Telegraph: Final appeal set for Pakistani Christian woman facing execution for blasphemy
This is horrendous and sad. Support is needed to help save the woman!
Final appeal set for Pakistani Christian woman facing execution for blasphemy
AChristian woman facing execution for blasphemy in Pakistan has been granted her final chance to appeal next week, after the country’s supreme court set a date for Asia Bibi’s last hearing.
In a case that has gained international infamy, the mother-of-five from rural Punjab was convicted in 2010 for defaming the Prophet Mohammad during an argument with a group of Muslim women over a bowl of water. She has been on death row ever since.
Appeals at lower courts have all failed, before the country's top court temporarily suspended her execution in July 2015.
If Pakistan’s supreme court does not overturn her sentence following arguments heard in Islamabad next Thursday, Mrs Bibi will become the first person to ever be hanged under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws.
At least 20 people charged with blasphemy in Pakistan have been murdered, some by their own prison guards, and many more have gone into hiding.
Mrs Bibi’s plight has divided Pakistan, pitting its hardline clerics and their supporters against liberal reformers, and exposing deep fractures in the highly conservative Muslim state.
A farm worker, she was accused of insulting the prophet in June 2009after an argument broke out over a bowl of water she had been sent to fetch from the well in Ittan Wali village.
Several Muslim women refused to drink from the bowl because they believed it had been made “unclean” by the Christian’s touch.
Five days later, an imam who was not present during the argument accused her of defaming the prophet. Despite insisting she was being persecuted for her faith in a country where Christians face routine harassment and discrimination, Mrs Bibi was sentenced to be hanged the following year.
Two politicians who took up Mrs Bibi’s cause were murdered in 2011. When one of the assassins, Mumtaz Qadri, was himself hanged earlier this year, tens of thousands rallied in Islamabad to proclaim him a hero and a martyr.
Saif-ul Mulook, Mrs Bibi’s lawyer, told The Telegraph that his client had never received a fair trial. The charges against her were the result of a “personal vendetta” between her and the complainant, he said.
Mrs Bibi's family were the only Christians in the village. Of the seven witnesses in the case, five are men who were also not present when the row took place.
Mrs Bibi’s husband Ashiq Mashih and five children have lived in hiding for the past six years.
"I have great hopes in the supreme court and I am very hopeful that justice will done for my wife,” said Mr Mashih, speaking from an undisclosed location on Friday. “She has been living a miserable life in jail for many years. I want justice for the mother of my five children.”
“The complainant and witnesses were biased and the complaint was registered on personal motives,” said Mr Mulook.
If the appeal fails, Mrs Bibi’s final hope is a pardon from Mamnoon Hussain, the president of Pakistan. But the fundamentalist clerics who wish to see Mrs Bibi executed wield considerable influence in Pakistan, and few politicians dare to openly defy them.
Activists say Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are often used to persecute or settle private vendettas against the country’s three million Christians.
While nobody has yet been executed for insulting the Koran or the Prophet - most are acquitted on appeal - mere accusation is enough to destroy many Christians’ lives.
Mr Mulook’s home in Lahore is under police guard following threats to his life.
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