12/18/2023 0 Comments Blasphemous story explainedIn the context of the troubled law of blasphemy, 15 this editorial reflects on the ramifications of a 2019/2020 case in Indonesia where a mentally ill woman, Suzethe Margaret, was arrested, charged with blasphemy and detained as a result of entering a mosque with her hair uncovered, wearing leather sandals and in the company of a pet dog. This is a fundamental issue of human rights and a challenge for the administration of the criminal law, especially when public feelings run strongly in the locality where the accused person engaged in the conduct in question. If the person is psychotically unwell and thereby unable to appreciate why they have been arrested or the nature of the criminal justice process, or to participate meaningfully in their trial, or at the time of the offending to understand the nature of their conduct or that it is wrong, it is important that they be streamed as quickly as possible into the health system and routed away from the criminal justice system upon it being established that their mental illness symptomatology has had the requisite consequences for their criminal responsibility. When a person charged with blasphemy is mentally ill, the danger of abuse of the charge is compounded because there is a real risk that the individual concerned either lacks capacity to stand trial or suffers from mental impairment/insanity. This has occurred on occasion in both Indonesia and Pakistan, 14 amongst other countries. Thus there is a danger that such charges can be preferred indiscriminately, harshly or for collateral motives in an ideological environment in which there is an atmosphere requiring retribution for what is perceived as a failure to respect religious values and practices. However, inevitably the criteria for establishing the charges are subjective – they depend on what is regarded by a court as offensive – and the penalties for the charges, especially in countries such as Pakistan, can be dire. The purpose of blasphemy laws is to protect against offence, derision, disrespect and harassment on the ground of religion, and thereby to maintain community harmony and respect for religious values and practice. 12 In September 2019, the same appellate court acquitted a Pakistani man sentenced to death in 2002, who by that time had spent 17 years awaiting his execution. 11 She has now fled to Canada, and threats have been made against the lives of the appellate judges. In October 2018, the Pakistan Supreme Court overturned the 2010 conviction of a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who had been found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death after drinking water from a cup that she handed to Muslim co-workers. There have been two high-profile instances in Pakistan where after many years the Supreme Court has overturned convictions that had placed the accused person’s life in grave jeopardy. In addition, the penalties for offending can be of the highest order, unless ultimately a conviction is overturned by appellate courts, usually after the expiration of a considerable period of time, during which the person has been in custody. In 2011, when the Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian, spoke out against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, he was shot dead in Islamabad, underlining the threat faced by critics of blasphemy laws. 7 He remained in prison under sentence of execution until 2018 8 when he was released after a decision of the Lahore High Court quashing his conviction on evidentiary grounds. One of the more troubling contemporary cases in which blasphemy charges have been deployed occurred in 2014, when a Scottish grandfather of 12, Mohammad Asghar, who had paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to death by a Rawalpindi court for blasphemy arising from bizarre letters he had written, and then in 2016 was shot in the back by a prison guard in his cell. 4 Controversies have also been ventilated about the operation of blasphemy/apostasy laws in Malaysia 5 and Afghanistan. 2 However, in recent years they have been utilised in concerningly politicised circumstances, particularly in Indonesia 3 and Pakistan. 1 There is a growing international impetus to abolish blasphemy laws. Such offences exist in many countries, including to this day at common law in Australia, but are rarely deployed. Of their very nature, the criminal charges of blasphemy and blasphemous libel are both serious and highly emotive.
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