Pakistan News
Nobel winner Malala: Kids ‘should stand up for their rights’
Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi won the 95th Nobel Peace Prize on Friday (Oct. 10) for their work promoting education rights for children in a year that has been anything but peaceful.
Pakistan’s emergencies require action before problems grow
Church World Service is calling for increased assistance to 1.7 million people in Pakistan who are coping with losing homes, livelihoods, access to food and clean water following devastating floods, before a lack of assistance creates more complex challenges.
Son of Pakistani governor who criticized blasphemy law is kidnapped
The son of a prominent Pakistani politician who was assassinated after speaking out against the country's blasphemy law was kidnapped on Aug. 26 in Lahore, police said.
Shahbaz Taseer, 27, was on his way to work at mid-morning, without his usual security guard detail, when he was taken from his car at gunpoint, police and government officials said.
Pakistani police claim Bhatti murder due to family dispute, story says
Police investigators in Pakistan are developing a theory that the murder of Pakistani religious affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti was due to a “family dispute,” not religious extremism, according to a story on Aug. 9 in the Express Tribune English daily newspaper.
Quoting an unidentified official associated with the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the assassination, the Tribune said “Shahbaz’s murder is said to be linked to a ‘chronic rivalry’ with relatives who lived in Faisalabad five years ago."
Bhatti, 42, was a Roman Catholic and vigorously campaigned for minority religious rights in Pakistan, which is 95 percent Muslim. He had criticized the country’s blasphemy law, which makes it a capital crime to insult Islam, before he was ambushed and sprayed with bullets on March 2 as he was leaving for his office in Islamabad. Groups claiming ties with the Islamic Taliban and al-Qaida later claimed responsibility for the murder.
Pakistani religious minorities criticize recent government initiative
Christians and other minority leaders in Pakistan have spoken out against the government’s move to relegate issues regarding religious minorities to provincial governments in the Muslim-majority nation, instead of dealing with them on a national level.
“This is obviously a major setback to Christians and other religious minorities,” said the Rev Maqsood Kamil, spokesperson for the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan (PCP), a partner church of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Kamil was reacting to the government’s decision on June 28 to place seven federal ministries, including the Ministry for Religious Minorities, under the control of provincial governments. The move is in accordance with the 18th Amendment to Pakistan’s constitution, passed in April.