A search for motives in Christian attack
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - Al-Qaeda and allied groups are the usual suspects when acts of
terror or violence take place in Pakistan, and once again fingers are being
pointed in that direction following the killing of seven Christians on Saturday
in the remote town of Gojra in Punjab province.
A leading bishop, Almas Hameed Masih, however, takes a different view and he
has registered a complaint case with the police against the district's entire
administration, which was handpicked by the province's ruling Pakistan Muslim
League (PML-N), led by former premier Nawaz Sharif.
The seven Christians were burned to death when about 100 houses and a church
were torched by angry Muslims who believed pages of the Holy Koran had been
desecrated. Christian
representatives claim officials did nothing to stop the mayhem.
Television footage of the attack shows gangs of hooded youths throwing petrol
bombs and firing indiscriminately into crowds. Some reports said that some of
the rioters belonged to the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni sectarian group
that has links with al-Qaeda.
Christian schools across the country went on strike on Monday and the chief
minister of Punjab, Shebaz Sharif, was stopped by Christians from entering the
Gojra area.
Christians - Catholics and Protestants - make up less than 3% of Pakistan’s
estimated 175 million population and many live in neighborhoods referred to as
"Christian colonies" in various cities. Like the minority Shi'ite Muslims, they
are regularly the targets of violence.
"There are so many question marks in this whole event," Rahman Malik, an
advisor to the prime minister on interior matters, told Asia Times Online.
"I will not say anything because a judicial inquiry is being set up. But our
biggest fear is that the whole event could have been engineered for some vested
interests," Malik said.
Malik refused to comment on Bishop Masih accusing the PML-N of complicity.
"Like all other aspects, we are reviewing this aspect and I will not say
anything before an inquiry finishes."
Investigations by Asia Times Online indicate that the attackers in Gojra
comprised two main groups - Muslim clerics of different schools of thought, and
non-political actors including traders' associations. The PML-N, the largest
political force in the town, appears to have been the binding force, led by
local party president Abdul Qadir Awan.
Gojra is a small rural town in the Toba Tek Singh area about 20 kilometers from
Faisalabad, the largest industrial city in Punjab, which is the largest
province in the country.
The entire region is dominated by Sharif's PML-N and no religious or political
party has ever been able to make inroads there. Sharif leads the opposition in
the federal parliament. The second-largest political party in the area is the
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) - which leads the government in Islamabad. The
PPP draws most of its support in Gojra from minority communities.
Various clerics operate in the Gojra area, but rather than supporting religious
political parties, they back the PML-N.
"It is true that several religious clerics were reared by the Sharif family
like Siberian tigers [Punjab chief minister Shebaz Sharif - Nawaz Sharif's
brother - recently imported this endangered species despite a ban] and are
often used for their [the Sharifs'] political ambitions," retired squadron
leader Khalid Khawaja told Asia Times Online. Khawaja is a former
Inter-Services Intelligence official.
If indeed the PML-N is implicated in the attack on the Christians, one can only
speculate on its motives. A few weeks back, Nawaz Sharif created a political
storm when he suggested that presidential powers be curtailed.
The military's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi and a Washington envoy have
immediately intervened, warning Sharif against taking any action that could
destabilize the government and its battle against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Sarim Burney is a senior official at the internationally known Ansar Burney
Trust, which was established in 1980 in the Pakistani port city of Karachi to
further human rights in the country. Burney has investigated human-rights
violations for the past 19 years and he believes that so-called religious riots
seldom have a pure religious motive.
"A few years back in a similar case [to Gojra] in the central district of
Karachi some people said they had found a Koran in the gutter and they blamed
the Christian population in the neighborhood. Instead of registering a case
with the police, they forced the Christians to leave the area," said Burney.
"My investigation showed that it was a simple case of land encroachment and one
section of the population was forced away.
"I have tried to study the reasons behind the Gojra riots. There is no evidence
of desecration of the Koran and it looks like a rumor was instigated among the
less-educated people of Gojra on the pretext of religion. Even if there was
such an incident, the political leaders could have registered a case under the
blasphemy laws and could have arrested the culprits, but instead we see a clear
move to incite people. I assure you, that from the debris of the burnt houses,
a story based on vested interests will emerge at some later stage," Burney
said.
It might be that al-Qaeda was not behind the riot, but Pakistan's bloody
history shows that in such tragedies, it is quick to step in and exploit the
situation.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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