Christians in Pakistan Celebrate Easter amid Blasphemy Fears

As Christians in Pakistan celebrated Holy Week and Easter, many say they are fearful over a new blasphemy charge that has triggered violence against the tiny Christian minority in the Punjab province.

A blasphemy charge was made on April 1 accusing an 11-year-old Christian boy and four other Christians, including his relatives, of blasphemy by desecrating a sacred band with inscriptions from the Koran worn by a Muslim boy, who worked for a rival television cable operator to one of the Christians. Christians there are calling it a trumped up claim.

"We Christians are worried. We are appealing to the government to ensure the safety of Christians and to drop the false blasphemy charge," Victor Azariah, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Pakistan told Ecumenical News International.

According to the National Council of Churches in Pakistan, a grouping of four of the country's Protestant churches, said there was tension and that violence had been meted out to Christians in the Toba Tek Singh district of Punjab province following the charge.

Blasphemy is punishable by death under the laws of overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan, although nobody has been executed for it. Courts have acquitted those accused of blasphemy in more than 100 cases after overruling lower courts but 20 people facing blasphemy charges, including six Christians, have been killed during their trials. Most Christians acquitted of blasphemy flee Pakistan, and Christians there remain unnerved after the murder of a judge who ruled for an acquittal in one blasphemy case.

"Once a blasphemy case is registered anything could happen. The Christians there are really worried," said Azariah.

"We are trying our best to contact as many Muslim groups as possible to convince them this is a fake charge," said the Rev Bonnie Mendis of the Roman Catholic parish at Toba Tek Singh, near Faisalabad, where Christians number 10,000 among three million Muslims.

A quarrel between the two boys working with the rival TV cable distributors "has been turned into a fight between two communities", he told ENI.

Christians in the area say that the blasphemy case was concocted by Muslims after the Christian boy's family members went to the Muslim family to question why the boy had been beaten up for refusing to play with the other boys. After this, a group marched through the village during which they are said to have attacked a disabled Christian who could not flee.

"Though most people know this is a fake case, the police have not withdrawn the case. The extremists could use it to incite violence against us. That's our experience," said Rev Mendis.

[Source ENI: www.eni.ch]