Minority Affairs Minister, Shahbaz Bhatti of Pakistan declared dead on arrival after having been shot by unidentified gunmen outside his house.
Rained with bullets, Bhatti’s black sedan was ambushed Wednesday in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad.
Bhatti was on his way for a cabinet meeting along with his niece when the assassination came to happen.
According to the reports, Bhatti’s niece and guard was pulled out of his car leaving him behind, until several bullets have hit his vehicle.
Bhatti’s driver had been lucky enough to survive from the hail of bullets so he immediately rushed Bhatti to Shifa Hospital. Unfortunately, the minority affairs minister had been pronounced dead before reaching the nearby hospital.
Witnesses said that there had been more than 50 bullets that were fired during the attack that lasted for several minutes.
Inspector general for Islamabad police, Wajid Durrani said that in order to assure Bhatti’s security, the government has assigned a group of bodyguards for security’s sake. However, the assigned guards weren’t there at the moment when the attack took place.
Wearing white shawls, the killers rushed to escape using a white Suzuki car leaving pamphlets for a Taliban affiliated group according to the reports announced by the TV stations.
Through the pamphlets seen, it has been determined that those who were responsible for the said attack were the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda.
A pamphlet was seen to be signed by the group named “Fidayeen e Muhammad” and “al-Qaida in Punjab” according to one report. This only depicts that the assassination was connected to the blasphemy controversy.
Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian cabinet member strongly opposed to the country’s controversial blasphemy law saying that anyone who will try to insult Islam will be given death sentence.
He was known to join Punjab Governor Salman Taseer in connection to the case of a Christian woman named Aasia Bibi who was sentenced to death for having been alleged of committing blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad last November.
Taseer had also been assassinated on January 4 in Islamabad by Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, 26 who was a police commando assigned to be his guard.
On the later part, Qadri confessed that he killed Taseer because he had opposed to support the blasphemy law.
On court’s hearing, Qadri was welcomed with flower petal showers while lawyers have kissed his cheeks. That event worried the liberals of Pakistani Society as well.
Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch relates that Shahbaz Bhatti was one of the few people in the government who took a brave and principled position on the blasphemy law.
Anger and dismay strike the hearts of human rights campaigners regarding Bhatti’s death as they consider such incident to be a sign of tolerance focusing on the President Asif Ali Zardari’s failure to protect liberal voices.
