Rawalpindi: A court in Pakistan has sentenced to death a woman over allegedly blasphemous messages sent via WhatsApp and Facebook. Aneeqa Ateeq, 26, was found guilty and given a death sentence by a court in Rawalpindi after a complaint was registered against her under Pakistan’s draconian cybercrime and blasphemy laws
According to the chargesheet, Ateeq, 26, met her accuser, a fellow Pakistani, online in 2019 through a mobile gaming app and the pair began corresponding over WhatsApp. He accused her of sending blasphemous caricatures of holy prophets, making remarks about “holy personages” on WhatsApp and using her Facebook account to transmit blasphemous material to other accounts. In doing so, she “deliberately and intentionally defiles sacred personalities and insulted the religious beliefs of Muslims”, according to the chargesheet.
Ateeq said that she is a practising Muslim and denied all the charges. During the trial, Ateeq told the court that she believed the complainant intentionally dragged her into a religious discussion so he could collect evidence and take “revenge” after she refused to be friendly with him. The court found her guilty, gave her to a 20-year sentence and ordered her to be hanged. Ateeq’s lawyer said: “I can’t comment on the judgment as the issue is very sensitive.”
Pakistan is an Islamic state and has some of the harshest blasphemy laws in the world, regularly handing down death sentences. In practice executions are not carried out and the accused spend their lives in jail. However, blasphemy trials in Pakistan are highly dangerous, with the accused often killed by vigilantes before courts reach a verdict on their cases, while judges, fearful of the implications, rarely acquit the accused and are often pressured into reaching guilty verdicts.
Evidence in many of the cases has been thrown into doubt. Pastor Zafar Bhatti, Pakistan’s longest-serving blasphemy prisoner, who was been accused of sending blasphemous text messages abusing the prophet Muhammad’s mother, has alleged the texts were sent by a number that did not belong to him. Bhatti was recently sentenced to death for the charges.
In recent years social media has become the new frontier for blasphemy cases. The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), passed in 2016, gave the government greater powers to control content posted on social media, including content deemed blasphemous.
Blasphemy remains highly sensitive issue in Pakistan. Last month a Sri Lankan national working in a factory in Pakistan was beaten to death and his body was set alight by a mob after he was accused of committing blasphemy by removing religious posters from the factory walls.
According to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, about 80 people in Pakistan are in prison for blasphemy, with at least half sentenced to death, though there have been no executions.
