State has duty to protect Christians

Condemning the latest atrocity against Christians in Pakistan, Pope Francis went a step further than earlier expressions of horror and solidarity, heartfelt as those have been. He referred at last Sunday’s Angelus to the suicidal attack in Lahore that day, killing 15 Catholics and Anglicans at their neighbouring places of worship, as “persecution of Christians … that the world seeks to hide”. He was blaming not simply the perpetrators, in this case a Taliban splinter group, and not just, by implication, the Government of Pakistan for failing to protect its citizens. He was blaming the whole world, which seems to have turned its face from the sight of great suffering and injustice.

Britain’s response to what is going on should be closely scrutinised. Pakistan is the biggest individual recipient of UK aid, projected at more than £400 million this year. This could enable pressure to be applied, for instance, to repeal the country’s draconian blasphemy laws, which facilitate the terrorising of ordinary Christians – the poorest section of Pakistan’s population – in their own communities. Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi has accused the Pakistani Government of failing to provide security for its citizens, a point echoed by Bishop Declan Lang, chairman of the England and Wales Bishops’ Conference Department for International Affairs. “We have grown tired of condemning such atrocities so freely carried out at the will of terrorists,” said Archbishop Coutts. The Government was even failing to implement an order from its own Supreme Court to take action in this area. There must be at least a suspicion that some in power do not regard the persecution of Christians as a serious matter.

For Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the fate of Pakistan’s two per cent Christian minority is obviously not his first priority. Trying to balance Saudi demands against the danger of alienating the burgeoning regional power of Iran is probably what keeps him awake at night. Nor is he active in defence of human rights. The country holds 8,300 people on death row, and lifted its moratorium on executions in December.

All the more reason for the international community to step up the pressure. Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office says it raises the issue of the human rights of minorities on a regular basis, but nothing changes. Real pressure would make the generous engagement in Pakistan of the Department for International Development conditional upon some effective response. The joint statement at the UN in Geneva last Friday in defence of “the Human Rights of Christians and other Communities, particularly in the Middle East”, formulated by Russia, the Holy See and Lebanon, is a small step in the right direction.
So was the decision by the city of Paris to make Pakistan’s best-known victim of the blasphemy laws, Asia Bibi, incarcerated under sentence of death for more than five years, a Citizen of Honour. But if Pakistan cannot be shamed into action, it will have to be pushed. Wanton attacks on Christian churches and the killing of Christian worshippers, with the apparent connivance of the authorities, just cannot be tolerated.