Activists say two separate cases of police killing men accused of blasphemy have opened a new dimension in a long-running human rights problem for Pakistan.
Last week, Shah Nawaz, a 32-year-old doctor in Pakistan's Sindh province, was shot by police, who claimed he had resisted arrest after being accused of insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad and sharing "blasphemous" content on social media.
Nawaz's family rejected the police's claims and said he was killed while in custody after surrendering to police. The family said authorities told him he would have a chance to prove his innocence.
It was the second such killing in a week. On September 12, a 52-year-old man in Balochistan province was killed while held in custody at a police station for blasphemy accusations.
The killings drew condemnation from the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), which said in a statement it was "gravely concerned by the alleged extrajudicial killing of two people accused of blasphemy."
"This pattern of violence in cases of blasphemy, in which law enforcement personnel are allegedly involved, is an alarming trend," the HRCP statement said.
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In religiously conservative Pakistan, speech considered insulting or criticizing Islam is punishable by death.
Although no one has ever been formally executed by the state under blasphemy laws, in dozens of cases, lynch mobs have killed those accused before a trial could take place.
Pakistan, in recent years, has witnessed a surge of blasphemy-related killings. In numerous cases, mere accusations have unleashed lynch mobs.
Last year, blasphemy accusations triggered mobs that attacked Christian neighborhoods in the eastern province of Punjab, burning several churches and displacing hundreds of people from their homes. Christians have said those involved in the violence have yet to be put on trial.
In 2011, a former governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was murdered by his bodyguard over his support for reforming Pakistan's blasphemy laws.
"Such killings are the combination of religious intolerance, deeply influential religious forces, and the state being unwilling or unable to confront the problem," Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, told DW.
In some cases, accusing someone of blasphemy can be used to settle personal scores, vendettas or to seize property.
"There is no need to go to court, just a public accusation of blasphemy will gather and incite vigilante mobs to lynch the accused, without waiting for any court case," Tahira Abdullah, a human rights activist, told DW.
Ruth Stephen, a Pakistani minority rights activist, told DW that accusing someone of blasphemy can be used "strategically to settle personal scores."
She added that the government of Pakistan "organizes and enables" religious extremists, which contributes to the problem of blasphemy killings.
Abdullah said a long-term solution would be for authorities to "review and amend the laws and procedures, which were tampered with illegally and unconstitutionally by unelected military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s."
Can the government intervene?
The HRCP has demanded the government ensure an independent inquiry into the recent blasphemy deaths at the hands of police.
However, analyst Kugelman said that Islamist hardliners are "deeply influential" in Pakistani politics, and "civilian and military leaderships have been unwilling to antagonize them."
"We have seen throughout Pakistan's history that those who exploit blasphemy laws, and those who justify violence against alleged violators of those laws, are treated with kid gloves by the Pakistani state," Kugelman said.
Activist Stephen said that the international community should put pressure on Pakistan's government to take action against blasphemy killings, for example, with the threat of sanctions.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has regularly asserted that Pakistan is one of the world's strictest and most frequent enforcers of blasphemy laws.
However, analyst Kugelman said that he doesn't think the international community will go as far as enacting sanctions over blasphemy-related killings.
"But we've seen the problem repeatedly flagged by Western governments, including the US in its annual religious freedom reports. Of course, simply flagging the problem won't make it go away, but at least it keeps the issue front and center internationally, and that's critical."
"International pressure can't stop rising mob killings, but it can keep the issue on the radar. And that at least puts pressure on the Pakistani government, knowing that key capitals, especially in the West, are concerned about a problem that Islamabad has been unwilling or unable to stop," he added.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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