Pakistani parliament in unity to condemn minister murder
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Islamabad, March 3, IRNA -- Members of parliament in Pakistani Thursday showed rare unity to condemn the assassination the country’s Minorities Minister and demanded arrest and punishment to the culprits.
Taliban gunmen shot dead Shahbaz Bhatti when he was travelling in his car and was going to attend the cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Mr Bhatti, the cabinet's only Christian minister, had received death threats for urging reform to blasphemy laws.
In January, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who had also opposed the law, was shot dead by one of his bodyguards.
The blasphemy law carries a death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say it has been used to persecute minority faiths.
Members of the National Assembly, lower house of the parliament, and the treasury and opposition members joined hand to condemn the murder and staged a collective walkout.
It is a rare show of unity by members of the parliament in the crisis-hit Pakistan to convey a message to the assassins that they oppose extremism.
The police have issued a sketch one of the assassins in the light of statement of Bhatti’s driver and witnesses.
Mr Bhatti's funeral will be held in his native village in Punjab province on Friday.
Mr Bhatti, 42, a leader of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), had just left his mother's home in a suburb of the capital when several gunmen surrounded his vehicle and riddled it with bullets, witnesses told the police.
Pamphlets by Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, a branch of the Taliban in Pakistan's biggest province, were found at the scene. Another Taliban spokesman in tribal Mohmand agency also claimed responsibility in phone calls to the media.
Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 30277618
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