I am starting a writing campaign. Every week we will focus on a different prisoner, a person in prison because of their faith. This week, I am going to focus on Asia Bibi.
DO NOT SEND INFO OR PICS ABOUT YOURSELF!!
Asia Bibi
Central Jail Multan
Multan City – Punjab
Pakistan
You can also write an email letter (to be sent in English) at this link or you can have it translated at this link. I recommend using the links because it is faster.
Join me in writing letters to Asia Bibi. Recent reports show her health is in extremely poor condition. Through cards, letters, and emails, let’s flood her with encouragement and prayer.
Asia Bibi is a prisoner in Pakistan. Sentenced to death over a cup of water and a religious question. Asia
Bibi has been imprisoned since 2009, in Pakistan, waiting for her appeal
to be considered. She will be the first Christian woman to be executed
under blasphemy law in Pakistan. All people
that are condemned, around 8,000, will be executed.
Asia Bibi is a Christian wife and mother. She worked in the fields for a Muslim family and alongside other Muslim women.
Her family is one of three Christian families in their village.
During a day’s work, Asia went to get water for the women to drink. The
Muslim women refused to drink because Asia had contaminated the water by being a Christian. That sparked a religious debate between the Muslim women and Christian Asia Bibi.
At
one point, Asia asked the women “Our Christ sacrificed His life for our
sins…Our Christ is alive. What has Muhammad done for you?” The women
grabbed and beat Asia then turned her over to a group of men. These men
dragged her into a locked room and pronounced over the mosque
loudspeakers that Asia Bibi’s face would be blackened and she would be
paraded through the village on a donkey.
Upon hearing this,
other Christians ran for the police who rescued Asia. However, local
Muslim leaders pressured the police into charging her with blasphemy.
Asia has been in prison ever since. Despite numerous appeals, lack of evidence on the prosecution’s side, two assassinations of political figures who supported her, her family being on the run, and the world watching, she is still sitting on death row. Languishing.
The latest, from British Pakistani Christian Association (June 2015), stated this about Asia Bibi:
Last
week, an emaciated, desperately ill mother of five endured a milestone, six years
since the brutal start of her incarceration that has led to her being left on death
row. The innocent victim of abuse in a land where innocence is no excuse
if you are of the wrong creed, Asia Bibi has languished for six years in prison.
She has wasted away as her appeal was delayed time and again and then rejected.
Her crime was to stand up for her Christian faith after her Muslim co-workers abused
her for an act of kindness on her part. A mob attacked her and her family,
sexually assaulting her daughters. She was taken into custody and sentenced
to death by an intimidated judge, cowed by the baying mob of Islamic fundamentalists
calling for her lynching, and has since endured crushing disappointment after disappointment,
apparent poisoning attempts, death threats, withholding of medical care and deep
isolation that has devestated her health.‘Six years have passed and the travesty of justice continues’,
said Wilson Chowdhry of British Pakistani Christians (BPC), ‘For
some time we have been told that there has been a moratorium on the
death penalty because of pressure from Western donors, but even before
this vanished at the end of last year, it has become clear that her
treatment was in effect a slow death sentence by neglect and worse, all
for a allegedly committing a crime that should not exist – blasphemy.’
Pakistan has lifted its moratorium on the death penalty after a terrorist bombing
of an army school late last year, saying it was so that they could execute terrorists.
However, after executing several terrorists, reports indicate that multiple senior
government and justice officials were told by powerful terrorist groups that any
further executions would result in deadly retribution. No more terrorists
have been executed, but the execution of others has continued full pelt.‘Asia Bibi is by no means the only Christian on death row for blasphemy’ Wilson
added. ‘There are a number of others, and there are
also other Christians who are in there for crimes they did not commit,
and are in effect there because they are Christians. One man who had
been imprisoned for over 2 decades from the age of 15 and who was well
known to be innocent of the crime he was convicted of was executed two
weeks ago. At his point of arrest as a child for a triple murder he did
not commit, he could or would not pay the police a bribe, was tortured
into confessing, and even when, after his false conviction, the two
witnesses recanted, saying they too had been tortured, he was still
taken out and hanged. The Pakistani state deliberately and wantonly
denied his lawyers the chance to provide evidence of his innocence and
perpetrated a monstrous miscarriage of justice. This is an absolute
travesty, especially when a reprieve was granted to a Muslim man
similarly tortured as a child into falsely confessing to a murder. The
moratorium was ostensibly lifted to execute terrorists, and in typical
Pakistan fashion, at least one innocent Christian ends up hanged instead
– whatever the reasons for this, whether it is to let Pakistan
authorities save face and cover up the fact that they have capitulated
to terrorists yet again, or whether they are cynically using the
sympathy from the West over the school bombing to deliberately execute
those they previously couldn’t do, it is completely unacceptable. I
call on the UK government to remonstrate with the Pakistani government
in the strongest possible terms over this deadly game of bait and
switch, and to free Asia Bibi and let her and her family escape to
safety.’
I am asking everyone to write/email letters of encouragement to Asia. Help her keep her spirits lifted and to feel the Holy Spirit. It won’t take but a minute. In addition, these letters may pressure the government to move on her situation and to let her go. Letters can do a lot. Join me in this campaign!
You can read a book on her case. It is called “Blasphemy.”
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