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| Mohammad Iqbal (Photo: Saba Imtiaz) |
Source/Credit: erase and rewind | Blog
By Saba Imtiaz | January 4, 2012
For Mohammad Iqbal, his decision to convert to the Ahmadi faith almost cost him his life.
It took his father fourteen years to start pressurising Iqbal to change his decision. Despite several threats, Iqbal, who belongs to the Arain caste, did not give in.
Iqbal says he escaped two murder attempts before his own father asked a local cleric to register a case (PDF). Even though one of the witnesses from the cleric’s side refused to testify against Iqbal, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a sessions court in Faisalabad. Iqbal recalls seeing “turbaned men” in large numbers at his trial hearings.
After six years in jail, his sentence was overturned by the high court on appeal. Iqbal was 40 when he was released from jail in June 2010, and joined his family in Rabwah, who had moved there three years earlier.
Iqbal’s wife was expecting a child when he was imprisoned, and he was only able to meet the child six months after it was born.
In an interview, he recalled conditions in the jail. Iqbal was kept in a cell with others jailed for committing blasphemy, including a Muslim. “We were kept together since the jail also housed extremists and terrorists,” he said. “Taliban members, the men who plotted that assassination attempt on Pervez Musharraf… they were all there and they knew the jail housed people convicted under the blasphemy law.” According to Iqbal, he was only allowed to leave the cell if he had visitors.
He is now trying to rebuild his life. Only one of his brothers still speaks to him. His father has reportedly offered to sign over land to him if he reneges on his faith. The cleric who filed the original case has died, and there is no one to account for why Iqbal spent six years in jail.
He is one of the many Pakistanis who have been victimised and targeted under the blasphemy laws. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against members of all faiths on the basis of little to no evidence. Allegations of blasphemy have been responsible for triggering off riots, such as in Korian and Gojra in 2009.
The majority of blasphemy cases are filed in Punjab, where both Governor Salmaan Taseer and Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti were assassinated in 2011. Taseer’s assassin confessed that he killed the governor for his opposition to the blasphemy law. Flyers strewn around the scene of Bhatti’s assassination declared that he had been killed because he was on a “committee reviewing the legislation”.
In its report on the state of human rights and democracy in 2010, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office stated: “Unfortunately efforts by the Pakistani government to reduce the abuses associated with the blasphemy law have been stalled by public opposition to any reform following the assassination of Governor Taseer, and there is little likelihood of much-needed reform in the near future”.
“I cannot even think of committing blasphemy,” Iqbal declared. “Section 295 is a wrong law. I was convicted merely on testimony, without any proof. I have no hope of it being repealed – look at Aasia Bibi’s case or the assassinations of Taseer and Bhatti. The situation is worsening.”
This interview was conducted in Rabwah in June 2011.
Read original post here: Pakistan: ‘The situation is worsening’
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