Dozens arrested after mob lynches Christian couple in Pakistan over blasphemy
Blasphemy is a serious offence in conservative Pakistan where those accused are sometimes
lynched on the spot. The latest incident took place in a village in Punjab province on Tuesday when a local cleric told his community through the loudspeakers of his mosque to punish the couple for burning a few pages of the Quran, a police source said.
A mob then gathered outside the house of Shehzad Masih, 32, and his wife Shama, in her 20s, dragged them out and beat them to death, police said. Their bodies were then set on fire in a brick kiln where they worked. ‘We have arrested 44 people, it was a local issue incited by the mullah of a local mosque,’ Jawad Qamar, a regional police chief, told Reuters. ‘No particular sectarian group or religious outfit was behind the attack.’ Blasphemy charges, even when they go to court, are punishable by death in Muslim-majority Pakistan. They are hard to fight because the law does not define clearly what is blasphemous. Presenting the evidence can sometimes itself be considered a fresh infringement.
Christians make up about four percent of Pak’s population and tend to keep a low profile in a country where Sunni Muslim militants frequently bomb targets they see as heretical, including Christians, and Sufi and Shias.
lynched on the spot. The latest incident took place in a village in Punjab province on Tuesday when a local cleric told his community through the loudspeakers of his mosque to punish the couple for burning a few pages of the Quran, a police source said.
A mob then gathered outside the house of Shehzad Masih, 32, and his wife Shama, in her 20s, dragged them out and beat them to death, police said. Their bodies were then set on fire in a brick kiln where they worked. ‘We have arrested 44 people, it was a local issue incited by the mullah of a local mosque,’ Jawad Qamar, a regional police chief, told Reuters. ‘No particular sectarian group or religious outfit was behind the attack.’ Blasphemy charges, even when they go to court, are punishable by death in Muslim-majority Pakistan. They are hard to fight because the law does not define clearly what is blasphemous. Presenting the evidence can sometimes itself be considered a fresh infringement.
Christians make up about four percent of Pak’s population and tend to keep a low profile in a country where Sunni Muslim militants frequently bomb targets they see as heretical, including Christians, and Sufi and Shias.