Ernest Dempsey - This is no revelation but common knowledge—being different in a conservative place incurs persecution. Interesting observation in such cases is the contrivance of pretexts by the persecuting side to justify acts of harassment.Harassment can occur anywhere, and in developing countries there have been a number of cases illustrating what is a widespread problem when people try to oppose existing conservative religious belief.
In Pakistan, this attitude of intolerance has become ingrained in a way that orthodox religious ideals are superimposed on personal grudge and vendetta to crash hard on any potential dissident.
Numerous cases have already been published in local media, some attracting international attraction and condemnation. A prominent example of the latter is the case of Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman and mother of five who was accused of blasphemy after a group of her fellow working women, of Muslim faith, had an argument with her over why she touched their drinking water. With clerics and locals teamed up against her, Asia Bibi was dragged to the court where she was sentenced to death. Now, the poor woman is awaiting her fate while rotting in a prison—all for being different. Several other cases of harassment and torture followed, involving mostly Christian victims.
Now another case of persecution through ‘group work’ has appeared, though this one does not include any minority group in strict terms but a liberal father who allows his daughters to go out of house for education and work, without covering their heads like traditional Muslim women do in many parts of the country. This ‘freedom’ of thought and living different has earned them public wrath and the fundamentalists in the neighborhood have accused the family of prostitution.
The incident has been reported from Badli Sharif city in Punjab province (where Asia Bibi’s case also took place) where more than a hundred people staged a public protest outside the police station against the family, “accusing” that the family’s six daughters are beautiful and the family gets lots of visitors. When the police conducted a preliminary investigation, they found that the family was being accused of prostitution simply because they were more liberal than the rest of the neighborhood inhabitants. As the father has chosen not to lock his daughters in his house and wed them away, but let them study and work outside home, the orthodox neighbors are ill at ease with the family’s presence and want them removed from the neighborhood.
The Badli Sharif case of harassment represents an ever-widening expansion of the epidemic of highly organized, planned attacks on minorities whether they are religiously and ethnically different from the persecutors or same but with a different approach to life. The good thing in this case appears to be the responsible role of police (though Punjab police is terribly infamous for siding with the culprits in most crime cases) that did not rush to arrest and torture the accused family but investigated a little to see beyond the accusation. It’ll be unfair not to appreciate their role. Hopefully, the rest of the police department will learn from this case and ensure protection of the ‘different’ from the horrors of organized (and unorganized) persecution.