On 2 March 2011, Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan's Minister for Minorities, was murdered in the heart of Islamabad, he was 42 years old. He had fought until the end to protect all minorities, not only his own, and to encourage dialogue. He believed in a united Pakistan, a land of ethnic and religious coexistence. And he gave his life for this ideal.
The victim of an assassination that shocked and outraged so many in the world, Shahbaz Bhatti is today a symbol for minorities in Pakistan, not only for Christians, but also for Hindus, Sikhs, Ahmadis and a large number of Muslims in this great country created in 1947 by the 'Partition' with India. Demonstrations have been held in his memory, songs composed in his honour, and committees created in the wake of his political, social and religious commitment. However, respecting the legacy he left us, his death has never inspired opposition and violence. Shahbaz has become, in Pakistan and around the world, a symbol for anyone who believes in peaceful battles in defence of minorities and a plural society.
Bhatti did not seek death, yet he never gave up his fight for the weak and oppressed, as Andrea Riccardi, who was to meet him in Islamabad, just two days after the attack, explained: 'He was a Christian who loved his country. Despite warnings and threats to his life, he had never thought of abandoning it. Indeed, he was convinced that Pakistan should rediscover its roots, following the model designed by the founder Ali Jinnah, a proponent of a secular State, in which different religions contribute together peacefully to its development' (quote from the book "Shahbaz Bhatti. Vita e martirio di un cristiano in Pakistan" - ed. Paoline)
Militancy
As we read in his 'spiritual testament', Shahbaz's vocation to spend his life for others dates back to that Good Friday when he listened to a sermon on the Passion of Jesus. He was just 13 years old and wanted to defend Christians and, more generally, all 'the poor and persecuted'.
When he was still a high school student he engaged in his first civil battle, namely against the introduction of a new identity card with a different colour according to religion. It was the very harsh times of General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq's regime (1977-1988). Bhatti founded the Christian Liberation Front (CLF) in 1985 while studying for his bachelor's, then master's, in public administration at the University of Punjab, Lahore and contributed with his protest to block the bill. These were years of tenacious militancy. At university, he experienced his first death threats, but he never gave up.
Indeed, in 1992, encouraged by the Catholic activist Cecil Chaudry, hero of the wars against India, he launched a national campaign against the blasphemy laws. It is a law that allows charges to be brought even on a mere suspicion and that has so far created a very high number of prosecutions, not only against members of minorities but - less known abroad - especially against the Muslim majority. These are often actually settling of scores between different family groups.
From the very beginning, however, Bhatti chose not to close himself up within the circle of the local Catholic community and in 2002 the Christian Liberation Front joined forces with other minorities representatives and founded the APMA (All Pakistani Minorities Alliance). He was unanimously elected to lead this coalition. He succeeded in making his name known throughout Pakistan, also thanks to the aid he provided to the people affected by the terrible earthquake of 2005. The APMA made a significant choice on that occasion and brought aid to all, making no distinction, and thus to a large number of Muslims who had been left homeless. It received official recognition from the state authorities.
Member of Parliament and Minister
Shahbaz Bhatti had already turned down earlier offer to enter politics in 2000. It did not fit into the albeit militant choice he had made. But eventually, in search of allies for his battles, he decided to approach Benazir Bhutto's PPP and, after her assassination, agreed to stand in the parliamentary elections with precise guarantees for minorities in his programme. He was elected to the Lower House of the National Assembly in February 2008. The new parliamentary role did not change his lifestyle, as his brother Paul recounts: 'He kept going out to meet everyone: the poor, Islamic scholars, political and religious leaders, ordinary people. His office was constantly invaded by people who came to him just to talk or get some advice. And he wouldn't turn anyone away'.
On 2 November 2008, after the election of Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's husband, as president, the APMA leader was offered the Ministry for Minority Affairs. Shahbaz Bhatti delivered impassioned words in his programme speech as minister 'I decided to become a minister to champion the cause of the oppressed and marginalised communities of Pakistan. I have dedicated my life to the struggle for human equality, social justice, religious freedom and to uplifting and empowering religious minority communities. Jesus is the centre of my life and I want to be his true follower through my actions, sharing God's love with the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted, the needy and the suffering of the Pakistani people'. He began an unceasing activity that would bear considerable fruit for the minorities in little more than two years. Bhatti directly followed numerous personal cases, including that of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy. He succeeded in improving her conditions of detention. Most importantly, however, in his work as a minister, he collected a long list of achievements, on the legislative level as well as, more generally, on the level of rights.
