A/HRC/40/58 her Muslim colleagues after drinking water from the vessel, on the grounds that as a Christian she was unclean and forbidden to use the same utensils as Muslims. An argument ensued during which her co-workers demanded that she convert to Islam, at which time she was subsequently alleged to have insulted the Prophet Muhammad. When news of this reached a local imam, he pressured her to confess to making blasphemous comments, and when she refused, a mob beat her severely in the presence of her children. After being imprisoned for nearly a year, she was charged with blasphemy. The Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, who had visited Asia Bibi in prison and who had suggested that she might qualify for a presidential pardon if the High Court did not suspend her sentence, was shot dead by his bodyguard in January 2011. Furthermore, the Minister of Minorities Affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti, who also supported Asia Bibi and suggested that the anti-blasphemy law might need to be changed, was killed in an ambush in March 2011. The appeal process took eight years until the Supreme Court quashed her sentence in October 2018, citing material contradictions and inconsistent statements of the witnesses which cast further doubt on the coherence of the evidence. On 29 January 2019, the Supreme Court rejected a petition to review the acquittal. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian, serving as the Governor of Jakarta, was a candidate in the gubernatorial elections scheduled for 2017. He referred to a Qur’anic verse in a speech he made during his gubernatorial election campaign. Some groups objected to the reference, as posted online in a video, which seemed to have been edited to omit a word, which led to a misinterpretation of his speech. Some organizations reported Purnama to the police and accused him of having committed blasphemy. Purnama publicly apologized and clarified that it had not been his intention to offend. Nonetheless, a fatwa was subsequently issued and during large-scale protests, rally leaders reportedly made statements which incited hatred and intolerance. These protests were claimed to be politically motivated to defeat Purnama in the gubernatorial election. Although Purnama’s defence team presented evidence of various procedural errors in the police investigation, the court denied their motion to dismiss the case. On 9 May 2017, Purnama was found guilty of blasphemy and of inciting violence by the North Jakarta District Court, and he was sentenced to two years in prison. On 24 January 2019, he was released three and a half months early under the remission laws of Indonesia, which grant prisoners leniency on public holidays and for good behaviour. 40. Avijit Roy Avijit Roy, an American-Bangladeshi blogger, was visiting Bangladesh when he and his wife, Rafida Ahmed, were attacked by persons with machetes in the streets of Dhaka. Although his wife recovered from injuries sustained in the brutal attack, Roy died shortly after he was taken to hospital. His murder was part of a growing trend of violent attacks against bloggers and atheists, which intensified in the period 2013–2016, during which at least 10 bloggers and publishers were attacked and killed. Amidst rising demands for a law to make blasphemy a capital crime, the Government responded by stating that such a law was not necessary since the existing legislation prohibited gratuitously offensive attacks on religion. In 2013, the Government set up a committee to track bloggers and others making derogatory statements online about Islam. Subsequently, a list of the names of 84 bloggers who wrote on religion, reportedly compiled by an extremist group, was made public. At least seven individuals on that list, including Roy, were killed in the period 2014–2016, and several others have gone into hiding. 41. B. Public order measures On 21 February 2012, the Russian feminist punk rock protest group, Pussy Riot, performed a one-minute song that contained obscenities and criticized Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, along with public and religious officials. Members of the band were arrested several days later and criminally charged with hooliganism. Members of the music group asserted that their performance constituted a political statement rather than one motivated by hatred towards a religious group. A judge accepted statements from 11 adherents of the faith who witnessed the performance and found it offensive to their beliefs, 42. 11