Politician a prisoner in country riven by hate

Sherry Rehman when she could appear in public. Photo / AP

All Sherry Rehman wants is to go out - for a coffee, a stroll, lunch, anything. But that's not possible.

Death threats flood her email inbox and mobile phone; armed police are at the gate of her Karachi mansion; government ministers advise her to flee.

"I get two types of advice about leaving," says the steely politician.

"One from concerned friends, the other from those who want me out so I'll stop making trouble. But I'm going nowhere." She pauses, then adds quietly: "At least for now."

It's been almost three weeks since Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer was gunned down outside an Islamabad cafe. As the country plunged into crisis, Rehman became a prisoner in her own home.

Having championed the same issue that caused Taseer's death - reform of Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws - she is, by popular consensus, next on the extremists' list.

Giant rallies against blasphemy reform have swelled the streets of Karachi, where clerics use her name. There are allegations that a cleric in a local mosque, barely five minutes' drive away, has branded her an "infidel" deserving of death. In the Punjabi city of Multan, opponents tried to file blasphemy charges against her - raising the absurd possibility of Rehman, a national politician, facing a death sentence.

"My inbox is inundated. The good news is that a lot of it is no longer hate mail," she says with a grim smile. "But a lot of it is."

Pakistani politicians have a long tradition of self-imposed exile but 50-year-old Rehman - a former confidante of Benazir Bhutto, known for her glamour, principled politics and sharp tongue - is surely the first to undergo self-imposed arrest.

Hers is a luxury cell near the Karachi shore, filled with fine furniture and expensive art, but a stifling one.

Government officials insist on 48 hours' notice before putting foot outside. Plots are afoot, they warn.

She welcomes a stream of visitors - well-educated, English-speaking people from the slim elite. But Pakistan's left is divided and outnumbered.

Supporters squabble over whether they should call themselves "liberals", and while candle-lit vigils in upmarket shopping areas may attract 200 well-heeled protesters, the religious parties can turn out 40,000 people, all shouting support for Mumtaz Qadri, the fanatical policeman who shot Taseer.

"Pakistan is one of the first examples of a fascist, faith-based dystopia," warns commentator Nadeem Farooq Paracha.

Is it really that bad? At Friday lunchtime worshippers streamed into the Aram Bagh mosque, a beautiful structure in central Karachi inscribed with poetry praising the prophet Muhammad.

"He dispelled darkness with his beauty," read one line. At the gate a banner hung by the Jamaat-e-Islami religious party offered less inspiring verse: "Death to those who conspire against the blasphemy laws."

Rehman is polite when asked about the silence of her colleagues in the ruling Pakistan's People's Party on the blasphemy issue. "They feel they want to address this issue at another time," she says.

The truth is, they have abandoned her.

The party played with fire over the blasphemy issue last November when President Asif Ali Zardari floated the idea of a pardon for Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death on dubious blasphemy charges.

According to Rehman, he also agreed to reform the law.

But then conservative elements in the party objected, a conservative judge blocked the pardon and, even before Taseer had been killed, the party had vowed not to touch a law that has become the virtual sacred writ of Pakistani politics.

Pakistan will soon return to more concrete worries: Taleban insurgents, economic collapse, the rise of extremism. Yet there is no doubt the aftermath of Taseer's death points to a country headed down a dangerous path.

- OBSERVER