(Islamabad) A Muslim woman was sentenced to death on Wednesday in Pakistan for sending a text and cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, deemed “blasphemous”, on WhatsApp messaging.
Posted at 12:17 p.m.
Blasphemy is a highly sensitive subject in Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim country where those found guilty of offenses against Islam can face up to the death penalty, even if it has never been applied for this type of conviction. .
Aneeqa Ateeq, 26, was arrested in May 2020 and charged with sharing “blasphemous content” on WhatsApp, including cartoons, according to a summary released by the court.
The judgment was announced in the garrison town of Rawalpindi (north). The court ordered that Aneeqa Ateeq be “hung by the neck until death”, and also sentenced her to 20 years in prison.
About 80 people are imprisoned in Pakistan for blasphemy, half of whom have been sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty, according to the US Commission on Religious Freedom in the World.
Human rights defenders believe that accusations of blasphemy are regularly launched abusively to settle personal disputes. If they often concern Muslims, they also regularly target religious minorities, especially Christians, they point out.
In December, the Sri Lankan director of a factory in Pakistan was lynched and burned by an angry mob after being accused of blasphemy.