I live in country where blasphemy is not a crime. The offence of blasphemous libel had not been prosecuted in New Zealand since 1922 but the law was only repealed surprisingly recently, in 2019.
Freedom of belief is a precious and rare thing in our world. This short BBC documentary highlights the price Mubarak Bala and his family have paid for stating he was an atheist on social media. His guilty plea was against legal advice and possibly not a free choice itself.
I heard Leo Igwe, Nigerian Human Rights Advocate featured in the documentary, speak at the Humanist International Conference Auckland in 2018. His 'Lucky not so lucky: Humanist activism in a world threatened by religious extremism' shared the risks some face for not believing.
"On April 5th 2022, Mubarak Bala – the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria – plead guilty to charges attached to blasphemy. The sentence that followed caused shockwaves throughout the country, reverberating around the world, and placing the threats to freedom of expression in Africa’s most populous country under new scrutiny.
BBC's Yemisi Adegoke follows Bala’s story and those of others who have decided to be openly atheist in Nigeria, one of the most religious countries in the world."