The horizon of dialogue and peace
Shahbaz Bhatti tried to expand his network of relationships beyond Pakistan's borders on some issues that were particularly close to his heart, such as dialogue and peace, and established numerous contacts at international level. He travelled to the United States, and was received by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and in Canada, where he was awarded a prestigious prize in 1999, he met Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He cultivated contacts all over the world, in Asia with a Korean association, in Italy with the Patriarchate of Venice, which had contributed to the relief effort during the 2005 earthquake. Meanwhile, he continued to weave his web of relationships with church organisations. An important friendship was also born at the time with the Community of Sant'Egidio, present in the country since 2000, with the involvement of hundreds of Pakistani youth and adults in various cities. After a first visit to Rome in October 2009 and major collaboration in providing aid to the populations hit by a devastating flood - making no distinction between Muslims and minorities as in the 2005 earthquake - in September 2010, Shahbaz Bhatti visited Italy again.
On 11 September, at the invitation of Sant'Egidio, he took part in a celebration in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome in memory of the victims of the attack on the Twin Towers in the presence of the US Ambassador to the Holy See, Miguel Diaz, and numerous other diplomatic representatives. He considered it very important to be present as a minister of a state, such as his own, which had been repeatedly accused of complicity with terrorism. The next day, Shahbaz was received in the Vatican and delivered an important message to Benedict XVI in which President Zardari expressed his government's desire to guarantee inter-religious and intercultural harmony in the country. The Pope assured the victims of the flooding a month earlier of his sympathy and support for all the people of Pakistan.
His death
Bhatti appointment as minister was accompanied by spiralling threats on his life. Particularly, after the assassination of the Muslim governor of Punjab Salman Taseer who had championed the case of Asia Bibi, Shahbaz received heavy pressure to resign. His reappointment to the new cabinet in mid-February 2011, was encouraging.
However, only a few days later, on the morning of 2 March, a commando of armed men blocked Bhatti's car, who had just left his mother's Islamabad home, and shot him dead in broad daylight. An execution that had long been carefully planned and carried out with extreme ease. Everyone knew - even Bhatti himself - that, in the absence of protection, the death sentence would be carried out sooner or later. Yet he vowed not to stop speaking for his friends, the poor and oppressed, the 'outcaste' men and women of his tormented Pakistan. He was neither a hero nor a hardline extremist politician. He was first and foremost a Christian, who lived and died as a Christian.
Farewell
The death of Shahbaz Bhatti caused great emotion all over the world. US President Barack Obama was among the first to react, Benedict XVI remembered him during the Sunday Angelus. In Pakistan, in addition to the state leadership, numerous Islamic authorities paid homage to him. There was an uninterrupted pilgrimage of Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus at his mother Martha's house, who gathered around her in prayer, testifying to the interreligious friendship that had been Shahbaz's strength.
On 4 March, two ceremonies took place. An 'official' one was held in the morning in Islamabad, with a liturgical celebration in the presence of numerous politicians, Prime Minister Gilani and many ambassadors. The cathedral was packed with worshippers and authorities. Everyone spoke of Bhatti as a 'martyr'. Relatives also arrived for the celebration from abroad. His brother Peter - who set up the International Christian Voice in Canada - was sure that the Christians of his country would not be intimidated: "Now thousands of Shahbaz Bhatti will rise up and they will not stop until they have defeated the dark forces of evil". Paul Bhatti came from Italy, where he worked as a doctor. He would later take over his brother's government post.
A funeral with an immense gathering of people took place in Khushpur, where Shahbaz's body was transferred by helicopter. It was an expression of strong popular symphaty: a mixture of anger and emotion of the many who had hoped with him and who suddenly were left orphans. Hundreds of adults and young people, dressed in black, yelled slogans against the government and Islamic fundamentalists. A group of women waved black flags and praised the assassinated minister, shouting: 'Bhatti, your blood is the beginning of a new revolution'. The streets were lined with banners and placards with the leader's photo. Some of them read: 'Shahbaz Bhatti, son of the motherland, we will miss you', others 'Bhatti we will continue your mission'. Catholic priests, as well as numerous leaders of the Hindu and Sikh minorities, together with representatives of the Muslim majority, took to the stage set up near the village church.
The square filled more and more with crowds. Eventually there were ten thousand of them. They chanted and shouted slogans demanding justice for the minister's death. As the coffin arrived, the then Bishop of Faisalabad Joseph Coutts pronounced his greeting with great difficulty: 'Shahbaz Bhatti fought to rid Pakistan of prejudice and hatred, to plant the roots of a culture of mutual respect and tolerance'.
