Pakistan court upholds death penalty for Christian woman convicted of blasphemy

(The Christian Science Monitor) A Pakistani high court has upheld the death sentence given to Asia Bibi, a jailed Christian woman convicted of blasphemy in 2010, whose case at the time played into an atmosphere of recrimination and spawned the murders of several prominent human rights and political figures.

Bibi’s lawyers had asked the Lahore High Court to overturn the death sentence, which was handed down after she had a row with Muslim women neighbors at a village well in Pakistan’s Punjab Province.

Bibi’s name and case have since become nearly synonymous with a sensitive national debate over blasphemy laws, which are not clearly defined and were further criminalized under the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s. The laws can carry the death penalty, though in Pakistan there has been an unofficial moratorium on the death sentence since 2008 and only one person has been executed.