The Sunday Telegraph - 01.09.2019

The Sunday Telegraph Sunday 1 September 2019 S *** 15

World news

‘The world should listen to the others still in jail’

A

s Asia Bibi sits free at last
in a secret location in
Canada, the Pakistani
Christian woman who
spent years on death row
on false blasphemy
charges turns her mind to those left
behind still facing the same ordeal.
Nearly four months after the
54-year-old finally left Pakistan
following a miscarriage of justice that
caused worldwide outcry, she has the
opportunity to build a new life for
herself and her daughters.
Yet while she is grateful for the
international efforts to free her, she
says the world should also know that
Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws have
left many others still languishing
behind bars.
In her first ever newspaper
interview, she told The Sunday
Telegraph she had at times fallen into
despair after being sentenced to death.
She also spoke of her heartbreak at
being forced to leave her homeland,
amid fears she would be murdered by
religious extremists even after
Pakistan’s supreme court had quashed
her flimsy conviction.
Her freedom was finally secured
with mediation from Ján Figel, a
European Union special envoy, who
has for the first time spoken about
negotiations to secure Mrs Bibi’s
freedom as she was held in protective
custody for months even after her
release from prison.
While she is currently in Canada,
she hopes to move to an undisclosed
country in Europe in the coming
months.
Mrs Bibi said her wrongful
conviction after she was accused of
insulting the Prophet Mohammad in a
row with fellow farmhands had
devastated her life.
“My whole life suffered, my children
suffered and this had a huge impact on
my life,” she said in a series of voice
messages sent in response to questions
from The Telegraph.
Mrs Bibi thanked the supreme court
for acquitting her, but said others also
needed fair trials. “There are many
other cases where the accused are
lying in jail for years and their decision
should also be done on merit. The
world should listen to them.
“I request the whole world to pay
attention to this issue. The way any
person is alleged of blasphemy
without any proper investigation,
without any proper proof, that should
be noticed. This blasphemy law should
be reviewed and there should be
proper investigation mechanisms

used this delay to get the situation in

the country under real control.”

He held talks in Brussels with

Anwar Khan, Pakistan’s attorney

general, and Shireen Mazari, human

rights minister, on how to free her.

As the months dragged on, Mrs Bibi

and her husband, Ashiq Masih, were

kept in government safe houses first in

the hills outside the capital Islamabad

and then in the port city of Karachi.

While given a television and a phone,

they were unable to go outside.

The strain saw Mrs Bibi fall into

depression and be treated for heart

problems. Throughout this time she

was in daily contact with Muhammad

Amanullah, a human-rights activist

who had previously helped five other

people accused of blasphemy. Mr

Amanullah acted as her direct liaison

with the EU.

He said: “[Pakistan’s government]

always told us it will be two weeks, or

10 days, two weeks, 10 days and like

this we spent seven months.”

He went on: “At one point she had

lost her hope and one day she told me,

if I am assassinated or anything

happens to me, please do not forget

my daughters.”

Early candidates for asylum

included France and Belgium, but as

time went on, Mrs Bibi’s daughters

were granted temporary refuge in

Canada.

Mrs Bibi had wanted to go to

Europe, but arrangements were made

for her to follow them and she finally

left Pakistan in May. Mrs Bibi and Mr

Figel both rejected earlier reports she

had ever wanted to go to the UK.

She said she had never contacted

the UK or asked to go there. The whole

family is later expected to move to an

undisclosed European country.

“Security conditions are crucially

important for Asia Bibi and for her

family,” said Mr Figel.

When her freedom finally arrived,

security concerns meant Mrs Bibi was

unable to say goodbye to her father or

her home town. “My heart was broken

when I left that way without meeting

her Christian faith in exchange for

immediate freedom. “Her story and

the highly professional supreme court

decision can serve as a base for

reforms in Pakistan, which has very

outdated system of blasphemy

legislation easily misused against

neighbours and innocent people.”

