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Europe Parliament To Withdraw Pakistan s GSP+ Status Over Abuse Of Blasphemy Laws
Pakistan was obliged to implement 27 core conventions on human rights, environmental protection, and good governance to keep GSP+ status, Europe stated.
IMAGE: AP/EU parliament/ODF
European Parliament on Monday declared that it was withdrawing Pakistan’s GSP+ status over the controversial Blasphemy laws. Earlier in April, the EU had adopted a joint motion for a resolution on the blasphemy laws in Pakistan as it urged the Islamic Republic to opt for a more comprehensive approach to address the abuses of blasphemy laws. Pakistan attracted condemnation for convicting a Christian couple of blasphemy in an apex court, who were both handed death by hanging sentence in 2013 despite that the couple was illiterate and the alleged blasphemous message was in English.
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The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has expressed displeasure over a series of recent court decisions that seek to limit the religious rights of Christians in the North African country of Algeria.
USCIRF’s concern, expressed via a press release in late June, was made public after three separate court rulings against Christians in the majority Muslim country.
In March, Hamid Soudad, a 42-year-old Christian accused of insulting the prophet Mohammad, had a five-year prison sentence against him upheld by the Oran City Court of Justice. On June 6, Rachid Mohamed Seighir, pastor and bookstore owner, was sentenced to one year in prison by a court in Oran for “printing, storing or distributing materials” considered damaging to the Muslim faith. And an administrative court in Oran separately ordered that three Protestant churches that had been forcibly closed by the government in 2020 be sea
A Pakistani court has overturned the death sentence of a Christian couple in a blasphemy case, acquitting them for lack of evidence after they had spent seven years on death row, lawyers say.A lower court had sentenced Shafqat Emmanuel, a watchman at a factory, and his wife, Shagufta Kausar, to death in 2014 for allegedly sending derogatory remarks about the Muslim prophet Muhammad in a text message to another man, Khalid Maqsood.
[AP]
Although constitutions of South and Southeast Asian countries provide for equality of faiths, governments do not always protect the rights of minority groups, the U.S. State Department said in its 2020 International Religious Freedom Report released on Wednesday.
The American commitment to defending freedom of religion and belief goes back centuries – and continues today – Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he announced the publication of the 2,397-page document covering 200 countries and territories.
“Religious freedom, like every human right, is universal. All people, everywhere, are entitled to it no matter where they live, what they believe, or what they don’t believe,” Blinken told reporters.