Pakistani police have arrested a mentally disabled 11-year-old girl after a mob accused her of desecrating pages of the Koran.
The mob demanded the Christian girl’s arrest and threatened to burn down Christian homes outside the capital Islamabad, local media say.
Officials said the girl could not properly answer police questions.
Her parents have been taken into protective custody following threats and other Christian families have fled.
It is thought that the girl has Down’s syndrome.
Paul Bhatti, Pakistan’s minister for National Harmony, told the BBC that the girl was known to have a mental disorder and that it seemed “unlikely she purposefully desecrated the Koran”.
“From the reports I have seen, she was found carrying a waste bag which also had pages of the Koran,” he said.
“This infuriated some local people and a large crowd gathered to demand action against her. The police were initially reluctant to arrest her, but they came under a lot of pressure from a very large crowd, who were threatening to burn down Christian homes.”
He said more than 600 people have fled from the Christian neighbourhood.
Rights activists have urged Pakistan to reform its controversial blasphemy laws, under which a person can be jailed for life for desecrating the Koran.
Many of those accused of blasphemy have been killed by violent mobs, while politicians who advocate a change in legislation have also been targeted.
Last year, Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs, was killed after calling for the repeal of the blasphemy law.
His death came just two months after the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who also spoke out about the issue
.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Sad and pathetic.
Pakistan has become one of the most hostile places to be a non-muslim.
These laws need to repealed.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
I hope she gets freed soon.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
That girl should be released immediately …:k: no excuse for that
P.S.all those who burn islamic books are mentally challenged?few months before a man burnt quran he was also mentally challenged …
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
........
.
The very same statement which was recently censored/deleted.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
This is horrible & there are still people out there who will defend these laws.
Experts slam victimisation of mentally challenged girl | DAWN.COM
KARACHI: As the news of the Christian girl Rifta and her ordeal continues to make headlines, what comes to the fore is a sick picture of double victimisation of an individual, first as a religious minority and secondly as a mentally handicapped human being in a society where there is little understanding of mental illnesses.
Currently, the Down syndrome sufferer is being held in the Adiyala Jail for a judicial remand under charges of blasphemy and any progress in the case will be made only after Eid. While voices are being raised as to how a fair trial must be conducted under the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, what is being overlooked is the need for sanity to prevail.
The Bahawalpur case where a malang was killed by over 2000 ‘sane’ people after being accused of blasphemy and the case of this girl show the apathy of our society. So far, there has been no medico-legal examination of the girl to determine her mental health.
Earlier, under 1912 Act, a person could be held for 10-30 days before an inquiry began but after the Mental Health Ordinance 2001, a mentally unstable person could not be detained for more than 72 hours and it was mandatory to carry out psychiatric evaluation within that period, an MLO working in a public hospital in Lahore said.
Till 2001, Pakistan followed the Lunacy Act 1912, the mental health law that was introduced in India, which referred to a person with mental illness as ‘idiot of unsound mind’ or ‘lunatic’. However, in 2001, things improved significantly when the Lunacy Act 1912 was repealed and replaced with the Mental Health Ordinance 2001 (MHO 2001) by Pervez Musharraf.
The ordinance offered a more humane outlook towards individuals with psychological disorders and mental handicaps and allowed them to be given a fair chance. However, after the 18th Amendment, the Federal Mental Health Authority was dissolved and MHO 2001 lapsed. So far, none of the provinces, with the exception of Sindh, has made any effort to take up this issue.
Human rights lawyer Zia Awan agreed that the 2001 ordinance would have offered a more sensible way out in this case.
“If you go by the law, then Section 82 (of) Pakistan Penal Code says that ‘nothing is an offence which is done by a child under seven’ while in Section 83, a judge can decide to ignore the age stated in Section 82, raising it to 12 years, in the case of a child who has not attained sufficient maturity of understanding,” Mr Awan explained.
“At the moment, it is important that a psychiatric evaluation is carried out to determine the extent of her mental illness. This girl might have a mental age of a 3-year-old and we have to keep this in mind when doling out a judgment,” he said.
He added that if the MHO 2001 was there, the girl would not have been sent to the jail and would rather have been sent to a ‘facility equipped to take care of her needs’.
Commenting on the situation, Dr Haroon Ahmed, president of the Pakistan Association of Mental Health, said: “There are so many loopholes in our legal system and usually it’s the innocent that gets caught. “So far, we do not have clear-cut definitions of mental illness and when it comes to legislation, mental health service providers are excluded. Currently, no laws address civil or criminal liability of a person suffering from mental illness.”
He said the Pakistani society was already stifling with the ‘mob justice mentality providing a clear reflection of this decay’. “The charges of blasphemy are very serious but how do you determine who is sane and who is not? How do you deal with a schizophrenic person who claims to be a divine entity? Do you treat him for his illness or do you ‘punish’ him?”
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Its getting ridiculous.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Unacceptable.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
The cleric needs to be arrested instead, to prevent others from doing the same.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
This is a new low. So disgusted and angry, I thank god I wast at the scene, I would have ended up shooting someone in the crowd.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Such a society is in itself a blasphemy to Islam and prophet (pbuh).
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
P.S.all those who burn islamic books are mentally challenged?few months before a man burnt quran he was also mentally challenged ....
Given both the law and the many publicised incidents of mob brutality to blasphemers in Pakistan, you would have to be mentally challenged to still go ahead and do something like this. No person in full control of their senses would do so.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
A disabled girl is all our pathetic police force is capable of getting their hands on.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Why would a non-Muslim live in Pakistan when it isn't even safe for Muslims?
