Three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver were killed in an explosion in the southern city of Karachi, police say.
The blast ripped through their van, injuring at least four others near the university’s Confucius Institute.
Police have yet to determine the cause of the blast – but the separatist Baloch Liberation Army said the van was attacked by a female suicide bomber.
The group opposes Chinese investment in Pakistan, saying locals do not benefit.
KARACHI, Pakistan — Last month, a man named Muhammad Mushtaq was accused of burning pages of the Quran inside a mosque in central Pakistan. A mob armed with sticks, bricks and axes gathered at the mosque and dragged him out.
Mr. Mushtaq was tortured for hours and eventually killed, his body hung from a tree. A handful of police officers were among those who watched.
The Feb. 12 killing in the district of Khanewal was denounced across Pakistan. Prime Minister Imran Khan said the government had “zero tolerance” for such mob violence and promised that the police officers would be punished.
Exiles advised to keep a low profile as hitman is convicted in London
Pakistani exiles seeking refuge in the UK are being advised by counter-terrorism police to keep a low profile following warnings that their lives may be at risk after criticising Pakistan’s powerful military.
Counter Terrorism Policing, a collaboration of UK police forces and the security services, has told possible targets that they need to inform police if they intend to travel within the UK.
One British-based dissident said she had received information that hitmen linked to Pakistani drug gangs would be contracted to target her.
A British “hitman” has been found guilty of conspiring to kill a Pakistani dissident in the Netherlands.
A court in London heard Muhammad Gohir Khan was offered £100,000 (about $134,000) to carry out the murder in Rotterdam last year.
However he failed to track his target down, and was arrested on his return to the UK.
Now a jury has given a unanimous guilty verdict of conspiracy to murder and he is set be sentenced in March.
… According to the charge sheet, Ateeq, 26, met her accuser, a fellow Pakistani, online in 2019 through a mobile gaming app and the pair began corresponding over WhatsApp.
He accused her of sending blasphemous caricatures of holy prophets, making remarks about “holy personages” on WhatsApp and using her Facebook account to transmit blasphemous material to other accounts. In doing so, she “deliberately and intentionally defiles sacred righteous personalities and insulted the religious beliefs of Muslims”, according to the charge sheet.
Christians in Pakistan have suffered the secondary effects of U.S. intervention abroad.
On St. Patrick’s Day, 2018, four men waved down a rickshaw driver in a suburb of the Pakistani megalopolis of Karachi. The men, all Muslim and led by a Muslim cleric, recognized the cabbie, who happened to be a Catholic they had harassed many years prior. They pulled him out of the rickshaw, beat him almost to death, and then set fire to the vehicle, his only source of income.
I know that Christian, whose name is Michael D’Souza. My wife and I befriended him during three years living in Bangkok, where he and his family had fled in 2012, seeking asylum and refugee status. With the assistance of some family and friends, we paid his family’s airfare when they decided, after almost a year in Bangkok’s infamous Immigration Detention Center, to return to Pakistan in summer 2017.
In October 2007, the cover of Newsweek magazine described Pakistan as the Most Dangerous Nation in the World. Five years later, TIME magazine followed with a cover that labelled my birthplace as a country with a “Dark Heart.”
A frenzied mob in Pakistan tortured a Sri Lankan man to death and then burnt his body in public allegedly over blasphemy accusations, according to local media reports.
The incident took place on Wazirabad Road in Sialkot on Friday, where reportedly the workers of private factories attacked the export manager, a Sri Lankan national, of a factory and burnt his body after killing him, the Dawn reported.
Sialkot district police officer Umar Saeed Malik said the man was identified as Priyantha Kumara, who was in his 40s.
