ICC Note: For Christians, few places on earth are today a more challenging place to live than in Pakistan. Routinely accused of “blasphemy” against Islam, entire Christian communities must sometimes flee attacks by mobs of angry radical Muslims. Politicians who stand up for Christian civil liberties are assassinated and last year a single suicide bombing attack on the All Saints Church in Peshawar left more than 80 Christians dead. Courts in the Netherlands are considering granting Pakistani Christians special refugee status, allowing them to seek refuge in the Netherlands more easily than refugees from the rest of the world. 
3/7/2014 Pakistan (Christian Today) – Members of the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) were in the Netherlands this week to ask for greater efforts to protect persecuted Christians in Pakistan and make it easier for them to receive asylum in the country.
The BPCA held a meeting jointly with the Middle East Forum for Development on the human rights situation of minorities in Pakistan.
The meeting was chaired by MP Pieter Omzigtz of the Christian Democrats Party and those present included Michiel Servaes of the Labour Party and Joël Voordewind of the Christian Union, which last year appealed to the Dutch government to offer Pakistani Christians and Ahmadis special status because of the persecution they are experiencing.
The Dutch government has offered this status to the Ahmadis but not to Pakistani Christians. The Christian Union is appealing this decision and expects an answer by June.
During the meeting on Tuesday, genocide expert Professor Desmond Fernandes warned that the situation of minorities in Pakistan was getting worse.
“If you look at the situation in 2013, atrocities against minority groups, including Christians substantially, has actually increased,” he said.
Fernandes is even more worried after the recent ruling by Pakistan’s Federal Sharia Court, which specifies that life imprisonment does not suffice as a punishment for blasphemers and that only the death penalty should be permissible.
“This suggests that there are specific directions and orders from the highest level, suggesting that the situation is just going to increase in terms of deterioration of circumstances for Christians and certainly for a lot of others,” he said.
Christians account for less than 2 per cent of the Pakistani population and are routinely harassed for their faith. Human rights group blame much of the persecution on the blasphemy laws, which carry a death sentence.
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