Parliament of cowards: 2 of Aasia Bibi's protectors are dead. The last one is in hiding

[charlie]

And then there was one. Of the three brave Pakistani politicians who stood up for Aasia Bibi, an embattled Christian woman flung on to death row last year, just one is still alive: Sherry Rehman. The liberal parliamentarian from Karachi, known for her glamorous style and outspoken views, spearheaded efforts to reform the much-abused blasphemy law after Bibi, a mother of four, was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the prophet Muhammad.

Rehman, 50, was joined in her lonely struggle by two men – the Punjab governor, Salmaan Taseer, and the minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti. Now both of them are dead and worries are growing that Rehman is next. "Make no mistake: she is in grave danger, like nobody else," one friend said.
...

"I get two types of advice about leaving," she said then. "One from concerned friends, the other from those who want me out so I'll stop making trouble. But I'm going nowhere"...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/02/sherry-rehman-pakistan-blasphemy-laws-hitlist

...But a couple of weeks ago, while the world was watching Cairo and Tripoli, his own prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, quietly abandoned any attempt to repeal Pakistan's blasphemy laws – and the death penalty for breaking them. The battling woman backbencher who'd pushed for abolition retreated. The ministries working on amendments threw them away. Blasphemy, as defined in the statute book by Pakistan's last military dictator but one, remains a capital offence.

So the Christian peasant farm-worker and mother of four, Aasia Bibi, whose case crystallises the whole sorry debacle, remains in prison and in fear for her life. So the governor of Punjab province, Salmaan Taseer, murdered by his own bodyguard for speaking out, remains unavenged. Remember how 90 lawyers put their hands up and volunteered to defend Taseer's killer for free. Remember how the elected government of the Pakistan's People Party, the party Taseer belonged to, did nothing but mumble. Remember how it promised reform then shuffled away. Don't forget, then, that Shahbaz Bhatti's murder comes as a direct consequence of the pusillanimity of an elected government...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/02/shahbaz-bhatti-pakistan-democracy

Pakistan's federal minorities minister, a Christian, was gunned down by suspected Islamist militants in this capital city Wednesday in the second killing this year of a senior government official who had spoken out against the country's stringent anti-blasphemy laws.

Shahbaz Bhatti, the sole Christian cabinet member in majority-Muslim Pakistan, was shot multiple times by gunmen who surrounded his car as he left for work from his mother's house, near his home in a residential neighborhood. The attackers fled, but fliers scattered at the scene bore the names of the militant Islamist groups Punjabi Taliban and al-Qaeda...



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/02/AR2011030206514.html

[LeftishBrit]

1. Horrible and depressing.