Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Pakistan: 'WhatsApp blasphemy' death sentence reinforces dangerous trend
A woman was sentenced to death this week after being convicted of sending a "blasphemous" text message and caricatures of Prophet Muhammad via WhatsApp.
Aneeqa Ateeq, a 26-year-old Muslim woman, was arrested in May 2020 and charged with posting "blasphemous material" as her WhatsApp status, according to a summary issued by the court. A man urged her to change it, but she instead forwarded the material to him, it said.
Caricatures of Muhammad are forbidden by Islam.
The court in the city of Rawalpindi found Ateeq guilty, gave her a 20-year jail sentence and ordered her to be "hanged by her neck till she is dead."
The death sentence is subject to confirmation by the Lahore High Court.
'Revenge' for refusing 'to be friendly'?
Ateeq, who has stated that she is a practicing Muslim, denied the charges.
During the trial, Ateeq told the court that she believed the complainant, Hasnat Farooq, deliberately pulled her into a religious discussion so he could implicate her and take "revenge" after she refused "to be friendly" with him.
Farooq contended that the accused shared the allegedly blasphemous material as a WhatsApp status and refused to delete it when he confronted her on the messaging platform.
She "deliberately and intentionally defiles sacred righteous personalities and insulted the religious beliefs of Muslims," according to the charge sheet.
Legal experts, however, said no proper legal aid was provided to Ateeq during the trial.
"The defense lawyer failed to defend her during the entire trial period and even admitted her crime in the court proceedings, which led to Ateeq's death sentence," said Saiful Malook, a senior lawyer who represented Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who spent years on death row following blasphemy allegations before she was acquitted by the nation's top court in 2019.
Blasphemy to settle petty disputes and personal vendettas
Blasphemy is a sensitive topic in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, where about 97% of the 180 million inhabitants are Muslim.
In 1947, Pakistan inherited the blasphemy laws from its British colonial rulers, who had made it a criminal offense to commit "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religious belief."
In later decades, the Islamic military dictator General Zia-ulHaq introduced extensions of the laws between 1977 and 1988, including life imprisonment for people found guilty of defiling or desecrating the Holy Quran. Later, the death penalty was declared mandatory for anyone blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad.
According to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, about 80 people are known to be jailed in Pakistan on blasphemy charges — half of whom face life in prison or the death penalty.
People have been lynched and even killed following allegations of insulting Islam or the Prophet Muhammad.
In December, a Sri Lankan working in a factory in the eastern business hub of Sialkot was killed by an enraged mob over blasphemy suspicions, an incident that grabbed global headlines.
Activists and rights groups believe that Pakistan's blasphemy laws are draconian and are often misused.
The laws are often employed in cases that have little to do with blasphemy and are used to settle petty disputes and personal vendettas. Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis — a minority Islamic sect — are often victimized as a result, they point out.
"The current version of the blasphemy law is indeed draconian. It is often misused, abused and exploited by individuals for their own ulterior motives and vested interests," Tahira Abdullah, a human rights activist, told DW.
Amending the 'untouchable laws'
Rights organizations have long called on the government to amend or repeal the contentious laws.
"The law should be amended, and, at the very minimum, there is a need to amend the procedural aspects of the Pakistan Penal Code Sections. For example, we need to change FIR filing process, enforcement of the 2017 law for the protection of the accused and witnesses and the judges' protection. The misuse of the cybercrime law (PECA 2016 law) also needs to be stopped," Abdullah said.
"No law, including the blasphemy law, is untouchable," she added.
Conservative and right-wing groups, however, have vociferously opposed allowing even a slight amendment to the blasphemy laws.
Ayesha Ijaz Khan, a lawyer and columnist, told DW that it was impossible to have a rational conversation on the issue given the prevailing climate of fear.
"It is impossible to speak freely about matters tied to religion in Pakistan, although calls for reform have cited examples from other Muslim-majority countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, where prison sentences for blasphemy vary from 3 to 5 years and do not carry the death penalty," she said.
Anti-blasphemy politics by religious-political groups
Abdullah said Pakistani politicians appeared to lack the courage to tackle the problem. "They are too afraid of the noisy street power of the mullahs and religious-political parties like the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP)," the expert underlined.
TLP is a largely Barelvi (a sect in Islam) party, founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. The core ideology of this party revolves around the "finality of Prophet Muhammad" and the protection of Pakistan's blasphemy laws.