Additional reporting by Waqar Gillani

in Islamabad

A 2018 US State

Department

report on

international

religious

freedom says

Pakistan may

have 77 people

imprisoned for

blasphemy

charges, with at

least 28 given the

death sentence.

‹ Junaid Hafeez,

a lecturer at a

university in

Multan, was

denounced by

Islamist students

for hosting

feminist authors

and accused of

posting

blasphemous

material on

Facebook. He

has been in

solitary

confinement

since 2014 and

his lawyer,

Rashid Rehman,

was shot dead.

The trial of Mr

Hafeez has yet to

be completed.

‹ A Hindu

veterinarian was

charged with

blasphemy in

May for allegedly

wrapping

medicines in

pages of Islamic

teaching.

Ramesh Kumar

Malhi said the

pages were

accidentally

taken from a

religious text

book. The

incident set off

rioting near his

clinic near

Mirpur Khas,

Sindh province.

‹ Qaiser and

Amoon Ayub

from Lahore

were sentenced

to hang for

blasphemy after

insulting the

Prophet

Mohammed in

posts on their

website.

‹ In 2017, Mashal

Khan, a student,

was falsely

accused of

blasphemy. He

was beaten by a

mob before

being shot dead.

Incendiary Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy cases

Interview

By Ben Farmer
in Islamabad

my family. Pakistan is my country,

Pakistan is my homeland, I love my

country, I love my soil,” she said.

Mr Amanullah has also left the

country after being declared an

apostate because of his work with

those accused of blasphemy.

Mr Figel said Mrs Bibi was “an

admirably brave woman and loving

mother” who had refused to give up

while applying this law. We should not
consider anyone sinful for this act
without any proof.”
The US State Department says an
estimated 77 others are in prison in
Pakistan under blasphemy laws, most
of them Muslims, with lawyers and
rights groups saying false accusations
are made to settle scores, or silence
rivals. The charge can carry the death
penalty, but is so incendiary that cases
can also end in mob lynching. Pakistan
has never executed anyone specifically
for blasphemy, but trials and appeals
can drag on for years because judges
are afraid of extremist threats.
“Sometimes I was so disappointed
and losing courage, I used to wonder
whether I was coming out of jail or
not, what would happen next, whether
I would remain here all my life,” Mrs
Bibi said.
“When my daughters visited me in
jail, I never cried in front of them, but
when they went after meeting me in
jail I used to cry alone, filled with pain
and grief. I used to think about them
all the time, how they are living.”
Mrs Bibi was first convicted of
blasphemy after she quarrelled with
two Muslim women while they picked
falsa berries for a landowner in rural
Punjab in 2009. Her accusers claimed
she insulted the Prophet Mohammed
in an argument because the women
would not drink from a container she
had touched. The accusation was
taken up by the village mullah and she
was taken to court and sentenced to
death in 2010. But Mrs Bibi said she
had been made to confess at the hands
of a village mob who nearly beat her
unconscious. She denied she had ever
committed blasphemy.
She spent eight years on death row,
constantly fearing for her life, before
the case was quashed in the supreme
court last October. However, she was
kept in custody for a further seven
months as Imran Khan’s government
wrestled with how to free her without
angering influential hardline Islamist
groups who had paralysed the country
in protest at her acquittal.
Mr Figel, a Slovak politician and the
EU special envoy on religious freedom
since 2016, said: “I think Imran Khan’s
government and Pakistan’s military

‘At one point

she had lost

her hope and

one day she

told me, if I

am

assassinated

or anything

happens to

me, please do

not forget my

daughters’

‘Pakistan is

my country

... my

homeland, I

love my

country’

‘I wondered

... whether I

would

remain [in

jail] all my

life’

Esha, Sidra and

Eshum, the

daughters of Asia

Bibi, above, with a

photograph of their

mother after she

was sentenced to

death for

blasphemy in 2010.

Below, Mrs Bibi

with, from left,

brothers Ramzan

and Unus and son

Imran

ADREES LATIF/REUTERS; AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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