Blasphemy in Pakistan: The case of Aasia Bibi

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were inherited from its British colonial rulers. Introduced in 1860, the laws were meant to reduce tensions and prevent riots between Hindu and Muslim communities in undivided India. For more than a century, only seven cases of blasphemy were ever reported. In the 1980s, however, under the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, the laws were expanded and stricter penalties imposed in a controversial period known as “the decade of Islamization.” In the three and a half decades since, more than 1,000 cases of blasphemy have been reported to the police, according to the National Commission for Justice and Peace, a human rights advocacy group. While the punishment for blasphemy used to be two years’ imprisonment for blasphemy, the maximum penalty is now death. And the additions to the law apply only to Islam, as opposed to all faiths. There is no definition of what constitutes blasphemy, so the laws are applied broadly and charges can be brought on weak evidence, human rights lawyers say.

Aasia was charged under 295-C, the section of the Pakistan Penal Code that deals with “Use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet” and the only one among the blasphemy laws that carries the death penalty. That sentence, or life imprisonment, may be given to “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 Muhammad.”

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, or HRCP, condemns the blasphemy laws, arguing that they can be used to settle personal scores and applied very broadly. In addition, charges can be brought on the thinnest of evidence.

Among those jailed on blasphemy charges is Bahauddin Zakariya University professor Junaid Hafeez, for a post written by someone else that he had shared on his personal Facebook page in May 2013. It had allegedly contained disrespectful content about the Prophet Muhammad’s wife. One year later, Rashid Rehman, the lawyer defending Hafeez, was shot dead in Multan. Hafeez remains imprisoned in a Multan jail, while Rehman’s killers remain at large. 

At different times in the country’s history, people have attempted to amend the blasphemy laws, but with no success. In 1998, the bishop of Pakistan’s third-largest city, Faisalabad, tried to repeal the laws over a death sentence handed down to a Christian man, Ayub Masih, for blasphemy. When he failed, Bishop John Joseph committed suicide in front of a court building in nearby Sahiwal, in protest.

Others who have challenged the misuse of these laws or have defended those charged with blasphemy have been shot dead or otherwise silenced. In January 2011, Punjab Gov. Salmaan Taseer, who had advocated for Aasia’s release, was shot by his own bodyguard in an upscale market in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. The killer, Mumtaz Qadri, received the death penalty. Three months after Taseer’s assassination, Shahbaz Bhatti, the federal minister for minorities affairs, who had been commissioned by the federal government to investigate Aasia’s case and review the blasphemy laws, was also assassinated. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and suspects were arrested for Bhatti’s murder, but no one, so far, has been convicted.

In his investigation, Bhatti had found the case against Aasia to be “baseless,” he had said.

Aasia’s case is currently pending with the Supreme Court. In its verdict upholding her death sentence, the Lahore High Court found the evidence “consistent, coherent and confidence inspiring.”

But a copy of the trial proceedings obtained by Al Jazeera America reveals serious inconsistencies in witness accounts. In his statement to the court, Saalam changed his testimony about how and when he found out about Aasia’s crime three times [see page 13].

In her testimony, Aasia pointed out the close relationships between the three prime witnesses (one of the sisters, Asma, was the student of Saalam’s wife) and said that Mafia and Asma had conspired with him to bring a “false, fabricated and fictitious case” against her.

According to the court documents, Saalam accused Aasia of uttering blasphemous remarks twice, the first time in the berry fields and then five days later, on June 19 — the day of her arrest — in front of a gathering of villagers. But in Aasia’s memoir, dictated to her husband from the confines of her prison cell, she says she was beaten by a mob to the point of losing consciousness and was asked to convert to Islam. When she refused, begging for mercy, the police arrived, “threw me in their van, to cheers from the angry crowd, and a few minutes later I was in the police station.”

When Aasia’s case hit the headlines, Ali Dayan Hasan was the Pakistan director of Human Rights Watch, or HRW. He fought for her to be pardoned, he says, and was in confidential talks with senior government officials as early as November 2010, when Aasia was first sentenced. He was given to understand that then-President Asif Ali Zardari would pardon her and she would be sent out of the country on the next flight. But before the pardon could be issued, and just three weeks after the lower court gave her the death sentence on November 8, 2010, the Lahore High Court passed an order prohibiting the president from issuing a presidential pardon.

“Nobody had anticipated that any court of the land could ban the president from pardoning her. This was brazenly unconstitutional,” says Hasan. “Aasia’s case is an example of judicial bigotry and institutionalized maliciousness on part of the Lahore High Court.”

At the time, Khawaja Sharif was the chief justice of the Lahore High Court and the person responsible for barring the presidential pardon (though he did not himself hear Aasia’s case). After he retired in December 2010, he defended Qadri, Taseer’s assassin, who had confessed to the crime. Sharif has no doubt that justice has been served in Aasia’s case. “The evidence was concrete and proved in both the lower court and the high court. If there was conflicting evidence, the high court would have set aside the death penalty.” He also disregards the conflicting testimonies, saying only, “A very competent police officer conducted the investigation, and there is no doubt that blasphemous remarks were made.”

Hasan says when Aasia’s case emerged there was hope for change. There was a quiet agreement in Parliament that blasphemy laws had gotten out of hand, he says. Human rights groups had planned to petition for the abolition of blasphemy with the understanding that religious parties would object and ruling party parliamentarian Sherry Rehman would take the middle ground and submit a bill for reform, which she did. “But after the assassinations of Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, the government backed down in its efforts and Rehman had to withdraw the bill,” Hasan recalls.