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Its the stupid moronic clerics who have taken 'thinking from the heart' term too literally
Hope she gets free soon.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
How horrible ! I just read that the girl has Downs Syndrome. The Govt must ensure her safety and reunite her with her parents.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
statements of 11 yo really worth in Pakistani society?
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
****ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari has taken notice of the report stating that a minor Christian girl in Islamabad was arrested on the charges of blasphemy and asked the Interior Ministry to present a report to him.
It was earlier reported that 11-year-old Christian girl Ramsha was arrested and sent to jail for allegedly desecrating pages from the Holy Quran.
Some reports, however, also said that the girl was burning used papers collected from garbage for cooking when someone entered her house and accused her family of burning the pages of Holy Quran.
After the incident, people of the area gathered together and beat the mother and sister of Ramsha and also burnt few houses of other Christians. The Christian population is reported to have fled the area, while the police arrested Ramsha’s mother and sister.
Spokesperson Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the president has taken serious note of the incident and called for report from the Interior Ministry. Zardari said that blasphemy by anyone cannot be condoned but no one will be allowed to misuse the blasphemy law for settling personal scores.
Farhatullah Babar said that the president called for a report within 24 hours and directed the authorities to protect the life and property of everyone and that no one should be allowed to take the law into his hands. The president also called for protecting every one particularly the vulnerable sections of society from any misuse of the blasphemy law.
In 2011, Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer was shot dead by his own security guard for standing up for Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death over blasphemy allegations.
Re: Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Sadly, a communal situation seems to have developed. From Guardian.
**An 11-year-old Christian Pakistani girl could face the death penalty **under the country’s notorious blasphemy laws, after she was accused by her neighbours of deliberately burning sacred Islamic texts.
Rifta Masih was arrested on Thursday, after complaints against her prompted angry demonstrations. Asif Ali Zardari, the president, has ordered the interior ministry to investigate the case.
As communal tensions continued to rise, **about 900 Christians living on the outskirts of Islamabad have been ordered to leave a neighbourhood where they have lived for almost two decades.
**
On Sunday, houses on the backstreets of Mehrabadi, an area 20 minutes’ drive from western embassies and government ministries, were locked with padlocks, their occupants having fled to already overcrowded Christian slums in and around the capital.
One of the senior members of the dominant Muslim community told the Christians to remove all their belongings from their houses by 1 September. “I don’t think anyone will dare go back after this,” said one Christian, Arif Masih. “The area is not safe for us now.”
A few brave souls have stayed behind, but shopkeepers have refused to serve their Christian neighbours or supply them with water. Locals say only about 10% of families in the area are Christian, renting cramped houses from Muslim landlords. They tend to do dirty, menial jobs such as sewer maintenance.
Relations between the communities had been simmering for months after complaints were made about the noise coming from three churches in the area during religious services. Two of the landlords who owned the buildings had already ordered an end to worship and some services were forcibly broken up.
But there was no indication that all the Christians would be forced out so suddenly until Rifta was accused of the provocative act of burning the sacred words of Islam.
It sparked immediate demonstrations by crowds estimated at between 600 and 1,000 people, some of whom blocked the nearby Kashmir highway, the major road running west out of the capital.
The police, initially unwilling to take action, eventually charged the girl with blasphemy and took her into custody. The rest of the community, including her parents, fled.
As with many other aspects of the incident, there is disagreement about exactly what was burned. Some say it was a small pocket book of Qur’anic verses. Others claim it was pages of the Qur’an. Either it was a relatively small quantity of ash carried in an earthenware dish, or it was around half a kilogram of refuse that filled a small plastic shopping bag.
Hammad Malik, a 23-year-old with a shaven head and bushy beard who is deemed a “scoundrel” by the Christian community, said he saw Rifta walking out of the tiny, single-room dwelling where she lived with her parents and sister at some time after 6pm. He said it was pure chance that he noticed her bundle.
“I looked at it but did not know exactly what it was but I could see it had words written in Arabic,” he said.
He concedes that no one actually saw her burning anything as the offence allegedly happened inside the house, and she was caught while finding somewhere to throw away the remains. However, the local mullah claims there was a witness: another young girl who caught her in the act and then ran to the mosque to raise the alarm.
One thing the Muslim community does agree on is that claims in the local media, sourced to the police, that the girl has Down’s syndrome are false.
“She is a completely normal girl,” said Kamran Khan, cousin of the Masih family’s landlord. As the largely male and grownup crowd gathered outside the house, a girl who said she knew Rifta said she did behave oddly – she talked to herself and walked in a peculiar way.
The other point of general agreement is that **“the law should be followed”. **Unfortunately, the law in question is Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which has a proven track record of ensnaring people on the flimsiest of evidence and being cynically used to intimidate communities or settle quarrels over money and property.
Even though no one has yet been executed for blasphemy in Pakistan, long prison terms are common – one Christian couple was sentenced to 25 years in 2010 after being accused of touching the Qur’an with unwashed hands.
There have also been cases of people killed by lynch mobs demanding instant punishment. Daring to criticise the law is incredibly risky and few do it.
In 2011, Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab province, was gunned down by his own bodyguard after he spoke out against the case of Aasia Bibi, another Christian woman accused of blasphemy.
The Christian community of Mehrabadi says the whole thing is a plot. They too have conflicting accounts of what happened. In one version, according to priest Boota Masih, a Muslim neighbour asked the girl to throw out the ash into which the desecrated pages had been placed.
Either way, one hotly contested incident involving a very young girl looks set to change the complexion of the neighbourhood for ever.
**“They have done this to provoke the Muslims, like they have with their noisy banging and singing from their churches,” said a local mullah, who would not give his name. “We are not upset the Christians have left and we will be pleased if they don’t come back.”
**
Pakistani girl accused of Qur’an burning could face death penalty | World news | The Guardian