Unwarranted activism on social media in the case of a pastor charged with faking an assassination attempt has diverted attention from persecution in the Jaranwala riots and endorsed claims of hardline groups that Christians were exploiting blasphemy cases to find asylum in Western countries, sources said.
Faisalabad police on Friday (Sept 29) charged Reverend Eleazar Sidhu alias Pastor Vicky of the Presbyterian Myong-Sang Nasreth Church in Kukranwala village, Jaranwala, with making false allegations after he allegedly admitted that a gunshot wound he had blamed on religious extremists was self-inflicted.
Sidhu had filed a case with police alleging that extremists on Sept 3 ordered him to recite the Islamic creed and shot him when he refused.
On Sept 14, however, a termination letter to Pastor Sidhu by the Reverend Altaf Khan on behalf of the Board of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan appeared on social media stating that he had been suspended from the church on Sept 13 after he “voluntarily confessed” to colleagues and friends that the injury was self-inflicted.
Pastor Sidhu admitted to “planning this whole act without any fear, duress or pressure,” Rev Khan stated, adding that the church did not want to make “any conclusions since the matter is sub-judice,” but that it was ending his employment contract and any professional ties with him “until the matter comes to its logical conclusion.”
A video that appeared on social media the next day, Sept 15, shows Pastor Sidhu making a confession in front of a police officer.
“I did it because of stress. I wanted police protection. I threw the pistol in a canal,” he says in the video.
The officer replies, “Pastor you are a brother. We came when you complained. The doctor has stated that you harmed yourself.”
‘GLARING LOOPHOLES IN CASE’
Lazar Allah Rakha, an attorney who specializes in criminal law who has successfully defended several people accused of blasphemy, said the FIR [First Information Report] registered by Pastor Sidhu contains “glaring loopholes”.
“None of his allegations, starting from the writing of Islamist slogans on the wall of his church to being threatened by unknown persons and subsequent assassination attempt, make any sense,” he told Kross Konnection.
Rakha said that as a Christian he was shocked when he first heard about the alleged attack on the pastor.
“However, the legal practitioner in me smelled foul play after reading the story narrated by Pastor Vicky in the FIR,” he said. “His claims raised several questions in my mind, including why of all the clergy people, only his church walls were vandalized by extremists?”
There are 27 churches in the area, and no pastor, including Pastor Sidhu, was involved in pursuing justice for Christians attacked on Aug 16 in Jaranwala, so he wondered why would any group target him particularly, he said.
“Moreover, how did the assailants know Vicky would stop at the crime scene to pass urine and were already waiting for him?” he said. “His claim that the assailant only asked him to convert and outright shot him when he refused is also incomprehensible. I’ve dealt with hundreds of serious cases, including murders, so I am certain that Vicky staged the attack for reasons best known to him.”
The pastor’s false allegation, followed by misplaced activism by a handful of Christian rights advocates on social media, diverted attention from persecution in the Jaranwala riots, Rakha said.
Christian leaders said Pastor Sidhu’s act bolstered criticisms by religious groups that Christians cite Pakistan’s blasphemy laws to seek asylum abroad. Hundreds of Pakistani Christians in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, and Malaysia are seeking relocation to Western countries citing threats, persecution and lack of security.
“While it’s a fact that blasphemy laws are being grossly misused in Pakistan, it’s unfortunate that Christians seem to be doing the same,” said Adeel Rehmat, chief executive officer of the Pak Mission Society, Pakistan’s leading faith-based humanitarian organization.
Endorsing Rakha’s observation that hype by rights advocates on social media had badly harmed the Christian community’s struggle for justice for Jaranwala victims, Rehmat said that Pastor Sidhu’s fake case has helped police and religious groups to divert attention from the riots.
“We are actively involved in the rehabilitation of the victims of the Jaranwala tragedy, so when news of the church writings surfaced, we were naturally concerned,” Rehmat told Kross Konnection. “We got particularly worried when Sidhu claimed that he had been attacked, but upon inquiring from several credible sources, we were told that he was lying.”
