Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman on death row for blasphemy has been put in isolation over fears of attacks by vigilantes enraged over a high-profile ruling in another blasphemy case that moderates said struck a blow against religious extremism.Prison officials and rights activists said this week that they were concerned for Asia Bibi’s life due to the security threat and her worsening health. The mother-of-five, whose plight has prompted prayers from the Vatican, has been on death row since she was convicted in 2010 of committing blasphemy during an argument with a Muslim woman over a bowl of water. Bibi is being held in a cramped, windowless cell in a high security zone of the prison, where other death row inmates are confined, it has been learnt.
She was also vomiting blood last month and was having difficulty walking, and is rumoured to have been diagnosed with hepatitis B, due to her squalid living conditions. She is not the only one wronged by the criminal justice system of Pakistan, where prisoners are treated worse than second class citizens and prisons remain places of death, mental illness and disease. In July, after much campaigning by Christian and human rights groups, Bibi saw her death sentence temporarily suspended. She has kept her faith despite the fact that officials necessitate prisoners to sit before the Quran for hours and read the Islamic holy text.They have been told that if they praise Allah and ask for forgiveness, their sentence will be reduced. This is not the Pakistan that the Quaid had envisioned, where minorities that are represented by our national flag are not represented in the society that they live in.One can only hope that after the historic verdict of the Supreme Court that granted Justice to Salman Taseer, justice will be served to Asia Bibi as well and her ordeal will finally come to an end.
pk.shafaqna.com
