The trial, held within the prison for security
reasons, was tense and emotional. On the day Younus was convicted, Islamic
zealots outside the prison said the judge faced serious consequences if he
failed to hand down the death penalty. "The judge was visibly
harassed," says Muhammed Hussain Chotiya, the lawyer for the doctor.
According to Chotiya, the judge admitted to him that the charges were flawed
and that he was going to acquit the professor. "We were shocked when he
pronounced the death sentence. The order did not even
have his signature," claims Chotiya.
Human-rights groups maintain that Younus was framed
because of his liberal views. Younus has practiced medicine in Pakistan and
Ireland and has been an active member of the South Asia Peace Movement and the
International Humanist and Ethical Union. "The clerics generated an
atmosphere where it was not possible for the accused to get a fair trial,"
says I. A. Rehman, director of the independent Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan (HRCP). The
pressure on Pakistani judges to uphold the law has increased recently. In 1998,
an Islamic extremist shot dead a Lahore high-court judge, Arif Iqbal Hussain
Bhatti, after he suspended a blasphemy death sentence handed down to two
Christians by a lower court.
The doctor is unmarried and does not have children.
But his father and brother, who live in the central Punjab town of Chistian,
are also afraid. "I do not want to say anything," said Mohammed
Afzal, the professor¿s brother, when NEWSWEEK contacted him by phone. "Initially
they were reluctant even to accept legal help or allow us to publicize the case
for fear that it would further antagonize the mullahs," says Khadim
Hussain, a human-rights activist.
Hundreds of people, mostly Christians and
non-Muslims, are facing trial under the draconian law. According to the HRCP,
at least four people (including
three Muslims) have been condemned to death by lower courts. Their fate will be
decided by the superior courts that are hearing their appeals. Last month a
Lahore high court upheld a blasphemy death penalty for a Christian, Ayub
Masih-the first time a blasphemy conviction has been upheld by a high court.
Activists say the Masih case shows how the law has become, in the hands of
unscrupulous men, a weapon of oppression-or just a way to settle scores.
Masih was reportedly accused of blasphemy following a
land dispute with a Muslim landlord. His conviction by a lower court in May
1998, in the Punjab city of Faisalabad, so depressed Roman Catholic bishop John
Joseph that he shot and killed himself in front of the courthouse. The bishop¿s
last words were, "Ayub, I am offering my life for you."
Many times, people accused of blasphemy have been
killed by fanatical mobs after they were acquitted by the courts. Two people
charged with blasphemy were murdered even before the court issued a verdict.
One of the victims, Naimat Ahmer, was stabbed to death in Faisalabad. The
other, Manzoor Masih, was shot dead outside the Lahore high court. "An
aroused mob will not wait to confirm whether a person charged is guilty or not,
or even whether an offense in fact has been committed or not," says Rehman
of the HRCP.
Conservative Islamists have blocked any move to amend
the blasphemy law. They launched a nationwide agitation last year when Pakistan¿s
military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, tried to stop its misuse by making some
procedural changes. But Musharraf dropped the idea after he was pressured by
hard-line generals. In Pakistan these days, free speech is a dangerous thing.
© 2001 Newsweek, Inc.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has
documentation on press freedom violations in Pakistan.
THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE GEN. PERVEZ MUSHARRAF sought to create an impression of benign rule last year. In part, this meant avoiding the bare-knuckle