Pakistan court jails Chinese national charged with blasphemy

Peshawar [Pakistan], April 18 : A Pakist court on Tuesday ruled that the Chinese national arrested on blasphemy charges will be held in jail for two weeks, reported Geo News.

The Chinese man was produced before the court where he said he had been falsely accused, but the court sent the man to jail on judicial remand for 14 days.

Under Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws, anyone convicted of blasphemy can be sentenced to death.

Meanwhile, China's foreign ministry said on Tuesday that its embassy in Pakistan is verifying the situation regarding a Chinese national held on blasphemy charges, reported Geo News.

The Chinese man, identified by police only as Tian, was arrested on Sunday night, hours after hundreds of residents and labourers working on a dam project in the town of Komela in northwestern Pakistan blocked a key highway and rallied demanding his arrest.

A Pakist worker claimed that the Chinese supervisor scolded him for dodging work under the pretext of Ramzan prayers. Both work for the Dasu Dam hydroelectric gravity dam which is under construction in the Kohistan district, reported Dawn.

Charged crowds from villages and towns started rushing towards Kamila Bazaar and blocked the Karakoram Highway to traffic late Sunday night after some Kohist labourers working at a mega energy project showed up among them and accused the Chinese national of making sacrilegious comments.

A first information report (FIR) of the incident was lodged under sections 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code and 6/7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act with Kamila Police Station, reported Geo News.

On Monday he was airlifted from Upper Kohistan to Abbottabad in a Pakistan Army helicopter on Monday afternoon over his safety concerns.

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in the country as even rumours of sacrilegious remarks can incite lynch mobs and deadly violence.

Recently in February, a raging mob of hundreds tortured a man to death after snatching him from a police station in Nankana Sahib, where he was locked up for allegedly committing blasphemy, reported Geo News.

Similarly, in 2021, a Sri Lankan citizen Priyantha Kumara who worked as a manager at a private factory in Sialkot was beaten to death by a mob after being accused of blasphemy in highly controversial circumstances.

In January 2022, the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in a report stated that as many as 89 citizens were killed in 1,415 accusations and cases of blasphemy in the country since independence. The report said that from 1947 to 2021, 18 women and 71 men were extra-judicially killed over blasphemy accusations. The allegations were made against 107 women and 1,308 men.

Out of the total, 1,287 citizens were accused of committing blasphemy from 2011- 21. "The actual number is believed to be higher because not all blasphemy cases get reported in the press," the report had said, adding more than 70 per cent of the accused were reported from Punjab, reported Dawn.

The report said misuse of blasphemy laws is often described by courts as an unlawful act. It had said the Islamabad High Court had previously suggested to the legislature to amend the existing laws to give equal punishment to those who level false blasphemy accusations.