Khaled Ahmed - Pakistan, gripped by fear, tries to normalise blasphemy laws, anti-liberal violence // Man sentenced to death for blasphemy on Facebook
Our Stockholm Syndrome
Pakistan: man sentenced to death for blasphemy on Facebook
On April 13, Mashal
Khan, a journalism student at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan,
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, was killed by a mob of fellow students, who “shot him,
stripped him, mutilated and pulped him, and threw him from the second floor”,
after accusing him of being “secular” and “liberal”, and not saying his Friday
prayers in the mosque. The media thought this
must be labelled “death for blasphemy”. But the killers murdered Mashal Khan,
not for blasphemy, but for being “liberal”, perhaps conditioned by the recent
“disappearing” of a bunch of “liberal” bloggers by the deep state.
Perhaps for the first
time, Pakistani leaders rose as one to condemn the killing; Imran Khan, whose party,
the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, rules in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, went in person to
condole with Mashal’s father, not knowing that a councillor from his own party,
Arif Khan, was among the killers whom, significantly, the police subsequently
failed to arrest among the many whom it did. Such is the pro-killer syndrome in
the province that his party, by and large, thinks that secularism is
blasphemous. (At least, his coalition partner, the Jamaat-e-Islami, thinks so).
But Pakistan has not
missed the threat from Imran Khan’s member in the National Assembly, Ali
Muhammad Khan, quoted saying that those who are secular had better leave
Pakistan. Then, another member of Khan’s party, National Assembly member
Musarrat Ahmad Zeb, charged that the Taliban attack on Nobel Laureate Malala
Yousofzai was “staged” — she accused the army of building Malala up as a
champion of girls’ education and granting residential plots to the doctors who
apparently falsely claimed that she had been shot in the head… read more:
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/our-stockholm-syndrome-4696804/Pakistan: man sentenced to death for blasphemy on Facebook
An anti-terrorism
court in Pakistan has sentenced a man to death for allegedly committing
blasphemy on Facebook,
the latest step in an intensified crackdown on dissent on social media. A court in Bahawalpur
handed out the verdict, the harshest yet for such a crime, after finding
Taimoor Raza, 30, guilty of insulting the prophet Muhammad. Raza was arrested last
year after a debate about Islam on Facebook with a man who turned out to be a
counter-terrorism agent. He was one among 15 people arrested by the
counter-terrorism department last year, accused of blasphemy, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The verdict is part of
a wider crackdown on perceived dissent on social media in a country where
unfounded allegations of blasphemy can lead to mob vigilante justice.
Raza’s brother, Waseem
Abbas, said the family was “poor but literate”, and belonged to Pakistan’s
minority Shia Muslim community. “My brother indulged in a sectarian debate on
Facebook with a person, who we later come to know, was a [counter-terrorism department]
official with the name of Muhammad Usman,” he said. Raza’s defence
attorney said his client had been charged with two unrelated sections of the
law to ensure the maximum penalty. “Initially, it was a case of insulting
remarks on sectarian grounds and the offence was 298A, which punishes for
derogatory remarks about other religious personalities for up to two years,”
said Fida Hussain Rana, the defence counsel. Raza was later charged unde
section 295C of the penal code, related to “derogatory acts against prophet
Muhammad”, Rana said.
Social media
represents a new battleground for the Pakistani fight against blasphemy.
Authorities have asked Twitter and Facebook to help identify users sharing
blasphemous material, and have distributed text messages encouraging Pakistanis
to report fellow citizens... read more:
