Pakistan’s authorities appear to have found a solution to at least one of their problems in the international arena: Aasiya Noreen, or “Asia Bibi,” a 50-year-old Christian woman and mother of five who has been on death row for six years for allegedly insulting Muhammad.
Instead of executing Asia Bibi and further advertising to the international community that theirs is a savage and backwards nation — and instead of releasing her and provoking millions of angry Muslims to turn on the government and accuse it of supporting “apostasy” — Pakistan’s authorities appear to be letting time, wretched conditions, severe maltreatment, and beatings slowly kill her.
Recent reports state that she is deathly ill and “so weak she could hardly walk.” Mission Network News says that Asia Bibi has “internal bleeding, abdominal pain, and is vomiting blood. If she does not receive immediate medical care, she could die.”
According to Bruce Allen of Forgotten Missionaries International, “She suffers terrible pain, and she can hardly eat. … Here’s this woman, languishing in a prison under this death sentence for a crime that she vehemently denies.”
In June 2009, while working as a farm laborer on a hot day, Asia Bibi was told to fetch water. Because she had drunk some of the water, the Muslim workers refused it: both the cup and the water were, they said, unclean because a Christian had touched them. (See this video of an Egyptian cleric saying how disgusted he is by Christians and how he could not drink from a cup that was merely touched by a Christian.)
Before the “cup” incident, it seems, a feud between Asia and one of her Muslim neighbors concerning property damage had existed.
After the “cup” incident, her enemies and some of the Muslim workers complained to a Muslim cleric. They accused Asia Bibi of making insulting statements about the Muslim prophet, Muhammad. Her official “crime,” therefore, which she vehemently denies, is “insulting” the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
Shortly after the complaint was registered, a mob stormed her home and severely beat her and her family, including her children. They put a noose around her neck and dragged her through the streets. She was then arrested; and in November 2010, a Punjabi court fined her and sentenced her to death by hanging, in accordance to Section 295-C, which prohibits on pain of death any insult against the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
Because her case attracted attention and condemnation from the international community, six years later, she has not been executed. Instead, however, sick, isolated and regularly beaten by prison guards and Muslim inmates, she has evidently been left to rot to death.
In late 2011, a female prison-officer — assigned to provide security for Asia — was discovered beating her, “allegedly because of the Muslim officer’s anti-Christian bias, while other staff members deployed for her security looked on in silence.”
In late December 2013, Asia Bibi, a Catholic, sent a message to Pope Francis, saying,
Only God will be able to free me. … I also hope that every Christian has been able to celebrate the Christmas just past with joy. Like many other prisoners, I also celebrated the birth of the Lord in prison in Multan, here in Pakistan… I would have liked to be in St. Peter’s for Christmas to pray with you, but I trust in God’s plan for me and hopefully it will be achieved next year.
It was not. In 2014, a Pakistani court upheld her death penalty. Recently, Pope Francis called for clemency for Asia Bibi while the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom pressed the Obama administration to designate Pakistan a “country of particular concern.”
Last year, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, citing Asia Bibi in particular, as well others, called for the use of the $900 million in U.S. aid to Pakistan as leverage to help persecuted religious minorities. If these funds are not used as leverage, nearly $1 billion in U.S. aid can be seen as “rewarding” Pakistan for being openly unjust to its minorities….

mortimer says
Aid to Pakistan and any Muslim-majority country should be linked to progress in human rights.
John Thomas says
We must be mad!
Pakistan is set to receive £1.17bn in support from the UK between 2011 and 2015, making it one of the largest recipients of bilateral aid.
Annual spending will increase from £215m in 2010-2011 to £405m in 2014-15.
Aardvark says
The cost of a military operation to remove all nuclear capability from Pakistan would be far less then 1.17 billion pounds. And it would be a one-off price, rather than the regular contributions we currently make and will continue to make for many years…
Wake up, Cameron! Stop throwing my tax money away!
