A 26-year-old Muslim woman in Pakistan was reportedly sentenced to death on Wednesday for sending a blasphemous text message and caricature of Prophet Muhammad on Whatsapp.
According to reports, a woman named Aneeqa Ateeq was arrested in May 2020. She was charged with posting “blasphemous material” as her WhatsApp status.
The court noted that a friend asked Ateeq to change the status but she forwarded it to it him instead.
Aneeqa Ateeq Gets Death Penalty
Caricatures of Muhammed are forbidden by Islam and blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Muslim-majority nation Pakistan.
There are strict laws prohibiting such acts and it can carry a potential death sentence. The sentence against Ateeq was announced by a court in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
The court ordered her to be “hanged by her neck till she is dead”. She was also given a 20-year jail sentence.
As per reports, more than 80 people have been jailed in Pakistan on charges of blasphemy.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom states that half of them face life in prison or are given death penalty. Many times, the cases are about Muslims accusing Muslims of blasphemy but a lot of the case involve religious minorities.
According to multiple reports, more than 75 people were allegedly killed on being accused of blasphemy.
Reportedly, there have been multiple cases where people tried to settle personal scores by blaming each other of blasphemy.
Last year in December, a Sri Lankan man who worked as a factory worker in Pakistan was allegedly beaten to death and was set ablaze by a mob after he was accused of blasphemy.
A report by IANS from 2020 states that Pakistan gave death penalty to about 584 people in 2019. 17 of them were convicted of blasphemy and 15 were executed*. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had mentioned the numbers in their reports. The report added, ” The state of human rights across the country is indeed dire.”
* Though no judicial execution has been carried out under these laws, many of those accused, their lawyers and any persons speaking against blasphemy laws and proceedings have become victims of lynchings or street vigilantism in Pakistan. More than 75 people were murdered for blasphemy between 1987 and 2017.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
