Pakistan minorities live in fear after blasphemy mob killings

Four-year-old Aliya's life collapsed last year when her illiterate Christian parents were falsely accused of tossing out pages of the Koran in their rubbish, and then lynched and burnt on a brick kiln by an angry mob.
The mob killing of Shama Bibi and Shahzad Masih triggered outrage in Pakistan, where desecration of Islam's holy book is legally punishable by death and even unproven allegations of blasphemy often lead to bloody killings at the hands of vigilantes.
After the ordeal on November 4, 2014, Aliya, which is not her real name, left the dusty brick factory where even as a toddler she had worked with her family as bonded labourers. Five other Christian families also fled.

Now she comes home from school every day, wearing her backpack and new shoes, to the lower-class area of Lahore where she lives with her maternal grandfather, elder brother and sister.
The children play cricket on the roof terrace of the tiny, two-room concrete house, with a view of a dusty track lined with small rivers of sewage.
But their hearts are not in their new lives, built far away from the factory - even as Christmas approaches.

"The children often cry for their parents," sighs their grandfather, who AFP is not naming, saying that even a year on the family does not feel safe.

Their sense of insecurity persists even though authorities have taken unusually strong measures to protect people like Shama and Shahzad, who were eventually found to be falsely accused.
The police have traditionally been reluctant to clamp down on those who take part in mob violence for fear of enraging Islamists in this conservative Muslim country of 200 million.
But with the country's top leadership seemingly more determined to tackle religious extremism in the wake of a Taliban school massacre last year that left more than 150 dead, matters could be slowly changing.
Pakistani courts appear to have shifted to a more moderate stance on blasphemy recently, warning against false accusations and bailing one accused after she had languished in jail for three years.

In the Christian couple's case, more than 100 people are still in jail - including the factory owner, who has been accused of locking them up when they tried to flee as the blasphemy allegations gathered steam because he thought they would default on their debt to him.
Five other factory executives are also imprisoned, as well as two Muslim clerics accused of spreading the rumour and encouraging the mob to attack the couple.
Pakistan inherited its blasphemy law from former colonial power Britain, which devised the code to ensure communal harmony in the then undivided India.