Fat Tony says
So what you’re basically saying is that NO aid should go to any Muslim-majority country……
ecosse1314 says
Yes Tony……do you have a problem with aid being conditional on how countries like pakistan treat their minorities.
voegelinian says
Unfortunately, Fat Tony, it’s likely from mortimer’s soft statements about Muslims in the past, that he meant that seriously & sincerely, not in the more appropriately sarcastic way you meant it.
RonaldB says
Your implication is that no Muslim-majority country has a satisfactory record in human rights.
Fair enough. If the shoe fits, wear it. Let me spell that out for the denser readers. Under Mortimer’s statement, every Muslim-majority country will be evaluated for its observance of human rights before it receives aid. Your observation implies you don’t think any Muslim-majority country observes human rights. I can’t argue convincingly against that proposition.
Let me point out that aid to Pakistan is actually tribute money, extracted on the idea that Pakistan has multiple nuclear weapons. If the Pakistani government unraveled, the theory goes, the security for nuclear weapons would deteriorate, and the weapons would become available to terrorists. Thus, the aid is for the purpose of shoring up the rickety Pakistani government as a bribe to not allow terrorists to obtain their nukes.
The appropriate action by the US would be to gradually decrease aid to Pakistan, while strengthening its ties to India, a free, democratic country that Pakistan considers its mortal enemy.
Jaladhi says
I think all kinds od aid to Muslim countries should be totally cut off until they start living like humans and respect all human beings. These monsters should be sent to Mars whee they can have their mayhem among them – killing each other off!!
Amazing the world cannot and refuses to see the real murderous behavior of Muslims and Islam!! This is not just the PCMC libtards but a majority of regular sane people who just cannot tell the truth about Muslims!
Jaladhi says
ugh typos:
I think all kinds of aid to Muslim countries should be totally cut off until they start living like humans and respect all human beings. These monsters should be sent to Mars where they can have their mayhem among them – killing each other off!!
Amazing the world cannot and refuses to see the real murderous behavior of Muslims and Islam!! This is not just the PCMC libtards but also a majority of regular sane people who just cannot tell the truth about Muslims!
Hope no more typos!! LOL…
voegelinian says
“I think all kinds of aid to Muslim countries should be totally cut off until they start living like humans and respect all human beings.”
Whenever a formulation is uttered or written that has telltale hints of asymptotic softness, it’s always a fun game to substitute “Nazi” for “Muslim”, to expose the utter untenability of such formulations. Thus:
“I think all kinds of aid to Nazi countries should be totally cut off until Nazis start living like humans and respect all human beings.”
No one in their right mind would utter or write such a formulation (unless they were Neville Chamberlain, perhaps). And yet, even in the Counter-Jihad we find such formulations popping up rather too discomfittingly often (cf. also mortimer’s twitch above), in one way or another, in various permutations edging in sideways to avoid the more frontal candor of which the PC MC, unlike the asymptotic (hence the useful distinction) is unashamed.
We’re not quite done yet: the problem is then revealed to be even far, far worse than my fun game exposes; for we know (or should know by now), that Islam is far more pernicious and dangerous than even Nazism is.
Marty says
Pakistan, like its source of evil inspiration is one of the vilest shitholes on Earth.
It’s founder, Mo Jinnah (spelling?) was a secular pro Westerner who drank
& married a fashionable Westernised wife.
He visualised Pakistan as a safe safe place for mohammedons, not an
islamist cesspit.
It should have no aid from any civilised nation, since it spends the cash on nuclear weapons & promoting terrorism in India & Afghanistan.
voegelinian says
No; no such animal exists as the “Westernized Muslim” — although many apparently Westernized Muslims do exist; enough to fool many even in the Counter-Jihad, unfortunately.
Jaladhi says
Oh Marty, Marty, Marty, how can you say that about the land of “pure” (yeah pure murderers) – Pakistan where only the pious Muslims live! (sarc off)
Jinnah may have been drinking wine and all Westernized but he was not secular. It is because of Congress Party’s secular vision he broke off with them and demanded a separate country for Muslims. As for his vision of Pakistan, I don’t think he would be abhorring the Islamic hellhole he created. That is a standard Muslim mind!
