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Journalism of Courage
It’s not just the brutality of Wednesday’s attack on the Idara-e-Aman-o-Insaaf, a Christian charity based in Karachi, that invites comment but the fact that it is the fifth straight attack on Pakistan’s Christian community since 9/11. In fact, ever since at least 16 worshippers at St Dominic’s church in Bahawalpur were felled in cold blood last October, Pakistan’s Christians have been living under a pall of fear not knowing when they would be attacked next.
Interestingly, most of these strikes have been on particularly soft targets, like churches. Taken together with the various terrorist incidents involving US facilities in the country, they constitute a clearly stated message of deep hostility to General Musharraf from Islamic fundamentalist groups in the region for his pro-US stance. Indeed, when the US war in Afghanistan was on, several Muslim clerics had issued fatwas stating that for every Muslim killed in the operations, two Pakistani Christians would meet the same fate. India cannot escape the issue either because whenever such incidents occur it is at once held guilty of having stagemanaged them by Pakistani officials — an unfortunate line of reasoning that suits the jehadi groups behind such attacks since it helps stoke tensions between India and Pakistan.
All in all, it is an ugly situation brewing out there, with Pakistani Christians — believed to constitute 13 per cent of the country’s population although officially the percentage is pegged at much lower — being made to pay the price for the general’s cynical politics of not cracking down sufficiently hard on local jehadi groups, while kowtowing to Washington. Despite Musharraf’s strong words condemning such communal attacks and promises to bring the perpetrators to justice, very little has been achieved on this score. Little wonder, then, that these incidents have been occurring with sickening regularity, provoking Pakistani Christians to state that they may now be forced to appeal to the international community for protection. Their abysmal status in the country, with no political representation to speak of, is a comment on the deeply undemocratic nature of the system General Pervez Musharraf presides over as president.
