Asia Bibi, a Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy after spending eight years on death row, has been transferred from a secret location near the capital to another in Karachi, but is still unable to leave the country to join her daughters in Canada, a friend said Saturday. Aman Ullah, who spoke to Asia Bibi by telephone Friday, said the 54-year-old Bibi is being held in a room in the southern port city. He said Bibi is frustrated and frightened, uncertain of when she will be able to leave Pakistan. “She has no indication of when she will leave … they are not telling her why she cannot leave,” said Aman Ullah,.
Aman Ullah has been a liaison between Bibi and European diplomats, who have sought to assist her. The Associated Press spoke to Bibi by telephone with Ullah’s assistance following her October acquittal, which was upheld last month. The acquittal should have given Bibi her freedom, but Aman Ullah said diplomats were told that her departure from Pakistan, where she feels her life would be in danger, would come not in the short term, but “in the medium term.” He said Bibi told him she is locked in one room of a house. “The door opens at food time only,” said Aman Ullah, and she is allowed to make phone calls in the morning and again at night. He said she usually calls her daughters. Bibi’s husband is with her, he said. “She is living with her family and given requisite security for safety,” Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said in an email. He said the government was responsible for taking “all possible measures” to protect her and her family, adding that “she is a free citizen after her release from jail and can move anywhere in Pakistan or abroad.” Aman Ullah, a rights activist, first began aiding those falsely charged with blasphemy when his wife was wrongly accused, and has since helped several people gain their freedom.
Published in Daily Times, February 10th 2019.
