Pakistan Christian Post - ACLJ is providing legal aid to persecuted Pakistani Christians

Pakistan Christian Post

Washington DC: August 5, 2010. (PCP) Speaking at the PPC conference on August 2, 2010, Shaheryar Gill, attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), shared about the work ACLJ’s affiliate, European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) is doing in Pakistan. Gill said that the ECLJ is providing legal assistance to persecuted Christians in Pakistan. Providing an update on the Gojra cases, he said the ECLJ is representing Christians whose houses were burned in the village of Korian on July 30. “We successfully opposed the bail applications filed by some of the mobsters who attacked and vandalized Christians in Korian,” said Gill. He further commented that many of the Christians complainants, however, have settled the cases with the attackers, either under pressure and serious threats or for monetary compensation.

Gill said that Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistani Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs, has done a great job of distracting Pakistani Christians and the world from seeking justice for Gojra victims by making claims of amending the blasphemy laws. Soon after the Gojra incident, Mr. Bhatti visited the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and stated that he had tabled a bill in the National Assembly of Pakistan to amend the blasphemy laws. It should go without saying that nothing has been done so far to actually change them. And, after one year of the Gojra killings, two Christians have been murdered because of the same blasphemy laws that the Minister claimed that the Pakistani Government was going to review and amend.

The ECLJ is also representing Ms. Magdalene Ashraf, a nursing student who was brutally raped and pushed out of the second floor window of a hospital building by a medical doctor, Abdul Jabbar Memon. “Doctors are expected to teach their students the ethics and professional sanctity of the medical profession, but this doctor broke all bounds. He violated not only his professional responsibility as a doctor who is expected to save lives but has committed a serious crime of raping and attempting to kill Ms. Ashraf,” said Gill.