Ruined lives

Five bloggers, Salman Haider, Ahmed Waqas Goraya, Asim Saeed, Ahmed Raza Naseer and Samar Abbas were disappeared in January 2017 within days of each other. All five used social media to oppose religious intolerance and criticised the military for its alleged support to retrograde religious extremists and militants. Their disappearance sparked fears at the time of a crackdown against dissenters and critics on the social media. After their disappearance, blasphemous material was posted on their blogs. This was followed by a virulent (seemingly orchestrated) social media campaign to paint them as blasphemers. The campaign triggered a flood of threats against them, as is the norm whenever a blasphemy charge is levelled against someone.
After the release of the five bloggers, reports of their torture in custody did the rounds. This was confirmed to me personally by one of these bloggers whom I happened to meet abroad. After their release, all five are reported to have fled abroad with their families in fear of life and limb. Who can blame them when a blasphemy charge, whether true or false, has evolved into a virtual death sentence, if not at the hands of the state, then at the hands of vigilante mobs?
The case of the five bloggers is being heard by Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court (IHC). In the latest hearing on December 22, 2017, some interesting developments and information came to light. The Director General (DG) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Bashir Ahmed informed the court that no evidence was found against the five bloggers on the charge of posting blasphemous material online. Justice Siddiqui responded by directing the FIA DG not to proceed further against the bloggers against whom evidence was lacking. He also remarked that those who level false blasphemy charges commit an equal, if not double the crime of blasphemy. No innocent person, he remarked, should be implicated in a false case of blasphemy.
Additional Attorney General Afnan Karim Kundi informed the court that the federal government was amending the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016 to include blasphemy and pornography to the list of scheduled offences in PECA. He revealed that the Law Ministry wanted to amend the law to ensure appropriate punishment to false accusers in blasphemy cases.
If what Kundi said is true, it could not have come soon enough. The track record of blasphemy cases is a sorry and tragic story. Most blasphemy accusations over the years have turned out to be motivated by mundane earthly reasons, not religion. They have stemmed from some vested interest or the other, eg property and money disputes, religion-based hatred (especially against religious minorities but by no means sparing Muslims), revenge, etc. The charge seldom finds its way to the courts. When and if it does, the outcome has sometimes been tragic. On October 10, 1997, Justice Arif Iqbal Bhatti (retd), formerly of the Lahore High Court, was killed in his law chamber three years after he and another judge acquitted two Christians accused of blasphemy, and who had been sentenced to death by a lower court. Since that horrendous incident, the judiciary has been reluctant to take up blasphemy cases because of the risks involved. That has acted as an incentive for vigilante mobs, led by fire breathing clerics, to take the law into their own hands and kill a blasphemy accused on the basis of (often motivated) accusation alone.
Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer was assassinated on January 4, 2011 by his own police guard, Mumtaz Qadri, for defending a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, sentenced to death for blasphemy. Taseer's and other PPP leaders' attempts to at least amend the blasphemy law and bring in protections against false accusation led to his death and in parliament, the silencing of voices such as Senator Sherry Rehman for advocating reform and safeguards. Lately, the Barelvi Tehreek Labaik Ya Rasool Allah has made blasphemy, Khatm-e-Nabuwat (finality of the prophethood of Hazrat Mohammad, PBUH) and the deification of murderer Mumtaz Qadri the three main planks of their campaign that found militant expression recently in the sit-in at Islamabad. An atmosphere of fear and dread has developed around the issue of blasphemy, with citizens forced to constantly look over their shoulders to fend off any such disaster as a blasphemy accusation. If safeguards against false accusation are now being contemplated by the government, it is not a moment too soon.
Scores of people's and their families' lives have been cut short or ruined on motivated blasphemy charges. If the accused survive the accusation, they live in constant fear of being killed by some fanatic sooner or later (cf. Justice Bhatti's murder above). In the case of all the victims of false blasphemy charges, including the five bloggers with whom this piece began, the reform and safeguards will come too late. For all intents and purposes, their lives lie shattered, their future uncertain, and no redress remotely in sight. There is no mention in the IHC proceedings quoted above of bringing the perpetrators of the disappearance of the five bloggers and subsequent posting of blasphemous material on their blogs to justice. For the agencies, barefaced denial in the face of the courts (even the Supreme Court) is the norm, with the invisible cloak of impunity in which they have wrapped themselves proving impossible to penetrate.
For the sake of all the past, present and future potential victims of false accusations of blasphemy for reasons that have nothing to do with religion but everything to do with material vested interests, the government must as soon as possible make good on its commitment before the IHC to bring in reform and safeguards to lay this tragic history to rest.
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