STRANGE THOUGH it is to say after a week of such international political violence, the person who most stays in the mind is Asia Bibi, who at the time of writing is still alive, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
The ultimate fate of Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who is unconscious after being shot through the skull in Tuscon, is unknown. Christina Green was shot dead in the same incident, at the age of only nine. And three Arizona ladies, all in their seventies, died at the “Congress On Your Corner” event. And so did John M Roll, a federal judge.
This deadly shooting happened on Saturday, January 8th. But stupidly, when looking at New York Timesheadlines yesterday morning I took "In Attack's Wake, Political Repercussions" to refer, not to horrible events in Tuscon, but to the assassination of Salman Taseer in Pakistan last Tuesday, January 4th.
In fact the headlines surrounding the two outrages are pretty similar. The concerns raised by the bloodshed are much the same. At the time of writing two fanatic gunmen are in custody at opposite ends of the earth. The worries about what extreme views are doing to national political discourse echo each other, although in the case of the Tuscon shooting those worries are expressed within the United States. In the case of Mr Salman’s assassination the criticisms of irresponsible extremist leaders and a craven government response to them seem to originate within the Pakistani diaspora – and no wonder.
On Saturday in Arizona the local sheriff Clarence W Dupnik had this to say: “Pretty soon we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.”
In the US the incendiary language of some Tea Party Republicans – not least of Sarah Palin – in the recent election is being examined just as the same politicians frantically disassociate themselves from this disaster.
In Pakistan there is no disassociating. Taseer was gunned down by a member of his own bodyguard because he had visited Asia Bibi in prison. His assassin has been warmly supported by extremists as a good Muslim.
Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old Christian mother of five, is on death row. She is one of the little people, with no natural allies within the political system, who were exposed to abuse when the tide of democracy and social order went out in Pakistan. She now lives at the heart of a nightmare. Asia Bibi was condemned to death on November 8th last year, under Pakistan’s newly reinforced blasphemy law. She has been in jail since June 2009. Her husband, Ashiq Masih, a labourer, and their five children who are aged between nine and 20, are on the run between Christian houses in Pakistan. Taseer, governor of the Punjab, seems to have been the last powerful person to hold out the hand of friendship to Asia Bibi.
It is perhaps because the roots of Asia Bibi’s terrible fate are so petty and so local that she lodges so stubbornly in the mind. She was working as an agricultural labourer in her local village in Punjab. The village elder told her to fetch water.
What happened next is much disputed – an argument over the relative merits of Islam and Christianity according to some, a refusal by Asia Bibi’s female Muslim co-workers to drink the water she had brought them, on the grounds that it was unclean having been touched by a non-Muslim, according to others. But the upshot was that the police who came to protect Asia Bibi ended up arresting her. She was charged under the blasphemy laws and convicted of having insulted the Prophet.
When Asia Bibi was sentenced to death by a municipal court last November, President Asif Ali Zardari, a close friend of Salman Taseer’s, ordered a ministerial review. This found the verdict unsound and recommended a presidential pardon. As Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch tartly pointed out last week, Zardari can be quite swift with pardons when it suits him.
For example, last May he pardoned the Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, within hours for his non-appearance at two corruption trials. But for Asia Bibi the presidential pardon never came. On December 30th the recommendations of the ministerial review were reversed. It became clear that the government had no intention of repealing or reversing Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which is used not just against the tiny Christian population but against Hindus and the members of the Ahmadi Muslim sect as well.
In fact – and this is culturally easy for Irish people to understand, coming as we do from a rural society where religion has always been our tribal marker – Pakistan’s blasphemy law is invoked in squabbles of the most minor and local nature.
Unfortunate people accused under it, and even their family members, have been summarily murdered. Asia Bibi knows that her life is not safe even in jail. The pope is one of the many who have appealed, in vain, for Asia Bibi’s life. It is probably impossible to help Asia Bibi; just as it is, hopefully, impossible to get her out of your mind once you have heard her story.