Any amount of education and adoption of Western ways change a Muslim – they always revert back to the 7th century barbarism from where they emanated!!
RonaldB says
Could you not say that Jinnah did India a huge favor by getting rid of a significant number of Muslims from Indian territory? Would India have been able to have its identity as a free, tolerant, developing country if it still had all the Muslims who are now in Pakistan?
Jaladhi says
Yes in hindsight Jinnah did a great favor to India by removing almost more than 100 million Muslims from India. But at the same time Indian leaders committed the worst blunder in history by allowing 35 to 40 million Muslims to remain in India who have grown four times to 150 million. Now, India is again in danger of Balkanization from Muslims in a very near future. Don’t be under the impression that Indian Muslims are any different than Pakistani Muslims. They are the same and are biding their time. Indian leaders looking through the rose colored glasses of secularism don’t see the danger(or at least they never admit it).
India could still have been a secular nation, even after sending all Muslims to Pakistan, a country for Muslims that their leaders wanted. At that time all Hindus from Pakistan should have come to India. In the last 60 years or so the Hindu population in Pakistan declined from more than 20% to about 2 – 3 %. What happened to them – mostly killed or converted or emigrated. Contrast that to Muslim population in India, which quadrupled in the same time!! Still India is blamed in the West when some Muslims get killed in communal riots started by Muslims themselves. Even in a Hindu dominated India, Hindus don’t have right to defend themselves – this is the hypocrisy of the West!!
I guess thats the difference between Hinduism and Islam – one accepts diversity with open arms and the other just kills them off!1
Marty says
I was trying to be nice about just one mohammedan.
There must be one decent one somewhere
Still, at least India’s a better place thanks to Jinnah
nacazo says
$ 0.00 money to pakistan until asia bibi is released.
RonaldB says
And what would be the reason for resuming the payment of unearned money to Pakistan once it is cut off?
Angemon says
This is common sense – which is probably why it’s ignored by Obama…
Jack Diamond says
This has been going on a long time, the same old story–the open season on the small minority of Pakistan’s Christians, legal and extra-legal, per the shari’a; the double-game of Pakistan’s government and ISI; the billions in largesse from the United States dating from the Cold War. Long past time the story changes.
1993. Salamat Masih, 11, Manzoor Masih, 38, and Rehmat Masih, 44, are accused of writing blasphemous remarks on a wall belonging to a mosque. Although the mother of Salamat Masih said that her son did not know how to read. 1994. Manzoor Masih is gunned and killed outside the District and Sessions Court after exiting a hearing in April. Salamat and Rehmat Masih injured but survive. Bishop John Joseph (Roman Catholic Diocese of Faisalabad) speaks out against the attack.
1996. Ayub Masih arrested for blasphemy. Masih, a Pakistani Christian then age 26, was arrested after allegedly telling a Muslim neighbor to read Salman Rushdie’s The Satantic Verses and that Christianity was “correct.” Mr. Masih denied making the statements that formed the basis for his conviction. Following Mr. Masih’s arrest, the neighbor was allocated Mr. Masih’s land and the entire Christian population of the village was evacuated. The complainant later shot and injured Mr. Masih in the trial court, but was never prosecuted by Pakistani authorities and continued as the main witness against Mr. Masih.
During Mr. Masih’s trial, religious extremists threatened to kill Mr. Masih, his attorneys, and the judge if Mr. Masih was not convicted. A Pakistani trial court judge had recently been murdered after acquitting two men of blasphemy. Mr. Masih received a death sentence by hanging. Mr. Masih was incarcerated in Multan, Pakistan and suffered attacks from other prisoners, denial of medical care for severe skin allergies and hemorrhoids, and solitary confinement in an 8 x 8 x 8-foot cell where the temperature often exceeded 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
After the death sentence for Masih, Brother John Joseph shot himself in a final desperate act of protest he hoped would end, once and for all, the atrocities being perpetrated against the tiny Christian community. It not only did not, Muslims rioted during the funeral and attacked the Christian neighborhood.
