PERSECUTION International Christian Concern | February 2013
IN THIS ISSUE:
Issue 1/4
COVER STORY Rimsha Masih may be safe, but those who stood by her are not. page 3
YOUR DOLLARS AT WORK page 7
Meet Joanna, a young girl forced to marry her captors, and learn how your gift helped her escape.
Your Bridge to the Persecuted Church
A NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT I shall know why, when time is over, And I have ceased to wonder why; Christ will explain each seperate anguish In the fair schoolroom in the sky. He will tell what Peter promised, And I, for wonder at his woe, I shall forget the drop of anguish That scalds me now, that scalds me now. Emily Dickinson Jeff King, President International Christian Concern
ur Regional Manager was in Pakistan. He stood at a church door and waited to enter, surveying the area where Christians are routinely targeted for harassment and abuse. As he waited, he could hear the worried whispers behind the church door. “Who is it?” one of the church workers asked in fear. Upon opening the door, the worker explained, “I’ve been praying and reading my Bible, but Muslims prohibit us to worship here now. We assumed you were a Muslim neighbor and we were afraid” (see page 7).
Our trip to Pakistan was both heartbreaking and incredibly satisfying. The level of oppression and discrimination that Christians live under is all-enconmpassing and crushing. Our hearts break as we meet and know the many and varied victims. While in-country, we (as well as you, the donor) responded to the need. We helped relieve the pain of many, many families. I find this satisfying to no end.
This is reality for much of the Christian world that lives under a dominant and fundamentalist Muslim culture.
We also started to build what we’ve wanted to for so many years: systems and training that will attack the root of problems rather than just responding to pain and attack.
This second-class citizenship is, in a word, Islamic. It was designed by Muhammad to slowly strangle other faiths that might compete with Islam.
Overall, touching so many causes me to be totally refreshed and thankful, to look up from the hurried pace of the work of leading a ministry and breathe a sigh of relief.
It is one thing to know this, and quite another to experience it. We routinely send our managers to their regions to stay up-to-date on the status of persecution, as well as to have an ICC presence in these countries. Traveling there again, we really felt it both firsthand and from victims.
Thank you for being a partner in this holy work and know that we will spend your money efficiently, ethically, and effectively. I promise. . . .
MIDDLE EAST
After her acquittal of blasphemy charges, Rimsha Masih was airlifted to a safe location, escorted by Christian police officer, Basharat Khokhar, whose life is in danger. Photo credit: The Telegraph
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A LIFE IN DANGER Basharat Khokhar hunched over the table as his eyes nervously scanned the restaurant where we had chosen to meet. When a bearded man sat down at a table nearby, Basharat had us move across the room. “My life is in danger,” Basharat explained. “Even my friends and colleagues will no longer be seen with me. ‘If you’re spotted, we’ll be killed with you,’ they tell me.” Basharat, a Christian police officer in Pakistan, risked his life to look after Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old Christian girl who had been accused of burning pages of the Quran. The accusation led to her arrest in August, and after languishing for three weeks in a high security prison in Rawalpindi, Rimsha was released on bail and flown by helicopter to an undisclosed location. Photos of Rimsha sprea d wide and far, as the wo Two months later, Rimsha’s accuser was arrested fac rld wanted to see the e of the little blasphemy girl. Photo credit: The Tel for fabricating the issue and the case was dismissed. egraph When Muslim mobs demanded Rimsha be burned to death and threatened her family, Basharat offered shelter to the girl’s parents in his own home. When Rimsha was weeping in prison, Basharat brought her food and tried to comfort her. When Rimsha was taken to court, Basharat reached out to hardline Islamist groups, like Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, believing that if he could garner their support in denouncing Rimsha’s arrest, other extremist factions might follow suit and drop allegations made against her. When Rimsha was released on bail September 7, it was Basharat who veiled her face and escorted her to a secure location. Photographs of Rimsha being whisked onto a helicopter the next day circulated worldwide and Basharat’s identity quickly became known throughout Pakistan. Ever since, Basharat’s life has been in jeopardy. “I still receive text messages and phone calls from unknown numbers saying they will kill me,” Basharat said. “Yesterday I received a text saying, ‘You have had enough pictures taken of you. The next will be with flowers.’ It meant flowers on my grave. The number was not registered, but we tracked the location to Waziristan, where the Taliban has a stronghold.” During a trip to Rimsha’s undisclosed location, four armed men approached Basharat from a black vehicle that had been following him. “They started beating me, but there were police nearby and they fled,” Basharat explained. “I was fortunate to get out alive.”
