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Anorak News | Asia Bibi: Boris Johnson seizes the opportunity to do the right thing

Asia Bibi: Boris Johnson seizes the opportunity to do the right thing

by | 13th, November 2018

Is there room in the country for the right sort of asylum seeker? The Daily Mail, a paper whose existence gave rise to thousands of Twitter accounts that use it to define everything they are not, leads with its support for Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman persecuted for her Christian beliefs and put on death row for eight years. Now released from that ordeal she faces the very real prospect of murder by Islamic extremists. Bibi’s crime was to be accused of being rude about the Muslim Prophet Muhammad as she argued with some Muslim women over a cup of water during a fruit harvest in 2010. She was soon beaten up, arrested, charged with blasphemy and sentenced to death by the hangman’s rope.

The case eventually came before Pakistan’s supreme court – yep, this one went to the very top. The judges said the accusations were “concoction incarnate”. In other words, the other women were liars. Bibi’s enemies had used her religion – she’s a Roman Catholic – against her to appeal to the county’s bigotry. It worked. For eight longs years and more it worked. It’s still working. Islamists want her dead. So is there room in the UK for Asia Bibi?

 

Asia Bibi

Daily Mail comes out in support of Asia Bibi – but why not the Guardian and other papers?

 

Wilson Chowdhry, of the British Pakistani Christian Association, says Britain is allegedly not offering Ms Bibi asylum because of fears of “potential unrest in the country”, as well as attacks on embassies. Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan refuses Bibi’s right to leave the country. Chowdhry says Khan is effectively “signing her death warrant”. Bibi’s lawyer has fled Pakistan.

Into the vacuum of Western indifference to the plight of a Catholic woman steps Boris Johnson. In a letter to the Home Secretary, the former foreign secretary who would be Prime Minister writes:

“I am well aware, as a former foreign secretary, of the constant threat to our overseas missions but we cannot allow the threat of violence to deter us from doing the right thing. I do not think it is a dignified position for the UK, given our historic links with Pakistan and the extent of our influence there, to look to others to do what we are allegedly nervous to do ourselves.”

Easy from the sidelines, no? Where was Boris when Asia Bibi was in prison? When a politico speaks it’s loaded with political ambition and vested interest. But the grandstanding and opportunism do not dismiss the point. Asia Bibi needs our help. It’s our duty to provide it. At a time when Donald Trump belches “America first”, promoting censorship and illiberalism with a policy that says the US will be fair to any country that is fair with it no matter how heinous their suppression of positive freedom, we need more than ever to amplify our belief in free speech, free expression and democracy. The Leader of the Free World has abdicated. Let’s fill the void.

Asia Bibi should be given safe haven in this country. If we want to go it alone post Brexit, this is how you show your worth. Boris Johnson, the Mail and everyone who values freedom, equality and liberty should demand Asia Bibi is granted asylum in the UK.

 



Posted: 13th, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink