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Pakistani Minister Assassinated

Ayaz Gul | Islamabad March 02, 2011

Gunmen assassinated Pakistan's minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, Wednesday in this year's second attack on a high-profile figure who openly opposed the country's controversial blasphemy law.

Witnesses say the attackers fled the scene in their car without hurting Bhatti’s driver, who then rushed him to the nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

City Police Chief Wajid Durrani told reporters the attackers intercepted Bhatti’s official car shortly after he left his residence for work and shot him several times at close range. Bhatti was without his assigned bodyguards at the time of the attack.

The slain minister belonged to the ruling party of President Asif Ali Zardari and was the only Christian member of the federal cabinet.

Bhatti had been threatened by Muslim extremists for speaking out against Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law.

Police are reported to have seized Taliban-linked leaflets from the scene of the attack warning opponents of the Islamic law of blasphemy will meet Bhatti’s fate.

In a VOA interview last month, the Pakistani minister had spoken about threats to his life, but vowed not to bow down before the extremist forces.

"This extremism is dangerous for the stability of the country," Bhatti said. "It is the time that the people of different faiths and the Pakistani nation stand united against the forces of intolerance, against the forces of violence. The blasphemy law is being misused to victimize the innocent people of Pakistan."

President Zardari and other Pakistani leaders condemned the murder, saying it will not deter the country from its fight against religious extremism.

Bhatti's murder comes nearly two months after another high-profile political figure, former Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down in the Pakistani capital by one of his security guards.

The assassin in that case, has confessed he killed the governor for criticizing the anti-blasphemy law. Taseer was also a senior leader of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party.

Former Punjab University Professor Hassan Askari Rizvi says the violence has strengthened domestic and international fears that religious extremism is growing in Pakistan. It will also be seen by the international community as evidence of the government's inability to provide security to its citizens, says Askari.

"So, it brings extremely bad name to Pakistan and this will be seen as a kind of emergence of a pattern that the governor is being killed and now a minister is being killed, therefore they [international community] would assume that these types of elements are becoming stronger in Pakistan," he says.

Local and international human rights groups have long demanded reforms or removal of the anti-blasphemy law, claiming that extremist groups and influential people misuse the legislation to settle personal disputes.

The law gives death penalty to anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or the Prophet Mohammad.

The controversial legislation has been in the spotlight since November, when a Pakistani court sentenced a Christian mother of four to death. Both the slain Pakistani politicians had vowed to help seek freedom for the woman they believed was innocent.