AP Features, June 6th, 2007
A Pakistani rights group urged the government Wednesday to immediately reinstate the Christian head of a nursing school and four of her Christian students who were suspended after alleged desecration of verses from Islam's holy book.
The suspensions were made last week by the management of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Science _ the main hospital in Islamabad which oversees the school _ after some Muslim nurses protested that verses from the Quran and sayings of the Prophet Muhammed had been erased from a wall.
The verses regarded the proper manners for drinking water.
On Wednesday, Shahbaz Bhatti, who heads the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance _ a group that seeks protection for minorities _ claimed principal Stella Nazir Hidayat and the four Christian students had been suspended without a proper probe.
"There is no evidence against them," he told a news conference. "We demand that justice should be done with the principal and the four students to ensure religious harmony."
Bhatti said the hospital management had also shut the school for two weeks.
"The suspended school principal and the four Christian students have told me that they respect Islam and its prophet and the Quran, and they cannot even think of hurting the feelings of Muslims," he said.
Police said they had registered a case against unknown people for desecrating the verses from the Quran, a crime which can carry the death sentence, although no such executions are known to have been carried out in the conservative Muslim nation.
Christians and other minorities generally live together peacefully in Pakistan. However, some churches have been attacked following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
