Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian who spent eight years on death row on blasphemy charges, has described trying to make a new life in Canada and her dreams of returning home.
While safe in Canada, which granted her a one-year stay after she was freed from jail, she has yet to taste true freedom. She does not speak either of Canada’s official languages, English or French, and is largely illiterate.
“Well, I haven’t visited Canada yet. I have stayed at home, mostly … I don’t go out much because of the cold and the snow,” the 48-year-old said.
Bibi was in France to promote her book Enfin Libre! (Finally Free!), co-written with the French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet.
She said she missed her sisters, brother, father and in-laws back home. But most of all having “four [distinct] seasons, my culture and my food!”
Bibi said she was hopeful things would change to allow her and her family – her husband, Ashiq, 58, and her daughters Eisham, 20, and Eisha, 21, who is disabled – to return to Pakistan one day. She also has three other children.
“I really hope for it, just the way I kept hope when I was in jail that one day I was going to be free,” said Bibi.
The allegations against Bibi date back to 2009, when Muslim labourers working with her in the fields refused to share their water because she was Christian.
An argument broke out and a woman went to a local cleric to accuse Bibi of committing blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad, an incendiary charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan. She was sentenced to death the following year but acquitted by the supreme court in 2018.
In her book, Bibi recounted how she was kept chained in prison and jeered at by other detainees.
A devout Catholic, she said on Tuesday that she had never committed blasphemy. “No way… I cannot even think of insulting any prophet. I didn’t say anything. It was all about a glass of water.”
In Canada, Bibi lives with her husband and daughters in a three-bedroom apartment in an undisclosed location. She said she had not recently received any direct threats.
“I did read in the newspapers that someone was threatening to kill me. But I just keep calm. I’m strong,” she said.
As for the immediate future, Bibi said she did not know where the family would go next. “I have not yet made up my mind,” she said. “I know the European Union is working very hard on my case and they are the ones who will decide where I am going to be living,” she said, adding she would “very likely” discuss possible French asylum at a meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Friday.
Bibi hopes one day to help other people persecuted for their beliefs. “I feel that all of us, we should unite to help those people who are imprisoned under such blasphemy laws, not only in Pakistan but around the world.”