Christian leaders deemed it best to let the law take its course and avoid hype, assuming Pastor Sidhu’s case would be dismissed with a fine or some days in prison, but the exposure of the case on social media appears to have heightened potential consequences.
“The community doesn’t realize that all this hullabaloo over nothing has caused grave damage to all the true cases of persecution,” said Advocate Rakha. “It has not only hurt our cause in Pakistan but also tainted the reputation of Pakistani Christians in the West.”
‘VICKY IS INNOCENT’
Karachi-based human rights activist Ghazala Shafique told Kross Konnection that Pastor Sidhu said police tortured him physically and mentally into confessing, but a reliable source with Faisalabad police denied it.
“Sidhu’s medical examination showed that his arm had been administered anesthesia before he was shot,” the police source said on the condition of anonymity. “The bullet merely caused a three-inch deep flesh wound on his shoulder, and burn marks caused by gunpowder confirmed suspicion that the gun was fired from a very close range to avoid damage to the bone.”
The officer said the trajectory and angle of the bullet wound was not consistent with the pastor’s statement about the alleged attack.
“The pastor kept changing his statements during the investigation, but when he was confronted with the medical report, he confessed that he had planned the act,” the source said. “He told us that a Christian dispenser named Gulfam had injected the anesthesia while his young assistant, Johnson Masih, had held his arm in position so that he could fire the bullet.”
He added that a Muslim who sold the illegal .30-caliber pistol to Pastor Sidhu had also been arrested.
“We haven’t been able to recover the weapon yet, because Sidhu has allegedly thrown it into the canal where the supposed attack took place,” he said.
The officer said that prior to his arrest, Pastor Sidhu was being kept in protective custody in his house and hadn’t yet been charged when Christian rights advocates, including two flown in from Karachi, Sindh province, tried to take him from his home in Jaranwala.
“The woman and her accomplice misbehaved with the police guards deployed at Sidhu’s home when they were stopped from taking him outside,” the officer said. “These activists started making live videos in which they instigated Christians against the police and gave the impression that Vicky had been victimized. We briefly detained the two and released them without a charge.”
Rights activist Shafique said she believed Sidhu’s story “because he took an oath on the Bible that he was saying the truth.”
“His family asked me to intervene, because according to them police had extracted Vicky’s confession forcibly and were keeping him in illegal captivity,” she said. “When I met Vicky, he looked as if he had suffered severe mental torture. He says he’s innocent, and we believe him.”
She insisted that their only objective was to ensure justice for the pastor and his two aides, Johnson and Gulfam.
“We do not trust the medical report or police investigation,” she said. “Pastor Vicky told us that he was tortured physically and mentally to get a confession, which is why we raised a voice against the police brutality.”
On Saturday (Sept. 30), a judicial magistrate in Faisalabad, Nausheen Umair, granted post-arrest bail on surety bonds worth 100,000 Pakistani rupees to Pastor Sidhu, but he will remain in Faisalabad jail on judicial remand until Oct. 14 under Section 16 of the Maintenance of Public Order. A conviction under the false allegations charge could result in a prison term of up to seven years and a fine.
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Mr Adeel Rehmat could you please substantiate the data as to how the blasphemy law is being misused by Pakistani Christians’ fleeing to Thialand and Sri Lanka, you imply that All is good in Pakistan and the cause of the Christians is fake. This surely is a misplaced assertion, the survival of Christians in this country is at stake and forced conversions and blasphemy etc are internationally accepted. Could you try to make the medical report of Alizr public, has he not got Paralysis. The state can prove anything while in custody.
You are supporting the state that is trying to put the blame on our community and painting it as a reaction / provocation. Is the civil society standing by your side in this asserting. The fact that is prominent is, that churches were burned and Christian houses were first looted and then set ablaze. Kindly also share / compile a date of the Christians that are living freely in the West, Aasiya still lives a life in hiding like many.
you need an introspection