The Council of Paris unanimously adopted a proposal by the city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo to award honorary citizenship to Aasia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy four years ago.
“To support her in her fight against ignorance and obscurantism, Anne Hildago wishes that Paris raises Aasia Bibi to the level of honorary citizen, a rare distinction granted to the world’s most emblematic defenders of human rights,” the statement said, according to the Vatican Radio.
Aasia Bibi has been on death row since November 2010 after she was allegedly found guilty of making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) during an argument with a Muslim woman.
“To be an honorary citizen is to embody the values of Paris, the values of liberty and tolerance. By this bold gesture, I wish to testify to the solidarity of Paris towards the numerous women around the world of all confessions who are religious obscurantism and political extremism,” Hildago explained.
The mayor reiterated her commitment to supporting Aasia until a presidential pardon or a new sentence restores her liberty, and restated that the city would welcome her, with her family, as soon as this freedom is restored to her.
In October 2014, the Lahore High Court confirmed the mother of five’s death sentence, dashing hopes it might be commuted to a jail term.
In November last year, Aasia Bibi’s husband wrote to the president to ask for her to be pardoned and allowed to move to France.
“We are convinced that Aasia will only be saved from being hanged if the venerable President (Mamnoon) Hussain grants her a pardon. No one should be killed for drinking a glass of water,” husband Ashiq Masih wrote in an open letter dated November 17 and published by the New York Times.
Masih’s plea to move to Paris came after Hidalgo requested President Hussain to grant her a pardon.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo had said the couple were welcome in the city, and Masih quoted his wife as saying she sent her “deepest thanks to you Madame Mayor, and to all the kind people of Paris and across the world”.
In December, the mayor unveiled a banner of Aasia which has remained on display on the steps of the City Hall. At the unveiling she stressed, “We must support Aasia Bibi, because women in all regions of the world are the first victims of an order which theocrats, who twist the messages of all religions, try to impose.”
The allegations against Bibi date back to June 2009, when she was labouring in a field and a row broke out with some Muslim women she was working with.
She was asked to fetch water, but the Muslim women objected, saying that as a non-Muslim she was unfit to touch the water bowl.
A few days later the women went to a local cleric and put forward the blasphemy allegations.
Amnesty International has raised “serious concerns” about the fairness of her trial and has called for her release.
