Greg DalyIreland has gone very quiet on Asia Bibi, writes Greg Daly
For all the Irish government’s talk of equality, it has been remarkably quiet on the issues of religious freedom and the persecution of religious minorities.
Anyone who had hoped it has been pushing the Pakistani government to act justly in the case of the imprisoned Christian Asia Bibi will have been sorely disappointed to read how the minister for foreign affairs and trade, Charlie Flanagan TD, answered when asked by Colm Keaveney TD whether he would make an intervention to seek to secure her release.
Officials in the department, Minister Flanagan replied, have indeed raised the case with the Pakistani embassy, but the most recent time the Irish ambassador to Pakistan conveyed Irish concerns about Asia Bibi’s fate to the Pakistani government was over seven months ago, in November 2014.
The previous month, the minister continued, had seen several European interventions in the case, with a spokesperson for the European External Action Service expressing dismay at the Pakistani High Court’s decision to uphold Ms Bibi’s conviction, and the then EU High Representative Catherine Ashton speaking about Ms Bibi’s case before the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
October was, of course, the month that saw Pakistan’s High Court after a succession of postponements finally hear and reject the appeal of Ms Bibi against her 2010 conviction and death sentence, so it is not particularly surprising that the EU did not dally in responding to developments in Lahore, with the Government intervening directly just over a fortnight later.
Since then, though, it’s as though Ms Bibi has been forgotten.
Asia Noreen Bibi’s fate is one with which readers of The Irish Catholic will be very familiar. In November 2010 the Punjabi mother-of-five was sentenced to death by hanging after allegedly having blasphemed against Muhammad.
Ms Bibi had been picking berries in Itan Wali, the village where she and her family were the only Christians, in June 2009, and got embroiled in an argument with some of her fellow workers when she went to get water from the well. The others, all Muslim women, said that as a Christian she was unfit to touch the drinking bowl, and days later claimed that in the ensuing argument she had insulted Mohammed. Although Ms Bibi denied this, saying that the women were trying to settle old scores, she was pursued and beaten by a mob.
The village imam told her that she could save herself by converting to Islam, but she refused, while maintaining that she had not insulted Mohammed. Subsequently arrested and imprisoned, a local judge sentenced her to death for the crime of blasphemy.
Keep in solitary confinement for her own protection, a month after her conviction a Muslim cleric offered a 500,000 rupee (€7,000) award to anyone who would kill her, and her family have been in hiding while prominent politicians who spoke in her defence have been assassinated, Punjab’s governor Salmaan Taseer in January 2011 and Minority Affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti two months later.
There are those who would attribute blame for this, at least in part, to Ireland. Section 36 of Ireland’s 2009 Defamation Act is often cited as an inspiration to strict Muslin countries such as Pakistan, which seek to promote universal blasphemy laws, and it is true that when in October 2009, at a meeting of the UN’s Human Rights Council, Pakistan submitted a six-part set of proposals to oppose discrimination based on religion and belief, one of its six proposals was clearly based on part of Ireland’s definition of blasphemy.
“State parties shall prohibit by law the uttering of matters that are grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion,” the first proposal read, concluding, “thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents to that religion.”
Crucially, however, this is not how blasphemy is defined in Irish law, as it excludes the second half of the Irish definition, which requires that a person who utters or publishes such matter “intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage”. Regardless of whether or not people agree with Ireland’s ‘blasphemy law’, they should at least recognise that intention is central to how it defines blasphemy.
This was not the case with Pakistan’s UN proposals, and it is not always the case with Pakistan’s domestic blasphemy laws, which were first codified by the British in 1860 and have been expanded since, most recently and dramatically in the 1980s.
In particular, Section 295C, introduced into the code in 1986 by the government of General Zia-ul Haq, pointedly omits any reference to intention when it states: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
While only 14 people are known to have been prosecuted for blasphemy in Pakistan prior to 1986, Pakistan’s National Commission for Justice and Peace says almost 1,300 people have been accused under various clauses of the country’s blasphemy law since then. Most charges relate to damaging the Quran, with relatively few involving insults towards Mohammed. Dozens of people have been murdered after being charged with blasphemy, but nobody – so far – has been executed for this crime.
It will be for Pakistan’s Supreme Court, then, to decide if Ms Bibi, already the first woman in Pakistan to be sentenced to death for blasphemy, shall be the first person to be executed for it. In the meantime, her family, having recently been able to visit her in prison, report that she is seriously ill, apparently suffering from intestinal bleeding. Vomiting blood, she has difficulty eating, has a constant pain in her chest, and is barely able to walk.
In April, shortly after an earlier visit to Ms Bibi, Ms Bibi’s husband Ashiq Masih visited Rome with his youngest daughter Isham, meeting briefly with Pope Francis, who, he said, “blessed and encouraged us”.
“I pray for you, for Asia, and for all Christians who are suffering”, the Pope said.
Ashiq Masih said that he and his daughter wanted to ask Pope Francis to encourage Pakistan’s government to free his wife, and to raise awareness of her case before the Pope and European authorities. His lawyer Joseph Nadeem pointed out at the time that appeals to Pakistan’s Supreme Court “could take a very long time”, and that a presidential pardon, if that could be secured, would immediately release Ms Bibi.
The EU may not want to be seen to be interfering in a case before Pakistan’s courts, as then-European High Representative Catherine Ashton said last year, but it may be that if Europeans are serious about saving Ms Bibi’s life, interventions pushing for a presidential pardon might prove her best hope.