-BASHARAT KHOKHAR, CHRISTIAN POLICE OFFICER AND ADVOCATE FOR RIMSHA MASIH
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MIDDLE EAST
into the back seat. Crouched in the driver’s seat was Pervez. Knowing time was short, I got to the point, “Why, as a Muslim, do you choose to defend blasphemy victims when it puts your life at risk?” I asked. “I give priority to the minorities because I fear for them in Pakistan,” Pervez responded. “Someone must stand up for them. Blasphemy accusations are just used to pressurize Christians and other minority people and nothing else… When I met with Rimsha face-to-face about ten days after her arrest… she was in a very bad situation. When I met her she was crying… badly crying. I felt I had to help her.”
-PERVEZ KHAN, A MUSLIM LAYWER WHO DEFENDS RELIGIOUS MINORITIES, INCLUDING RIMSHA MASIH Basharat is not a stranger to such threats, having himself been arrested for blasphemy in 2009. Basharat was acquitted of the charges with the help of a moderate Muslim lawyer, Pervez Khan who, upon Basharat’s request, also represented Rimsha and was responsible for her release on bail. FEAR FOR CHRISTIANS IN PAKISTAN Finishing our meal at the restaurant, I could tell Basharat was getting anxious and that it was time to end our interview. When meeting with accused blasphemers in Pakistan, it is never wise to stay in one place for too long. We huddled into a vehicle and drove to meet Rimsha’s lawyer, Pervez. We pulled up alongside another vehicle with tinted windows and three men stood guard outside as I hurriedly transferred 5
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While it is Christians and other minorities who are predominantly charged with blasphemy, it is Muslim lawyers who are best at representing them. A Christian lawyer must walk a tightrope to defend a blasphemy victim—fearful that a slip of tongue might result in the lawyer’s own imprisonment for blasphemy. A Muslim lawyer is able to speak more freely in court. Nonetheless, to defend an alleged blasphemer, no matter what religion the lawyer adheres to, is a dangerous profession. “When I was presenting my arguments for Rimsha, I was also receiving threats, many threats, from the Taliban who were at that time calling me from Karachi,” said Pervez. “They were telling me to abandon this case… We are still facing death threats from many groups, so many groups, including on my family.” BLASPHEMY WARRANTS DEATH Despite Rimsha’s release there are numerous other Christians languishing in Pakistani prisons on false accusations of blasphemy. Among them is Younis Masih who was
arrested in September 2005 and sentenced to death in May 2006 for “insulting Islam.” Younis has appealed the verdict and his case has been taken to the High Court in Lahore. Another Christian, Aamir*, was arrested in October for simply consoling a family at their son’s funeral. When sharing the hope of Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection, Muslims at the gathering reported the “blasphemous” sermon to local police who later arrested Aamir for “outraging religious feelings.” Aamir will appear in a lower court in the coming weeks. And, there is the well-known case of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother who was sentenced to death by hanging in November 2010 for allegedly insulting Muhammad. Two of her closest advocates, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, and Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s sole Christian cabinet minister, were assassinated for publicly opposing the laws that condemned her. Basharat and Pervez relate Taseer and Bhatti’s murders to their own circumstances. One does not need to be accused of blasphemy to be executed on Pakistan’s streets; merely aiding a blasphemy victim warrants the same sentence in the eyes of extremists. It is extremists, not the state, who ultimately carry out the death sentences of blasphemers. According to the advocacy group Human Rights First, 46 *name changed for security
(L-R) Regional Manager Aidan Clay meets with Perez Khan, Rimsha’s lawyer, and Basharat Khokhar, police officer who helped protect Rimsha and her family.
people charged for blasphemy in the past 25 years have been killed by vigilantes while awaiting trial or after being acquitted. While Rimsha is protected at an undisclosed location, Basharat cannot walk the streets without watching his back, viewing every stranger he meets as a potential assassin. Basharat will forever be connected to the young Christian girl who escaped the powerful grasp of extremists by being acquitted of blasphemy. But for him, the cost has been to live 24/7 under the threat of imminent death.
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YDAW
YOUR DOLLARS AT WORK JOANNA Save Our Sisters Joanna was a young woman with big dreams. Those dreams were shattered one day when a group of Muslim men kidnapped and gang raped her. They forced her to sign documents saying she had converted to Islam and was marrying one of the rapists, a 50-year-old Muslim man, “of her own free will.” Joanna came from a poor Christian family that lived in the hills of Bangladesh. She was targeted as a victim specifically because of her Christian faith. Joanna suffered for nine days of agony, unable to escape her captor, before she was rescued by an ICC contact. ICC financed her rescue and paid the court fees to process the annulment from the forced marriage. After a period of time spent at home to recover, Joanna is once again thinking about the future. When she met with Corey, ICC’s Regional Manager for Asia, in September she smiled shyly as she talked about her upcoming job interview in the city and the hope of a bright future where she is free to live her life without fear.
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