Last week on Thursday morning, my Twitter stream exploded with news of a human rights advocate being gunned down in Multan, a city in Pakistan’s Punjab province. It is believed that the human rights advocate, Rashid Rehman, was shot dead by Islamic extremists because he defended a university lecturer, Junaid Hafeez, who had been accused by a right-wing Islamist student group of having committed blasphemy. Blasphemy in Pakistan carries the death penalty but the accused are often lynched before the trial ends or languish for ages in jail without trial because lawyers are afraid to defend them. The law does not require evidence to be presented in court for an accusation and there are no penalties for false allegations. When it comes to blasphemy cases, courts in Pakistan often hesitate to hear evidence, fearful that reproducing it will also be considered blasphemous. Pakistan has plunged into a situation where target and sectarian killings are a daily occurrence. While any person, male or female, may become the target of muslim fanatics simply for holding an opinion contrary to theirs, the most common victims are the religious minority groups. Recent events have proved conclusively that any person who dares to practice their freedom of speech by expressing views about Islam on any forum including social media, is also at risk of being harmed. And not only that but those who dare to show their sympathy for the accused blasphemer are also not spared from the clutches of extremists. Rashid Rehman’s assassination is yet again a clear message that anyone auxiliary to those accused of blasphemy, not considered to be within the orbit of Islam, do so at their own risk. Rashid Rehman was a prominent human rights defender who believed that every defendant deserved a lawyer, especially someone facing perhaps the most serious allegation that can be charged at you in Pakistan. He was shot and killed by two men who entered his office at 8.30pm on Wednesday, April 7, in the city of Multan and opened fire. Two others in the office were seriously injured by the gunmen, who then fled. The extremely unpleasant news made me ask the question : How many countries are there in the world where people and individuals either abuse the law or storm out and take it into their own hands as frequently as they do in the land of pure, especially in the name of blasphemy and religion? I could not think of any other country than Pakistan. It seems that a fair number of self-righteous pious Pakistanis have specialty on how to abuse the law to its full extent and also to take the law into their own hands. The district police of Multan has not filed a case against the killers whose names were mentioned by the deceased himself in an application to the district police officer where he mentioned that if any harm comes to him, the three persons named would be responsible. When the local administration and the provincial government totally ignore the murder of a human rights defender and do not initiate any action that might lead to the arrest of the persons who threatened him, when a Supreme Court that is famous for taking Suo Moto action even on pointless issues ignores the murder of a brave activist; the sanity of these institutions and those that man them, is called into question. I, like thousands of other Pakistanis, am still mourning the death of Rashid Rehman, who wanted nothing more but to legally defend a defendant. Meanwhile, I am concerned about the safety, security, and psychological well being of the defendant who has been imprisoned for over a year now. Junaid was arrested by Multan police last year in March when he was accused of posting blasphemous material on Facebook. Apparently no one was willing to take his defense until the brave Rashid Rehman stepped forward. Juanid is known as a kind and intelligent person among his friends and family members. It is said he was very keen about appreciating and advocating the concepts of pluralism, liberty, feminism, and freedom of speech.
Junaid was accused of blasphemy because of being vocal about his progressive and liberal beliefs. He was the only lecturer in Multan’s Bahauddin Zakariya University who vocally spoke about the narrow-mindedness and intolerance of Pakistan’s religious fanatics. Thus he was a threat to the university’s powerful ultra right-wing Islamist students group. He was a brave person who stood in the face of religious fanatics and challenged their obsolete beliefs. Rashid Rehman leaves behind a grieving family and heartbroken friends. No lawyer will now dare to defend Junaid in court. As a result he will either languish in jail or surely be the next victim of the blood-thirsty fanatics. Unfortunately, there are heaps of those dimwits who think that killing an accused ‘blasphemer’ reserves them a permanent place in the heaven. For more than a decade now Pakistan has been in the strong grip of the worst kind of insanity; the insanity that allows mob justice; that allows harm, maim, and even murder of men, women, and children in the name of religion. In the midst of this insanity, I wonder how many more innocent souls are required to be sacrificed to shake and wake the secular-progressive and left-political elements, to break their criminal silence and to make them stand up and fight the menace of religious extremists? “those who remain silent or neutral in the face of oppression, have chosen the side of the oppressors”
