Father of condemned Pakistani Christian woman petitions court for access

The father of Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Catholic woman on death row for alleged blasphemy, has filed a ‎High Court petition demanding the right to visit his daughter in jail after being repeatedly denied ‎access since her 2010 conviction, his lawyer says.  "We filed a petition in the Lahore High Court after ‎several requests to visit Asia Bibi were rejected by jail authorities and the province's Home ‎Department," Sardar Mushtaq Gill, the lawyer for Bibi's father, Soran Masih, said on Aug. 23.  "It is ‎Masih’s fundamental right to visit his daughter in jail and this cannot be denied by jail authorities or the ‎Punjab government," Gill said.  ‎
Bibi, the mother of five, was sentenced to death in 2010 for insulting the Prophet Mohammad, a charge ‎she denies. Bibi says she was targeted after drinking water from a vessel used by Muslim farmworkers.  ‎The workers said it was forbidden for a Christian to drink water from the same container and later ‎reported her for blasphemy, saying she had insulted the Prophet Mohammad.  Her appeal against the ‎death sentence is currently pending in the Supreme Court. ‎
‎"Asia has been languishing in jail since 2009 and since her conviction, I haven't been able to meet her," ‎her father Masih said. "I am extremely worried about her health. There are reports in the media that ‎Asia is suffering from internal intestinal bleeding" he said.  Provincial authorities did not give a reason ‎for denying visitation rights.‎
Blasphemy remains an extremely sensitive issue in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, and the laws have ‎drawn intense criticism even within the country.  Former Punjab governor Salman Taseer and Catholic ‎minister Shahbaz Bhatti were both assassinated in early 2011 after they defended Bibi and spoke out ‎against her death sentence and the misuse of the blasphemy laws. (Source: UCAN)