It's not cricket (3)

'Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me'. 

That was a familiar proverb, particularly for people of my generation, used to shrug off unwarranted taunts back in our school days. 

Children can be cruel. They can also be quite adept at working the system. 

Listening to stories from my own grandchildren I find it astonishing how many schoolchildren are able to use woke culture to manipulate their teachers, often to the detriment of other pupils, by following the latest fads such as the (ab)use of pronouns, bullying others into submission. 

The Yorkshire cricket racism scandal made news headlines about name calling for some time, unabated by revelations that the prime accuser had skeletons in his cupboard as did some of the accused who had their social media accounts scoured for incriminating evidence against them.

By contrast there has been almost no coverage of a report by International Christian Concern that "The United States has once again designated Pakistan as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for its egregious violations of religious freedom.

"The designation was vehemently criticized by Pakistani officials. The Spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry, Asim Iftikhar Ahmed, said that the CPC designation was completely against the reality on the ground. Despite his claims, though, most NGOs on the ground—as well as several governments—report that Pakistan is trending downward for religious freedom in recent years. Pakistan has historically lied about the country’s treatment of religious minorities while continuing to claim internationally that the country is in doing well on the religious freedom front."

A report of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Pakistani Minorities draws attention to the appalling "Abductions, Forced Conversions, and Forced Marriages of Religious Minority Women and Girls in Pakistan ."

One commentator who has referred to this scandal is Adrian Hilton who tweeted: "Christian or Hindu girls between the ages of 12-25, abducted, converted to Islam and immediately married to their abductors have been increasing steadily in recent years in Pakistan." We don't hear enough about this.

Precisely.

Back in 2014 it was reported that an estimated one thousand Christian and Hindu women are forced to convert and marry Muslim men in Pakistan every year but hardly a murmur. It is not cricket.

Postscript [10.12.2021]

From ACN: All of Pakistan’s Catholic bishops have denounced the lynching of a Christian Sri Lankan man by a mob who accused him of blasphemy, tortured him to death and set his body on fire.

It's not cricket (2)

Oxford graduate Imran Khan was an international cricketer before he entered politics. Now as Pakistan's prime minister he has a plan which is definitely not cricket.

According to a report in MailOnline Imran Khan has a plan for Muslim-majority countries to force Western governments to criminalise insulting the Prophet Mohammed which he claims will work .

He said "lobbying Western nations, the EU and UN to adopt blasphemy laws with a warning of a trade boycott if they do not do so will be 'effective' in achieving their goal.

"He said leaders of Muslim-majority countries should call on the West to 'stop hurting the feelings' of Muslims across the world with their current freedom of speech laws, reports Pakistani newspaper Dawn." 

Britain's former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind told MailOnline that trying to force Western countries to bring in such a ban would be 'a pretty foolish decision. It is not countries that insult the Prophet Mohammed, it's individual citizens'.

Meanwhile, International Christian Concern highlights the case of "a Christian accused of blasphemy in Pakistan [who] was tortured into making a false confession while spending more than two months in police custody." 

Such reports are not uncommon.

In As Good as Dead, the impact of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, Amnesty International concluded:

    "Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are routinely used to target vulnerable people on the basis of false accusations. There is broad scope for their abuse which means that anyone can level an accusation of blasphemy, which can lead to criminal charges. Inadequate safeguards then mean the accused have few means to defend themselves. In a perversion of the justice system, the accused are often presumed to be guilty, on the basis of little or no evidence.

    "As the accused struggle to establish their innocence, they often face serious threats to their lives. Many people have been threatened and killed in revenge attacks after accusations of blasphemy were made against them. As Pakistan’s Supreme Court has acknowledged, the majority of blasphemy accusations are false. However, this does not prevent angry crowds, aroused by clerics and their supporters, from taking the law into their own hands while the authorities routinely fail to prevent these abuses and, by doing so, enable a culture of impunity.

    "This report documents cases which illustrate the broad scope for human rights violations and abuses, in order to highlight the need for urgent repeal of the laws and – until their repeal – the need for effective procedural safeguards to be put in place."

Need one say more!