In Pakistan, Blasphemy laws allow abuse, mob violence, and the targeting of individuals and religious minorities, including Christians, for criminal prosecutions that carry life sentences and death penalties, a report has stated. For instance, Pakistani professor Junaid Hafeez is imprisoned and sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy.

 

According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Pakistani authorities arrested Hafeez, a lecturer at Bahauddin Zakariya University, after his students accused him of blaspheming Islam on social media in 2013. In 2014, authorities put him in solitary confinement after other prisoners repeatedly targeted him.

 

During the same year, two gunmen shot to death Hafeez’s lawyer, Rashin Rehman, in his office, according to a report in American media outlet PJ Media. In December 2019, a district and sessions court in Multan sentenced Hafeez to death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. He was also sentenced to life in prison for desecrating the Quran and was given 10 years’ imprisonment for intending to outrage religious feelings.

 

Before his arrest, Hafeez received a master’s degree in the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship and had specialised in American literature, photography, and theatre. On February 27, the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) submitted an official contribution to the UN Special Rapporteur regarding summary, extrajudicial, or arbitrary executions in Pakistan.

 

In it, the ECLJ criticised the mandatory and automatic imposition of the death penalty for blasphemy against Islam in the country. The individuals accused of blasphemy in Pakistan are sentenced to death by hanging. The death penalty in blasphemy cases is egregious and disproportionate and clearly amounts to torture, according to a report. On February 26, Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), stated that Junaid Hafeez’s case is “emblematic of the unjust and abusive nature of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws”.