News / Thoughts

Appeal could take 8 years

Asia Bibi was going to the well to get water in 2009 when Muslim women tried to chase her away because, as a Christian, she ‘polluted the water’. Asia responded by saying that Jesus had rescued her and then asked “What has your prophet done for you?”

Six years later she is in prison on death row. She has been sentenced to death under Pakistan’s infamous blasphemy laws, but late this summer she was granted leave to appeal. This process will take six to eight years. Meanwhile Asia is battling with ill health.

She is still in confinement and more at risk than ever before. Extremists have threatened to take the law into their own hands and assassinate Asia themselves. “They drive around the Multan Jail and fire their heavy ammunition into the air to intimidate her and any legal assistance she has,” says a pastor who was able to meet Asia in the early years of her imprisonment. Since then, he has only been able to go and pray at the jail without any hope of seeing her.

While she waits, Asia Bibi does so as a sick, lonely woman. She suffers from internal bleeding and poor health and longs to be reunited with her family.

Pray now…

• For Asia’s health and protection
• For her case to be heard quickly and for her safe release
• For strength for the 5.3 million Christians in Pakistan as they continue in their faith
• For comfort for all Christians around the world imprisoned for their faith.