BONA FIDE REFUGEE BIBI NEEDS HELP

WE have a refugee program that’s helped plenty of frauds. Let’s now use it to help a real refugee – a Christian woman whom mobs want to murder.

In fact, why hasn’t the Morrison government already offered Asia Bibi asylum?

Asia Bibi is a Christian farm worker in Muslim Pakistan and a mother of five.

Nine years ago she went to pick fruit in a field with Muslim neighbours. It was hot and at midday she drank from a well.

That other workers screamed that by dipping her cup in the water, this Christian was making it unclean for Muslims. She should convert, they said.

Bibi’s retort was to seal her fate: “What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?”

The women complained to their imam, who accused Bibi of blasphemy. A mob beat her up in front of her children.

Police rescued her but then threw her in jail. For eight years she was on death row, sentenced to die for insulting Islam.

Two politicians who protested against this barbarity were assassinated, but last week Pakistan’s High Court finally dismissed the charges and said Bibi could walk free.

She couldn’t. Huge mobs whipped up by Muslim hardliners rioted around Pakistan, demanding Bibi hang and threatening her relatives. Her lawyer fled the country, her family went into hiding and Bibi was kept in jail.

Let the government finally use the refugee program for exactly the kind of people it was meant to save. Save Asia Bibi.