A Well Thought Out Scream by James Riordan

According to her family, Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five was falsely accused of blasphemy for speaking against the prophet Muhammad. She is to be hanged and would be the first woman executed under Pakistan’s Shariah blasphemy law. She has filed her last possible appeal and legal challenge to her conviction for insulting the Prophet Muhammed four years ago. Just a month ago the high court in Lahore, an eastern city, confirmed the death sentence ending the family’s hopes that the conviction might be overturned or commuted to a term in jail.

Bibi, who is 50-years old, has been on death row since November 2010 after she was convicted of insulting Mohammed during a row with Muslim co-workers over a bowl of water. Pakistan has a huge Muslim majority and blasphemy is a very sensitive issue which often prompts mob violence even when the allegations are unproven.

She recently wrote an open letter to her supporters that said, “You are my only hope of staying alive in this dungeon, so please don’t abandon me. I did not commit blasphemy.” The letter also included the following: “My prison cell has no windows and day and night are the same to me, but if I am still holding on today it is thanks to everyone who is trying to help me. When my husband showed me the photographs of people I have never met drinking a glass of water for me, my heart overflowed. Ashiq told me that the city of Paris is offering to welcome our family. I send my deepest thanks to you Madam Mayor, and to all the kind people of Paris and across the world.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has said the Bibi and he family are welcomed to move to the city, Bibi’s defence attorney, Saiful Malook, has filed an appeal on her behalf to the Supreme Court. In the petition his client has asked the court to reconsider deficiencies in the case including allegedly manipulated evidence and a delay between the time of the incident and its investigation by police. Mr Malook added that the blasphemy allegation was concocted by Bibi’s enemies to target her
and had no basis in fact. ‘We expect an early hearing of the appeal and hope that the proceedings will be over in one year,’ he added.

The legal challenge is in addition to a personal plea from Bibi’s husband Ashiq Masih to Pakistan’s President Mamnoon Hussain asking for her to be pardoned and allowed to move to France. “We are convinced that Asia will only be saved from being hanged if the venerable President (Mamnoon) Hussain grants her a pardon. No one should be killed for drinking a glass of water,? he wrote in the New York Times. Masih, who is also 50 years old, has to keep his identity secret and lives in hiding. He visits his wife once a month, making a five and a half hour journey to her jail in Multan in southern Punjab.

The allegations against Bibi date back to June 2009, when she was labouring in a field and a row broke out with some Muslim women she was working with. She was asked to fetch water, but the Muslim women objected, saying that as a non-Muslim she was unfit to touch the water bowl. A few days later the women went to a local cleric and put forward the blasphemy allegations. Amnesty International has raised ‘serious concerns’ about the fairness of her trial and has called for her release. Pakistan has never executed anyone for blasphemy and has had a de-facto moratorium on civilian executions since 2008. But anyone convicted, or even just accused, of insulting Islam, risks a violent and bloody death at the hands of vigilantes.