Blasphemy laws: 58% of women booked are Muslims
22 of a total of 38 women booked under the blasphemy laws are Muslims, data obtained from different organisations by The Express Tribune reveals.
The data also shows that 14 out of the 38 women booked under the blasphemy laws were Christian. A Hindu and an Ahamdi were also among those accused of blasphemy.
Dr Mehdi Hasan, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) chairperson, said that around 80 per cent of those accused of blasphemy were falsely implicated. “Many people get a blasphemy case registered against their opponents because of property issues or other personal or family vendetta,” said Hasan.
Syed Mumtaz Alam Gilani, the federal minister for human rights, said that more and more Muslims were using the laws to settle scores with fellow Muslims. “Currently, there are around 42 cases in which Muslims have registered FIRs against Muslims,” the minister said. Gilani also said that a parliamentary committee was trying to come up with proposals to ensure that the laws are not misused.
Records of the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP), Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and Ministry of Human Rights, also show that 37 of these women were booked between 1990 and 2010 while only one case was registered in 1987.
33 women of the 38 are from the Punjab.
Cases against six were registered in Lahore, five in Sheikhupura, four in Kasur, two in Rawalpindi and two in Gujranwala.
According to the record available, a Mrs Krishna was the only one to have been booked from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Akhtari Begum and Tabassum Malkana from Sindh and a Zaibun Nisa from Islamabad. The location of one Bushra Taseer booked under 295-C in 1996 was not clear from the records.
Nazia, Zaibun Nisa, Nasreen Bibi and Naseem Bibi were acquitted.
An ‘un-discriminatory’ law
There have been at least two cases, in which mentally-challenged women were also booked for blasphemy.
Zaibun Nisa, a mentally-challenged Muslim accused, was released after 14 years in prison. The Lahore High Court acquitted the 60-year-old on July 22, 2010.
In another case, Naseem Bibi, another mentally challenged person, was acquitted after eight months of being accused of blasphemy.
Acquitted not compensated
A case was registered against Nazia in June 2009 under Section 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code in Kharian. Nazia, a Christian, always maintained that she did not desecrate the Quran, as was alleged. Soon after the registration of a case against her, she was socially boycotted and had to live alone for six months. The issue was resolved by local elders who found her ‘innocent’. Following that finding the case was dropped. “I hadn’t done anything of the kind and I was happy when the case was dropped. But the time as a person accused of blasphemy was the most difficult one,” she says.
Nasreen Bibi of Kabirwala was convicted and awarded life imprisonment but her conviction was later over turned by the Supreme Court.
However, none of the women acquitted filed for damages.
Peter Jacob, the Justice and Peace Commission of the Pakistani Church secretary, said that the women did not file defamation or damages suits against complainants because “they do not want the social pressure”. On how to ensure that the laws are not used to settle personal scores, Jacob added, “There should be a penalty for the complainant if his accusations cannot be proven in court. But this is just a safeguard. These laws have many weaknesses.” The secretary said that amendments proposed by Sherry Rehman to the bill that she has recently submitted in the National Assembly were a step in the right direction.
The bill proposes amendments to the Pakistan Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, the two main sources of criminal law, calls for a clearer definition of the term ‘blasphemy’. The bill also calls for rationalising the criminal procedure, which includes the concept of premeditation or intent.
One of the most important changes the bill proposes is that it calls for the abolition of the mandatory death penalty.
Another amendment proposed proposes that the complainant take full responsibility if the accusations levelled by him are proven to be false.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 1st, 2010.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/84133/blasphemy-laws-58-of-women-booked-are-muslims/

The shame of Aasia Bibi’s blasphemy charade

Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer has gone to a Sheikhupura jail where a poor Christian woman bhatta mazdoor (brick-kiln labourer) has been sentenced to death by the sessions judge. She was accused of having blasphemed against the Holy Prophet (pbuh). The governor, unexpectedly for a politician, called it an outrage and has pledged to draft an amnesty letter to the president asking him to pardon Aasia Bibi. Most other politicians have kept quiet while human rights workers and NGOs working for women’s rights have protested at yet another shameful prosecution under the universally condemned blasphemy law in Pakistan.
Aasia Bibi did hard labour for the local bricklaying industry in Nankana Sahib and had the usual complaint about unfair and violent labour practices. She, however, also ran the gauntlet of living in the midst of an increasingly narrow-minded Muslim community of poor labourers presided over by a bigoted blasphemy law-loving cleric. Two reasons are related to why she was entrapped by an equally colluding police: that she was provoked by other women drawing water when they said that she was ‘napaak’ (impure); and that she had asserted to other women that the meat of Muslim qurbani (sacrifice) was haram (prohibited) for her.
Whatever the reason for her entrapment, the politician was stunned into silence. Only the Punjab governor proved that he was not a mere drawing room liberal but had the courage to rise to Aasia Bibi’s defence. No one from among the big politicians from small parties like the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Awami National Party raised their voice even after there was international outrage led by the Pope at the Vatican. The PPP, which had just handed over the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) to a cleric of the pro-Taliban ferocious variety, was loath to follow Governor Taseer’s example.
The PML-N was expected to stay out of it — because of its past role in stiffening the accursed law further — reaping mileage when the clergy was to bare it fangs at Governor Taseer, although Nawaz Sharif had gone to a Christian charity school and had probably seen members of his family visit the city’s Christian charity hospital. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah criticised the governor’s action with his ear cocked to what the Sipah-e-Sahaba would say about the case. The clergy did not take long to respond. There was a collective frog chorus saying the blasphemy law could not be changed after a column appeared in this newspaper in which it was argued that the law be repealed. The Barelvis, crushed by the Taliban in numerous suicide attacks, came out saying Aasia Bibi could not be pardoned because pardon itself was un-Islamic.
It takes eight to nine years for a person convicted under the blasphemy law to get out of jail after a final benign judgement by the Supreme Court. The sessions judge, in most cases himself a bigot, is usually scared into handing out a conviction by the hostile madrassa clergy standing outside his court and baying for blood. Aasia Bibi, while agreeing to ask for pardon, has also appealed the case at the High Court; but the bitter truth is that finally it is the Supreme Court where ‘justice’ is delivered in the midst of a most defamatory campaign by concerned states at the international level. With their hopes at an end, human rights workers led by the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Asma Jahangir, have recommended that all blasphemy cases be heard at the High Court level instead of the sessions.
After the massacre of the Gojra Christians on the charge of blasphemy in 2009, the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Human Rights had urged the government to re-examine the blasphemy law and improve its procedure. No one in the committee was convinced that anything could be done. In the past, procedural changes such as making blasphemy cases subject to the scrutiny of the divisional commissioner before making arrests and registering FIRs have been ignored. Minorities are increasingly under pressure from the mischief of this deeply-flawed law and there is no one who would agitate the way some of us are agitating for the release of Aafia Siddiqi from an American jail.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 23rd, 2010.