"Groups like TLP have been used over the years for shortterm political gain while overlooking the damage they do to the fabric of society and rule of law," Khan said. She noted that the group had protested against the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 2017 after the release of a proposed new version of an oath to be taken by lawmakers that omitted mention of the Prophet Muhammad.
"The state capitulated to their demands, emboldening them. Later, this allowed them to demand the expulsion of the French ambassador over offensive cartoons of Prophet Muhammad published in France in 2020, she noted.
Multiple reasons for the rise in blasphemy cases
At the time of the 2017 protests, Prime Minister Imran Khan — who was then in the opposition — had sided with the protesters instead of with the then government, the lawyer said. "This came back to haunt him when they created mayhem again during his rule."
Abdullah said the TLP's cynical manipulation of the blasphemy law to gain political objectives was not the only reason for the increasing number of blasphemy-linked court cases and vigilante killings.
"Other factors include the misuse of religion for personal ulterior motives, the ignorance of the masses regarding the Quranic injunctions on the subject, the fear factor among witnesses, judges and lawyers, and the absence of political will to focus on the problems in the law itself," she said.
Another big reason, Abdullah said, is "the ease with which vigilante mobs are permitted to carry out extrajudicial killings of blasphemy-accused individuals and then get away with impunity."
this virus."
South African virologist Wolfgang Preiser told DW that the behavior of the omicron variant gives hope that the pandemic could become endemic. But he added that it could only be achieved when most of the population has a primary immunity from a previous infection or vaccination.
"I still hope we can get around regular booster shots," Preiser said.
"If another variant doesn't come as a nasty surprise, then we can keep our immunity up by natural means via regular reinfections with the coronavirus," Preiser added.
'Good news' for Africa?
The comparatively mild infections caused by the omicron variant have proved to be good news for African countries where infections have been rising — and have also given scientists hope of a possible end to the pandemic.
"This is very good news," the Ghanaian epidemiologist Fred Binka told DW. "Viruses have two major characteristics: They have virulence, and they also have the transmission capabilities."
"They either mutate and gain strength in the transmissibility or their virulence," Binka said. "So, when they become very transmissible, you have the lower virulence."
Binka sounded upbeat, adding: "It is obvious that the pandemic is coming to an end, the virus has now established itself, and it will be endemic and be here forever." He predicted that COVID-19 will become a typical disease "that we can live with and treat."
WHO urges caution
According to the World Health Organization, the relatively mild infections do not mean that the world is out of the danger zone yet.
This week, WHO chief Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that the pandemic is nowhere near over. "Omicron may be less severe, on average, but the narrative that it is a mild disease is misleading," Tedros said.
"Make no mistake: Omicron is causing hospitalizations and deaths, and even the less-severe cases are inundating health facilities," he added.
Globally, deaths continue to rise. In Africa, there are still concerns about the impact of the pandemic, with vaccinations rates being the lowest in the world. Only 7% of Africa's population has received a COVID jab.
"If you get to a situation where nearly everyone has had it or has been vaccinated, you can relax," Preiser said.
Preiser said African countries, including South Africa, would need to keep pushing for populations to get vaccinated.
Binka also said remaining vigilant was key. "Caution is the order of the day," Binka said, adding that not all details about Omicron "has been documented, so let's wait another six months and see what will happen."
African children at higher risk
The cautious optimism from the African scientists comes after another study published in JAMA Pediatrics and led by a University of Pittsburgh infectious diseases epidemiologist found that children hospitalized with COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa are dying at a faster rate than in the US and Europe.
According to the study, children of all ages with comorbidities — including high blood pressure, chronic lung diseases, hematological disorders and cancer — were more likely to die.
"Although our study looked at data from earlier in the pandemic, the situation hasn't changed much for the children of Africa," said lead author Jean B. Nachega, an associate professor of infectious diseases and
microbiology and epidemiology at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health.
"If anything, it is expected to be worsening with the global emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant," Nachega said.
The professor called on officials to urgently increase COVID- 19 vaccinations and therapeutic interventions for eligible at-risk children and adolescents in Africa.
On Wednesday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa opened a COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing facility. The NantSA plant located in Brackenfell, Western Cape, will be manufacturing second-generation vaccines.
"Africa should no longer be last in line to access vaccines against pandemics," Ramaphosa said at the facility's opening.
bers, even under the most difficult circumstances," Yasumasa
Kimura, UNICEF's India representative, told DW.