Source/Credit: The Australian | South Asia correspondent
By Amanda Hodge | October 19, 2011
A RETIRED Pakistani schoolteacher has been jailed for three years on blasphemy charges after appealing against a one-month sentence handed down for allegedly insulting the Muslim prophet Mohammad.
Mehram Wahocho was also fined Rs5000 ($US57) in the appeal judgment, which found that the lower court sentence handed down two years ago was too lenient. The decision was made after Wahocho's accuser also appealed against the original sentence, asking for an increase in his punishment.
Last month, a 13-year-old Christian girl was expelled from her school, and her government nurse mother transferred from her job, for allegedly committing blasphemy during a test in which she inadvertently made a spelling error. Faryal Tauseef, an eighth grade student at Sir Syed High School in the northwest town of Havelian, was asked with her class to define "naat" (hymn), a style of poem written in praise of Mohammed, instead writing the word "lanaat" (curse). "In her explanation, Faryal wrote a word which was blasphemous," the school's administrator, Junaid Sarfraz, said, adding that her teacher had referred the case to Muslim clerics believing she had intentionally used the word.
"The girl confessed, saying that she did it by mistake and the school administration, after consulting local clerics, decided to rusticate (expel) her."
Pakistan's Human Rights Commission chairman Asma Jahangir said the blasphemy laws were open to blatant abuse but the current "climate of fear" in Pakistan stifled all debate about reform.
"The change will come when the atmosphere in this country changes, but right now people are too fearful to speak up," she said.
Pakistan's blasphemy laws, introduced in 1986 under General Zia ul-Haq, have sparked international controversy since last November when Christian mother-of-five Asia Bibi became the first Pakistani woman to be sentenced to death for blasphemy.
Read original post here: Teacher's Islamic blasphemy sentence upgraded in Pakistan
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