Islamabad (AsiaNews) – Khatu Mal Jeewan has become Pakistan’s new Minority Affairs minister. Speaking to AsiaNews, he followed tradition and said that he was grateful for his “new appointment”, pledging to “fight for the rights of his community”. He was also reassuring saying that “minorities would not be discriminated”. He replaces Shahbaz Bhatti, the Catholic politician slain by Islamic fundamentalists on 2 March for proposing changes to the country’s blasphemy law. For his part, the new minister did not mention the law that caused his predecessor’s death. In the meantime, the death toll from yesterday’s attack against the Syed Ahmad Sakhi Sarwar Sufi shrine has risen to 49 dead and more than 100 wounded.
Following Bhatti’s brutal murder, Pakistan’s ruling party, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), had proposed that a Bhatti family member take his place. However, Pakistani law does not allow this, and so the PPP proposed three candidates: Khatu Mal Jeewan, Michael Javed and Khalid Gill.
Khatu Mal Jeewan, a Hindu senator, was the eventual choice. He hails from Janhero, a city in Umerkot District, in the southern province of Sindh. A graduate from the Dow Medical College in Karachi, he was a medical doctor before entering politics.
“I fought for the rights of my community,” he told AsiaNews, “and backed the former minister in fighting for minorities”, and “I shall speak out for the rights of Pakistan’s minorities” to prevent any kind of discrimination.”
Speaking about his region of origin, which has the highest concentration of Hindus in the country, he said that most of them “live on the edge of poverty” and are “victims of discrimination and inhumane acts.”
Still the new minister sounded positive, saying that he was hopeful that his cabinet colleagues and leaders of other minorities will join him to fulfil the dream of Pakistan’s founder, Ali Jinnah, in which “minorities will have equal rights and will be able to live according to their respective faith.”
The PPP won the elections in 2008, announcing changes to the blasphemy law. However, after the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, and repeated death threats against Muslim lawmakers, the government decided to shelve any proposed changes to the “black law”.
In the meantime, the death toll from yesterday’s terrorist bombs against the Syed Ahmad Sakhi Sarwar shrine in Punjab, where Sufi Muslim devotees gathered for an annual three-day festival, has risen to 49, with more than 100 wounded.
According to mainstream Sunnis, Sufism is an heretical form of Islam. Like Ahmadis, they are often victims of violence and attacks.
A Taliban fighter claimed responsibility for the attack, the third of its kind against a Sufi shrine since the start of the year. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan is thought to be behind the violence.
Sufism is an ancient doctrine practiced in Pakistan with many more devotees and followers than fundamentalist Islamist groups.
