AICC, AICU regret hanging of Christianin Pakistan

Indian Christian groups regret hanging of Christian in Pakistan despite clemency appeals

PRESS STATEMENT
New Delhi, 13 March 2008

The following is the text of the Statement by Dr John Dayal on behalf of the All; India Christian Council, the All India Catholic Union, United Christian Action and other civil society and faith groups:

The Human Rights movement in the world must surely mourn the hanging of a Christian, Zahid Masih, on 12 March 2008 by the Pakistani regime at the end of trial widely criticized as violative of the principles of justice.

Masih was hanged to death at 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday, March 12 after being convicted of killing a Muslim boy. Zahid Masih, who was in his 20s, was executed at the Central Jail in the city of Multan in Pakistan’s Punjab province despite appeals for clemency. News reports said his frail mother and other relatives were seen crying inconsolably outside the jail when they received Masih’s human remains, two hours after the execution took place.

Pakistani and international rights groups have said it was an unfair trial. The defense team, church groups, and human rights organizations urged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and other authorities to grant him clemency. Masih’s lawyer, Prince Rehan Iftikhar, said he had personally filed a mercy appeal. The lawyer has said that during court proceedings “Zahid Masih was not given any chance to defend himself”, adding that “Pakistan’s government has treated him like a dog. No one heard our voice for mercy.”

The hanging of the Christian youth comes even as the President of Pakistan, retired General Pervez Musharraf released an Indian citizen who had been condemned to death on charges of spying. Clemency is also shown to many others on death row in Pakistan’s prisons.

It is a matter of deep regret that Pakistan’s governments, despite claims of the rule of law and justice continue to be extraordinarily harsh in prosecuting Christians, facing either charges of blasphemy under Islamabad’s notorious anti Blasphemy laws, or other criminal charges.

Under tremendous international pressure, including that by Indian Christian organisations such as the AICC and the AICU, the government in the past had reviewed the cases of other condemned prisoners. But in recent years, even as regime professes a commitment to democratic norms, the international human rights movements have seen a hardening of attitude in the authorities, both at the Federal government level as also in the provinces. This was also revealed by Pakistani delegates who attended the recent South Asian Minorities Council’s Global meeting at Parliament House complex in New Delhi.

We fully expect the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religious Beliefs now touring India, the UN Human Rights Council, and the Indian government to take up the matter of treatment of religious minorities – particularly the microscopic Christian community – by the regime in Islamabad.

Responding to the Chief Justice of India to get justice for Dalit Christians

Your honour, we discriminate

HT, August 24, 2007 Mumbai edition Op-Ed page

George Menezes


I AM responding to an embarrassing question asked by the Chief Justice of India while disposing of our case for equal rights for Dalit Christians. He asked whether Christians also practise the caste system. He gave the Centre eight weeks to respond to the Court.
The case has reached this point, after over 57 years of peaceful agitation. The process has seen several judicial interventions and an unbelievable number of Commissions studying the problem.
I have been a part of the process since 1986 as National President of the All India Catholic Union, and, in the last few years, from the sidelines watching and advising a massive grassroots movement involving several lay organisations, both Catholic and non-Catholic, supported very strongly by the Bishops Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
I speak in this piece only about the Catholic Church, and I have to say to the honourable Chief Justice, hanging down my head in shame like Tom Dooley, that there has been a rampant caste system, both in the community and in the hierarchical Church.
Today an activist judiciary almost walks the talk. I am therefore tempted to take Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan for a walk. Let us walk into the villages, where dalits live together no matter what religion they belong to. Let us enter the hut of the Chamar family. Ramesh Chamar and his parents are Hindus. His brother John befriended some Salesian priests, studied in the Don Bosco School and became a Catholic. The whole family continues to be discriminated against in humiliating ways, by the upper castes Hindus, as well as by upper caste Catholics in the village.
But there is discrimination, not just from the community, but from the Government. Ramesh gets all the benefits reserved for Hindu Dalits. John gets none. Ironically, the upper-class Catholics in the area would never consider marrying their daughter to him.
Let me take a longer walk. I am presiding over a meeting of the Working Committee of the All India Catholic Union in a Diocese in Southern India. Suddenly a group of Catholic Dalits from the Diocese barge into the meeting and shout slogans against us.
They ask me to stop the meeting and walk with them through the Diocese. They take me to the Church and show me the "side" their only access to the Church and the benches at the back earmarked only for them. They take me to the cemetery, where a wall separates the burial place of the Dalits from that of the upper castes. Due to space constraints I am listing only a very few of the acts of discrimination they are subjected to. I get really mad and feel terribly ashamed. Together with members of the Working Committee, we break the wall and invite being arrested by the police for trespass. I notice with sadness that the upper caste members of my Working Committee are reluctant to join me in breaking the wall.
No doubt, things have changed since then and both the Catholic community and the Church are aware of the mortal sins they are committing. But the progress is slow, and therefore even today, in answer to the question of the Chief Justice, I have reluctantly to admit that the Catholic community and the hierarchical Church are discriminating against Dalit Catholics. That this is happening is natural in a country like India. The Church is not an island. It lives and breathes in the social milieu in which it exists. The Hindu upper caste discrimination against Dalits has a natural fall out on the Church. The economic exploitation, cultural suppression and political domination of the Dalits in the whole country for hundreds of years have their own repercussions on the Catholic Church dominated by an upper caste clergy.
Christianity has certainly made a difference and diluted the effect of the presence of caste discrimination. But it still exists and needs to be taken cognisance of by the Supreme Court. If special benefits provided in the Constitution have been given to Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhist Dalits, based not on religion but on social discrimination, there is no reason why the Christian Dalits who still suffer indescribable social ostracisation, despite their Christianity, should not be included in the Presidential Order of 1950, and get the same benefits.
Fifty seven years is a long time to wait, your Honour.
George Menezes is President Emeritus, All India Catholic Union