Pakistan Buries Christian Politician Who Fought for Tolerance

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan March 4, 2011 -- A Christian government minister who died because he fought for tolerance was buried today, his coffin lowered into the ground in his small village as shocked Pakistanis wonder if there's anyone left who will speak for the country's most oppressed.

"Today is a very sad day," said Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani during the funeral for Shahbaz Bhatti, the minorities affairs minister who was assassinated on Wednesday. "The founding father of Pakistan had one wish: He taught the people of Pakistan to give the rights and protection to the minorities... People like him are very rare. All the minorities have lost a great leader."

After the funeral, which was held in Islamabad, Bhatti's body was flown to his hometown Khushpur, where his family and local religious leaders buried Pakistan's most senior Christian politician.

As Gilani spoke to mourners and Western diplomats inside Islamabad's best known church, dozens of Christians wailed and chanted psalms on the road outside, flanked by hundreds of police and Western security officials in suits. It was the largest security showing for an event in Islamabad in the last year.

Bhatti spoke for Christians -- who make up 5 percent of Pakistan's population -- and for all of Pakistan's minorities, and he was killed because he wanted to change the country's blasphemy laws, which demands death for anyone who insults Islam and are often used to persecute those minorities.

For the Christian mourners outside the church, Bhatti's death silenced their most powerful defender and makes them feel vulnerable. Christians often live on the edges of Pakistani society, taking some of its most menial jobs and living in the equivalent of ghettos. Christians have also been attacked, most recently in the town of Gojra in 2009 when nine Christians were burned to death.

"They are taking us as animals. They are taking us on the roads... they are killing our ministers. They are killing us in Gojra, they are killing us in Lahore, they are killing us everywhere," said an emotional Rahmoon Bhatti, who is a pastor in Islamabad and not related to Shahbaz Bhatti. "We are not secure against this law. We want this law to be done, we want this law to be taken out from our courts."