By Chris Dillow

These remarks by Jack Straw irritate me:

"There is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men... who target vulnerable young white girls. We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way."

By Sadanand Dhume

Every time you think things can’t possibly get worse in Pakistan, along comes something to prove you wrong. On Tuesday, in possibly the country’s most consequential political shock since the 2007 murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Salman Taseer, the 65-year-old governor of Punjab province, was gunned down in an upscale Islamabad market by one of his police bodyguards. The reason: the governor’s plain-spoken defense of Asia Bibi, an illiterate Christian woman sentenced to death under Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws. According to press reports, Taseer’s killer pumped nine bullets into him for daring to call the blasphemy provision a “black law”.

By Nawaz Hanif of Reprieve

On 22^nd June 2004 Naheem Hussain and Rehan Zaman were arrested and taken to Dadyal police station, in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. They had been accused of committing two murders in their village – and the police were determined to get a confession.

By Tahmena Bokhari

Like many others, I sat in shock as I read the news of the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, being murdered for supporting the revision of blasphemy laws. If you read any of my work, you know I am a staunch advocate for doing away with these unjust laws and you know that I am in favour of a progressive, liberal and tolerant Pakistan. As I saw the various news reports of so-called leader-spokespersons, who are usually men I might add, using this to further their own agendas, I began to feel very sad.