On Wednesday, August 29, 2012, there appeared to be a good chance that Rimsha Masih, the young Pakistani Christian girl falsely accused of blasphemy against Islam and arrested on August 17, 2012, would soon be cleared of those charges. Rimsha’s attorney, Tahir Naveed Chaudry, was confident that the little girl’s case would be transferred from the local court in Pakistan’s federal capital of Islamabad to the more lenient juvenile court. But after the hearing on Thursday, August 30, Naveed expressed deep concern that threats against the court made by Islamists would result in the judge yielding to mob rule.
This precarious condition demonstrates that even when an individual defendant is cleared of such charges, it is only one more Band-Aid on the festering open sores that are Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws. Just the existence of these laws, included in Pakistan’s Penal Code, squashes free speech and religious freedom and ensures a life of misery and persecution for Christians and other religious minorities. The government of Pakistan needs to deal with those who make the initial accusations, the religious clerics and others who foment riots, and the resulting mobs that carry out the violence.
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