{"id":27152,"date":"2017-11-05T07:25:32","date_gmt":"2017-11-05T07:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/demo.d5creation.com\/wp\/themes\/newspress\/?p=360"},"modified":"2021-11-28T11:44:21","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T19:44:21","slug":"this-is-a-sample-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/?p=27152","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan plays down accusations of Christian persecution. Foreign minister says."},"content":{"rendered":"

Pakistan\u2019s foreign minister has sought to dismiss accusations of Christian persecution, claiming there were \u201cindividual incidents\u201d comparable to knife crime in the UK.<\/p>\n

Shah Mahmood Qureshi, speaking during a visit to Brussels, said reports of religious minorities being targeted in Pakistan did not constitute a trend and the recent claims of Christian persecution<\/a> were an example of \u201cwestern interests\u201d that \u201cwant to paint Pakistan in a particular way\u201d.<\/p>\n

His comments follow the international outcry sparked by the case of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who spent eight years on death row on a charge of blasphemy, which was later overturned, before being allowed to leave for Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Asked about reports of Pakistan\u2019s 2.5 million Christians being attacked or facing persecution under the country\u2019s blasphemy laws, Qureshi said: \u201cYou can\u2019t say this is a trend, no. Individual incidents can be quoted anywhere, [of] minorities being mistreated here, in Europe, in Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed to the UK\u2019s own problems after the fatal stabbings of four people <\/a>in four days<\/a> put London\u2019s knife crime in the international spotlight<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can quote you examples of how knife crime has gone up in Britain that is a clear reflection of an increased intolerance within a society which has been so tolerant, so accommodating. So there are examples over here, and there could be some examples over there,\u201d Qureshi said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I can assure you that Christians are very welcome. The Christian community in Pakistan<\/a> is very positive and a very responsible community \u2026 We respect them and we want them to be there. We will do everything possible to protect them and we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Qureshi, who met Jeremy Hunt, the UK foreign secretary and Tory leadership hopeful, last week in London before his visit to Brussels to meet EU leaders, went on to criticise Boris Johnson, the frontrunner in the contest to be the next British prime minister, for his comments describing veiled Muslim women as looking like a \u201cletter box\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a faux pas,\u201d Qureshi said. \u201cIt will certainly not help in many constituencies where Muslims have a swing vote so he should be cognisant of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI think Britain today is a very divided house. I see after the referendum the argument hasn\u2019t settled. It is a very hot topic. There is talk of a fresh referendum and that means there is a large section of British society that feels they have made a mistake and want to revisit the decision. Who knows what will happen? It is too early to pass judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of Brexit, he said: \u201cIt will certainly not help Britain in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Centre for Social Justice thinktank has said that between 1987 and 2017 more than 1,500 people, mainly Christian or members of the Ahmadi Muslim minority, were charged with blasphemy.<\/p>\n

Accusations of the crime have also led to mob violence and it has been claimed that despite a police crackdown the scale of the recently revealed<\/a> trafficking of Christian Pakistani women to men in China had been suppressed to avoid damaging relations with Beijing.<\/p>\n

Pakistan, whose economy has stalled, recently received about $3.5bn (\u00a32.75bn) in loans and grants from the Chinese government.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants any law to be misused and we are against misuse of anything,\u201d Qureshi said of the blasphemy law.<\/p>\n

He said Pakistan and China had investigated the allegations of Pakistani women being trafficked to China, but found the \u201cstories had no truth to them\u201d. He added that as a policy Pakistan would \u201cnever tolerate that\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Pakistan\u2019s foreign minister has sought to dismiss accusations of Christian persecution, claiming there were \u201cindividual incidents\u201d comparable to knife crime in the UK. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, speaking during a visit to Brussels, said reports of religious minorities being targeted in Pakistan did not constitute a trend and the recent claims of Christian persecution were an example of \u201cwestern interests\u201d that \u201cwant to paint Pakistan in a particular way\u201d. His comments follow the international outcry sparked by the case of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who spent eight years on death rowRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[210,34],"tags":[237],"class_list":["post-27152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-pakistan","tag-newspress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27152"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27469,"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27152\/revisions\/27469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masihitv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}