ICC Note:

Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws continue to be a source of persecution and abuse in the South Asian country. Earlier this week, a Christian lawyer was shot and killed in his law office because of his willingness to take on the case of an individual accused of blasphemy. The accused, a professor of English, was accused of blasphemy in March 2013. Since then, he had been unable to find legal representation due to the fear surrounding blasphemy in Pakistan. In February 2014, the Christian lawyer took on the professor’s case. This decision proved fatal. Please pray for all those who suffer under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

5/9/2014 Pakistan (BosNewsLife) – Christian rights activists feared for their lives Thursday, May 8, after officials confirmed that gunmen posing as clients shot dead a prominent human rights lawyer defending a professor accused of blasphemy against Islam.

Wednesday’s killing of Rashid Rehman in the southern city Multan marked the first time a lawyer has been killed for taking on a blasphemy case, police said.

The attack by suspected Islamic militants underscored the danger facing those trying to put an end to religious intolerance in majority-Muslim Pakistan, said Sardar Mushtaq Gill, director of Pakistan-based Legal Evangelical Association Development (LEAD).

“LEAD and its staff, who have been under threats [from militants] strongly condemn the killing of Rashid Rehman,” he told BosNewsLife.

“We also do not know when and when we will be killed due to our human rights work in Pakistan. Such deadly and threatening incidents will not discourage us to continue our human rights work,” he added.

DEFENDING PROFESSOR

Rehman had been representing Junaid Hafeez, a lecturer in English accused by hardline student groups of making blasphemous remarks against the Prophet Mohammed in March last year.

Hafeez had been in prison without being able to find a lawyer until Rehman agreed to represent him in February, trial observers said.

Blasphemy carries the death penalty in Pakistan. The accused are often lynched or languish for years in jail without trial because lawyers are too afraid to defend them, Gill confirmed.

Rehman and a junior lawyer and an assistant were sitting in their office near Kutchery Square “when unknown armed gunmen entered their chamber and fired, injuring Rehman and two others,” he added.

Regman was reportedly shot five times. “The injured were rushed to Nishtar Hospital where doctors Pronounced Rashid Rehman dead upon arrival while the two wounded were receiving treatment,” Gill said.

MORE ATTACKS?

Gill was not surprised about the attack.

He said Rehman, who was also a coordinator for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in Multan, had last month been threatened inside a courtroom in the Multan Central Jail and on five other occasions.

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