By: Sarwar Alam
His family of seven share two small, squalid rooms in a cockroach-infested Bangkok apartment. But like many Pakistani Christians living illegally in Thailand, Farooz’s sharpest worry is not poverty but arrest. There is no safe return to the homeland they fled due to religious persecution, where Islamist invective surged higher last week after the release of Asia Bibi on blasphemy charges. Christians make up less than two percent of Pakistan’s Muslim-majority population, but are the sporadic targets of hardline Islamists. Churches have been bombed while pernicious charges of blasphemy are easily pinned on the group, often to settle personal scores. Mass…
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