PAKISTAN ENRAGED OVER U.S. KEEPING IT ON A LIST OF VIOLATORS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
“Pakistan is a multi-religious and pluralistic country where people of all faiths enjoy religious freedom under constitutional protections,” said Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Aisha Farooqui.And here is the truth about Pakistan. Scroll and see.“Pakistan Fumes After US Keeps It on Religious Freedom Blacklist,” by Patrick Goodenough, CNS News, December 26, 2019 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):____________________________________________________________________(CNSNews.com) – The Trump administration’s decision to keep Pakistan on a blacklist of religious freedom violators is irking the world’s second most-populous Islamic nation, which slammed the move as “unilateral and arbitrary” and complained that its archrival India had not been similarly targeted.“The designation is reflective of selective targeting of countries, and thus unlikely to be helpful to the professed cause of advancing religious freedom,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Aisha Farooqui said in a Christmas Day statement.“Pakistan is a multi-religious and pluralistic country where people of all faiths enjoy religious freedom under constitutional protections,” she said.In fact, Pakistan oversees the world’s most notorious blasphemy laws, with Christians, Ahmadis and other minorities disproportionally affected by provisions that carry the death penalty for disparaging Mohammed; life imprisonment for defiling the Qur’an; and shorter jail terms for insulting Mohammed’s wives, relatives or “companions.”Aside from the legal perils, Pakistanis professing various faiths have been targeted by murderous vigilante mobs or individuals determined to punish purported “blasphemers” in cases where the authorities have not yet acted.As recently as last weekend, a U.S.-educated Pakistani university lecturer in the city of Multan, Junaid Hafeez, was sentenced to death for blasphemy after being accused of insulting Mohammed on Facebook.Hafeez had been imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, for six years while awaiting finalization of his trial. His first lawyer was shot dead in 2014 for defending a client accused of blasphemy.After the sentence was delivered, the BBC reported, prosecution lawyers handed out candy to their colleagues “who chanted ‘Allahu akbar’ and ‘death to blasphemers.’”WaiversAccording to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent statutory body, at least 80 individuals are currently imprisoned or in death row in Pakistan after being convicted of blasphemy.Citing the blasphemy laws and other concerns, the USCIRF from 2002 to 2018 called on the State Department each year to designate Pakistan a “country of particular concern” (CPC) under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), but to no avail.It was only in late 2018 that the Trump State Department broke with the Obama and Bush administrations, blacklisting Pakistan as a CPC despite its purported status as an important counter-terror ally.Last Friday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the renewal of CPC designations for Pakistan and eight other “egregious” violators of religious freedom.” (The others are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.)It was that decision that the Pakistani foreign ministry was condemning on Wednesday.“This pronouncement is not only detached from ground realities of Pakistan but also raises questions about the credibility and transparency of the entire exercise,” Farooqui said.Despite the designation, Pakistan does not face any immediate consequences for its poor record….
SEE ALSO:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/12/pakistan-muslims-demand
-that-woman-who-questioned-muhammads-conduct-be-put-to-death
