From: smks@look1.apmaths.uwo.ca (Sultan Sial)
To: revs@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: looking for report of special rapporteur
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 96 10:04:42 -0500

Would anyone know hwo to obtain the
report of the UN rapporteur mentioned in 
the following?  The local UN office was 
not able to help.  

Sultan Sial
smks@look1.apmaths.uwo.ca
http://look1.apmaths.uwo.ca


(found on soc.culture.pakistan)
      GENEVA 1-30-96- A United Nations human 
rights investigator said Tuesday that Pakistan's 
laws encouraged intolerance against religious
minorities and urged Islamabad to draft ``new, 
more just legislation'' for all citizens. 

    Abdelfattah Amor, a Tunisian who serves as 
U.N. special rapporteur on religious intolerance, 
specifically urged Pakistan to modify its 
legislation on blasphemy as the death sentence 
appeared to be ``disproportionate and even 
unacceptable.'' 

    Amor's 23-page report, based on a mission last 
June, was the first by a U.N. human rights 
investigator to Pakistan. He examined the situation of
Christians, Hindis and Ahmadis there. 

    He urged the Islamic state's authorities to 
ensure that ordinances for crimes such as adultery 
and alcohol consumption were compatible with human
rights, and requested that they not be applied 
against non-Muslims. He also called for religious 
identification to be removed from passports. 

    Amor encouraged the government to stem religious 
extremism and to ``take appropriate measures in 
conformity with law.'' 

    ``The special rapporteur...considers that the 
country's current legislation applicable to 
religious minorities...is of a nature to
encourage intolerance or to develop it in the heart of 
society,'' Amor wrote. 

    Legislation applicable specifically to the Ahmadi 
minority, a banned Islamic sect, was 
``particularly questionable and even frankly
objectionable,'' according to the U.N. investigator. 

    Amor said: ``Protecting freedoms of thought and 
worship is a necessity, while the application of 
the death sentence for blasphemy appears  
disproportionate and even unacceptable, especially 
as  blasphemy often reflects a low level of 
education and culture which is not ascribable only 
to the person who blasphemes.'' 

    He acknowledged that much of Pakistan's legislation 
had been inherited from the past, including 
``periods of dictatorship.'' 

    The U.N. investigator also cited allegations that 
women and young girls, especially members of 
religious minorities, including Christians and 
Hindis, were raped and kidnapped ``in order to convert 
them by force to the Muslim religion.''