ISLAMABAD (UCAN): An elderly Pakistani Christian, 74-year-old Nazir Masih, who was accused of blasphemy on May 25, died in the early hours of June 3 at the Combined Military Hospital in Rawalpindi. He succumbed to serious injuries, inflicted when he was attacked by a mob of some 1,000 people with stones, bricks and iron rods after local Muslims accused him of burning pages of the Quran.
Police rescued Masih and his family, and he was rushed to the hospital where he died from multiple head injuries.
“Twenty-nine persons have been detained and placed on a judicial remand for interrogation. The identification parade for another 35 is scheduled for today,” Khizar Hayat, an investigating officer in Punjab province said on June 3.
“We are victims of a huge tyranny,” Adnan Gill, Masih’s nephew, lamented.
Christian political and religious leaders should develop a strategy to end abuses of the blasphemy law, said Roheel Zafar Shahi, secretary-general of the Pakistan Minority Rights Commission, a minority forum.
“Another innocent Christian lost his life to religious extremists. Sadly, neither the state nor our representatives are serious about a permanent solution,” he said.
Christian leaders, including Catholic bishops, visited Mujahid colony, a Christian neighbourhood in the Sargodha district, home to over 200 families, half of them Catholics.
Bishop Azad Marshall, president of the Church of Pakistan which is part of the Anglican Communion, expressed shock in a social media post on June 3.
“Today, every single Pakistani should be weighed [down] by grief, not only for the atrocities in a foreign land but right here,” he stated, adding, “Yet again, hate has brought us to the place where we must ask questions. The question is not ‘Where will this stop?’ … we have already come too far!”
Christian leaders allege the country’s blasphemy law is often exploited to target individual Christians and the community to settle scores in personal and land disputes.