After pressure from abroad, in 2002, Masih was released and given asylum in the United States.
What changes besides the names?
http://www.dawn.com/news/589587/high-profile-blasphemy-cases-in-the-last-63-years
http://www.freedom-now.org/campaign/ayub-masih/
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/bishop.john.joseph.a.life.that.inspires.beyond.death/29845.htm
Jack Diamond says
This has been going on a long time, the same old story–the open season on the small minority of Pakistan’s Christians, legal and extra-legal, per the shari’a; the double-game of Pakistan’s government and ISI; the billions in largesse from the United States dating from the Cold War. Long past time the story changes.
1993. Salamat Masih, 11, Manzoor Masih, 38, and Rehmat Masih, 44, are accused of writing blasphemous remarks on a wall belonging to a mosque. Although the mother of Salamat Masih said that her son did not know how to read. 1994. Manzoor Masih is gunned and killed outside the District and Sessions Court after exiting a hearing in April. Salamat and Rehmat Masih injured but survive. Bishop John Joseph (Roman Catholic Diocese of Faisalabad) speaks out against the attack.
1996. Ayub Masih arrested for blasphemy. Masih, a Pakistani Christian then age 26, was arrested after allegedly telling a Muslim neighbor to read Salman Rushdie’s The Satantic Verses and that Christianity was “correct.” Mr. Masih denied making the statements that formed the basis for his conviction. Following Mr. Masih’s arrest, the neighbor was allocated Mr. Masih’s land and the entire Christian population of the village was evacuated. The complainant later shot and injured Mr. Masih in the trial court, but was never prosecuted by Pakistani authorities and continued as the main witness against Mr. Masih.
During Mr. Masih’s trial, religious extremists threatened to kill Mr. Masih, his attorneys, and the judge if Mr. Masih was not convicted. A Pakistani trial court judge had recently been murdered after acquitting two men of blasphemy. Mr. Masih received a death sentence by hanging. Mr. Masih was incarcerated in Multan, Pakistan and suffered attacks from other prisoners, denial of medical care for severe skin allergies and hemorrhoids, and solitary confinement in an 8 x 8 x 8-foot cell where the temperature often exceeded 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
After the death sentence for Masih, Brother John Joseph shot himself in a final desperate act of protest he hoped would end, once and for all, the atrocities being perpetrated against the tiny Christian community. It not only did not, Muslims rioted during the funeral and attacked the Christian neighborhood.
After pressure from abroad, in 2002, Masih was released and given asylum in the United States.
What changes besides the names?
(sources Dawn News, Freedom Now)
Jack Diamond says
ehh, double post because of inserting links in the first delayed it posting. I waited…I did…
duh_swami says
I can’t seem to find where in the US Constitution it calls for giving taxpayers money as ‘foreign aid’ to any foreign country…
NotToBe says
Nice to note that India is going to take in persecuted minorities in Pakistan , including Christians:
http://www.dawn.com/news/1198646
Write to your politicians says
I have written to my local politicians, I have written to the newspapers, I have tried to bring attention to this issue of Asia Bibi, and yet no one is willing to touch it. Why is the media really just a group-think for the benefit of Islam. Surely this case brings to bear how many more times Islam is evil when compared to the evil we have seen with Nazism and communism. Is Asia Bibi going to be our Joan of Arc? Surely there comes a time when we must confront evil.
solange says
Languishing in prison for a “crime” that should not be a crime, proving that this is indeed a very barbaric, savage and backward nation, no mater how you look at it, what a shame. If there is a “crime” it is that of this nation and the ideology of Islam.
Cartimandua says
Pope! Do better for your Christian brethren. So far, you are not doing too well.
Mike Holt (CEO RestoreAustralia) says
Our western governments have betrayed us…but We the People have long memories and those who have betrayed us will learn what karma means. Governments and tyrants can only push us so far until we rise up and take back what is ours.
Islam is the problem. Islam is being dealt a death blow…and islamists are doing it to themselves.