At the end of the ceremony, the coffin was taken to the courtyard of a school, where a Pakistani flag was hoisted and the national anthem sung. There was an empty grave at the cemetery next to that of his father, Jacob Bhatti. Two months earlier, at his funeral, Shahbaz had told his brother Paul: 'This place is mine, only after I have fought for truth and justice. When that happens, do not cry for me'. The sad prophecy became reality, the tragedy of a people who followed him, faithfully, to the end. The crowd huddled around the Bhatti family, everyone wanted to touch Shahbaz's coffin for the last time, everyone repeated insistently: 'He is a martyr, he is a saint'.
The legacy of Shahbaz
Shahbaz Bhatti has left a valuable spiritual legacy that goes beyond the borders of Pakistan and takes on a global dimension. However, we should not underestimate his civil and political achievements. It is a long list of achievements, whose influence on Pakistani society has strengthened its democracy and respect for all the diversity it hosts. We only need to recall some of the most important ones achieved during his time as a parliamentarian and his two years and four months brief activity as a minister :
- a national law establishing the obligation for all public offices to recruit at least a 5% minorities quota in government jobs;
- allocation to minorities of four seats in the Senate (before then it was not possible for a Christian or a Hindu to be elected to this assembly);
- creation of a 24-hour minorities helpline at the Ministry for Minorities to report any abuses committed against non-Muslim citizens;
- establishment of the Minorities Day on 11 August, the anniversary day of Ali Jinnah's historic speech to the Pakistani nation, in which he proclaimed equal rights for all citizens, without ethnic or religious distinctions;
- opening of prayer places for non-Muslims in Pakistani prisons;
- creation of a network of 'district interfaith harmony committees', to foster dialogue and unite villages and rural communities through common concerns;
- adhesion, thanks to his reports, of a large number of Pakistani Muslim leaders to a groundbreaking joint statement in July 2010 to denounce terrorism.
But even before being elected to Parliament, Bhatti had already accumulated significant achievements with his APMA. Among the most important are
- the protest against the project of a separate identity card for non-Muslims - under the Zia dictatorship - that had forced the government to withdraw it;
- the battle to seriously challenge the separate electoral system for minorities in 2000 described by some as "religious apartheid", under which religious minorities could vote only for candidates of their own faith;
- the activity that prevented the approval of the Islamic decree to introduce the figure of the muhtasib, a religious guarantor on the Taliban model in the Frontier province in 2005.
Shahbaz had also, from an early age, engaged in an unrelenting battle for the amendment of the blasphemy law. But on this front, it is interesting to note that, since becoming a minister, alongside public denunciation, he had experimented with another, more discreet and perhaps more incisive path. Even without abandoning the protest, he had realised that, in order to unblock the situation, it was essential to launch a number of negotiations, initiated by the Muslim circles most sensitive to change. A work that had just begun but which, in many cases like that of Asia Bibi, was beginning to bear fruit.
On 5 April 2011, just over a month after Shahbaz Bhatti's death, the Community of Sant'Egidio remembered him at a conference in Rome, concluded with the solemn handover of the Pakistani minister's personal Bible to the basilica of San Bartolomeo all'Isola. This is the Roman church that John Paul II wished to dedicate to the memory of the 'new martyrs', the witnesses of the faith who have shed their blood throughout the 20th century up to the present day just because they are Christians.
The precious political legacy of Shahbaz Bhatti shows how a witness to the faith of our time was also able to work as a 'federator'. At the same conference a month after his death, Andrea Riccardi spoke of him as a man who, while fighting injustice 'with his bare hands', had been able to develop a fine skill as a politician: 'He did not compromise but knew the art of gradualness peculiar to the politician. He was a man of dialogue. He loved Pakistan, and you cannot love Pakistan without loving Muslims, a rich, complex world, Sunni, Shia, with a Sufi component frowned upon by fundamentalists, which Bhatti did not see as a compact wall'. And he likens his figure to that of Martin Luther King, who died in 1968, the year of Shahbaz's birth, calling him a 'martyr of dialogue'. Deeply Christian and sincerely Pakistani, Bhatti never inspired revenge or opposition. Around his memory, a non-violent movement has been created that fights strongly for the rights of minorities, but at the same time, with equal conviction, for coexistence with the multi-faceted majority that exists in the country
This might seem like a gamble thinking of modern-day Pakistan, of the violence that still dominates in many of its regions, but it is a great vision, also a political one, that is viable for building the future of that nation.
(translation by editorial staff in progress)
