Most were sent to prison under the Hudood Ordinances. The government is promulgating amendments to the laws inspired by Islam but the Catholic Church and human rights groups are urgently calling for their abrogation. The Pakistani minister has reiterated: divine laws cannot be touched.
Responding to amendments proposed by the Council of Islamic Ideology, the country's most influential ulemas have called a national meeting to protect the Hudood Ordinances and want the council to be dismantled.
The Council of Islamic Ideology admitted to abuses committed in the name of the notorious laws inspired by Islam, and proposed the release of all those detained in related cases.
Word that the Koran had been desecrated in an Ahmadi village in Punjab provoked the wrath of a crowd of integralists: they wounded three people and burned down homes, shops and a mosque. The victims claimed the incident was the fruit of a defamatory campaign against the minority community.
The petition goes to the Federal Shariat Court. Minority representative calls for the abolition of the ordinances, or at least for their non applicability to non Muslims.
The first victim is an imam accused of burning some pages of the Qur'an. The other is a man accused of uttering blasphemous words during an altercation with a lorry driver and was murdered near a courthouse.
National paper tells Prime Minister Aziz he is wrong to think that national values and religious norms must be taught from grade one. It calls for the separation of ethics and religion to avoid extremist trends as argued by a well-known Muslim scholar.
The Supreme Court found the men innocent after they spent seven years in prison. AsiaNews interviewed the wife of one of them: the story of the umpteenth victim of this unjust law features years of threats by Islamic fundamentalists, support from the John Joseph Foundation, and fear even after release.
A meeting about the practice was organized by the Minority Rights Commission of Pakistan. The courts were accused of being too dependent on their Islamic environment. A Catholic bishop said the feudal mentality and the economy also play a part.
A Christian from Karachi is arrested for allegedly sending blasphemous cellphone messages "as revenge for last month's attacks against churches by Muslims." Human rights activists demand that he not be remanded into police custody because too many people die in prison without trial.
The Pakistani government should treat the movie the way it treated the Muhammad cartoons: totally ban it for it insults Christians' belief in the divinity of Christ, the truthfulness of sacred scriptures, and the core values of Christianity.
A local NGO warns that HIV/AIDS figures for intravenous drug users are higher than reported. Without decisive action the country could find itself facing a full-blown epidemic in just a few weeks.
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