend” the Muslims in Sangla Hill. Ironically, he has since fallen to a suicide-bomber of the Taliban.

These were big incidents that not only shook Pakistan but the world too. The Archbishop of Canterbury, already expressing sympathy with Pakistan after the earthquake in Azad Kashmir, was forced to say after Sangla that Pakistan was in the process of redefining who could be its citizens. Smaller incidents of persecution of the Christians have never stopped, but Gojra tells us that holocausts can repeat themselves as civic virtue declines in Pakistan under the influence of extremism.

We don’t know whom the laws of blasphemy and desecration were supposed to target, but their intent was to stop the crime mentioned in them. Tragically, blasphemy cases have proliferated after the promulgation of the blasphemy law, and action taken against the accused is not by the state but by the vigilantes the state cannot control. Section 295-B Defiling of copy of the holy Quran says: “Whoever wilfully defiles, damages or desecrates a copy of the Holy Quran or an extract therefrom, or uses it in a derogatory manner or any unlawful purpose, shall be punishable with imprisonment for life”. But the punishment has been inflicted without trial on people who had nothing to do with it.

These are signals of doom. And the crime is being committed by the non-state actors that were once considered “assets” of the military-state. Their dominance in Punjab is well established and their control over local population to the detriment of local administration is also well known. The laws mean nothing under these circumstances.