#Pakistani buslims in the city of Sialkot set a #SriLankan on fire and killed him for #blasphemy with chants of “gustakh-e-nabi ki ek saza sar-tan-se-juda”
He was the general manager of RajCo Industries. pic.twitter.com/wrykUbiHo5— saumya jatav (@jatav_saumya) December 3, 2021
Last month, Pakistan lifted a ban on the hardline Islamist party, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), which has been the face of anti-France protests over the reprinting of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The TLP’s jailed leader, as well as hundreds of his supporters, were released and the party will now be allowed to participate in mainstream politics. Many fear that the move has implications not just for Pakistan’s politics but also for the wider region and the rest of the world.
On 31 October, police officer Irfan Ahsan was posted to provide security at Wazirabad town in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, where hundreds of TLP protestors had been camping for more than a week with the aim marching to the capital Islamabad to force the government to expel the French envoy over the reprinting of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a satirical magazine.
The protesters were also demanding the release of their leader, Saad Rizvi, who had been jailed under anti-terrorism laws.
Pakistan, once presumed an ally of the US, has been willfully responsible for the slaughter of many US and NATO troops by having massively assisted enemy jihadists in Afghanistan. Throughout the 20-year presence of US forces in Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence operations have included the recruiting, training and arming of the largely ethnic Pashtun Taliban.
Pakistan PM says he has started dialogue with Taliban over inclusivity
Pakistan’s prime minister says he has initiated a dialogue with the Taliban to encourage them to form an inclusive government that would ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan and the region.
Imran Khan tweeted on Saturday that he took the initiative after his meetings this week in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, with leaders of countries neighbouring Afghanistan.
Last week the Taliban announced an all-male interim government that included no women or members of Afghanistan’s minorities, contrary to their earlier pledges on inclusivity. They have also since moved to curb women’s rights, harking back to when they were in power in the 1990s.
Afghanistan has a familiar power back in place. Kabul has fallen. The Taliban have won. And Pakistanis are euphoric.
To many a foe, but to others a friend, the cloistered group of extremists has long held cordial ties with Islamabad, and the Taliban’s recent rise from the flames has left many Pakistanis in raptures.
Even the country’s prime minister, Imran Khan, has been waxing lyrical, heaping eulogies on the group of militants, who openly violated women’s rights, in addition to flouting a number of other norms of the civilized world, during their stint in power from 1996 to 2001.
Khan, who often resorts to anti-West rhetoric, said Monday during a ceremony in Islamabad that Afghans have broken the “shackles of slavery.” It was seen as a clear endorsement of Afghanistan’s new rulers, but also as a sideswipe at those who invaded Pakistan’s neighbor in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States.
h/t John
Cases have been registered against 400 unidentified people after a viral video showed a woman being assaulted at Minar-e-Pakistan on the country’s independence day.
This is why #Pakistanis r supporting #Taliban they have become 1 of them a Girl was Sexually Molested Stripped Naked by 400 Men at Minar E #Pakistan #Lahore on #IndependenceDayPakistan Celebrations NOT ALL MEN #Congratulationsindia #AfghanWomen #Afghanistan #TalibanSympathisers pic.twitter.com/9TIIh6tjC0
— 🇮🇳 Gopal Thakkar🚩 (@GopalAThakkar_) August 17, 2021
Forced conversion to Islam of young Christian and Hindu girls, some under the age of 12, seems to be an everyday occurrence. To those who are in a position to stop this practice, it appears not to matter. Almost no day goes by without news of these events.
This major and growing problem in Pakistan affects religious minorities. Human rights organisations working on this issue estimate that every year 1,000 Hindu and Christian girls are forced to convert to Islam — an estimate that could be far higher as many cases remain unreported. Most of the time, these girls are lured by much older men by the promise of a better life and sometimes are pushed into prostitution or even sold.
An eight-year-old Hindu boy is being held in protective police custody in east Pakistan after becoming the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in the country.
The boy’s family is in hiding and many of the Hindu community in the conservative district of Rahim Yar Khan, in Punjab, have fled their homes after a Muslim crowd attacked a Hindu temple after the boy’s release on bail last week. Troops were deployed to the area to quell any further unrest.
On Saturday, 20 people were arrested in connection with the temple attack.
