Kinfolk of Pakistani youths accused of alleged on-line blasphemy protest in Islamabad on October 2, 2024. | Picture credit score: AFP
Aroosa Khan’s son was chatting on WhatsApp however all of a sudden discovered himself the goal of “vigilant” investigators who accused him of getting dedicated blasphemy on-line, against the law that carries the demise penalty in Pakistan.
The 27-year-old is certainly one of tons of of younger folks tried in Pakistani courts accused of creating blasphemous statements on-line or in WhatsApp teams, against the law for which arrests have soared lately.
Most of the circumstances are being prosecuted by non-public “vigilante teams” led by legal professionals and supported by volunteers who scour the Web for criminals, human rights teams and police say.
Households of younger Pakistanis, together with medical doctors, engineers, legal professionals and accountants, say their family members had been tricked by strangers on-line into sharing blasphemous content material earlier than they had been arrested.
“Our lives have been turned the other way up,” Khan stated, claiming that his son, who has not been named for safety causes, had been tricked into sharing blasphemous content material on the messaging app.
He had joined a WhatsApp group for job seekers and a lady contacted him.
She despatched him a picture of ladies with Quranic verses printed on their our bodies, her mom stated, including that the contact then “denied sending it and requested Ahmed to return it to her so she might perceive what he was speaking about.”
He was subsequently arrested and prosecuted by the Federal Investigation Company (FIA).
An area police report suggests the vigilantes could also be motivated by monetary achieve.
A type of teams was answerable for the conviction of 27 individuals who have been sentenced to life in jail or the demise penalty within the final three years.
Blasphemy is an inflammatory accusation in Muslim-majority Pakistan, the place even baseless accusations can spark public outrage and result in lynchings.
Though they date again to colonial instances, Pakistan’s blasphemy legal guidelines intensified within the Eighties, when dictator Zia ul-Haq campaigned to “Islamize” society.
Probably the most energetic non-public investigation group is the Regulation Fee on Blasphemy of Pakistan (LCBP), which stated it’s prosecuting greater than 300 circumstances. Sheraz Ahmad Farooqi, one of many leaders of the non-public investigation group, stated greater than a dozen volunteers monitor blasphemy on-line, believing that “God has chosen them for this noble trigger.”
‘Authorized course’
“We’re not beheading anybody; We’re following a authorized course,” Farooqi stated outdoors a courtroom that heard 15 blasphemy circumstances, all introduced by his group.
He stated a lot of the accused had been hooked on pornography and had been disrespecting revered Islamic figures through the use of their names and dubbing voices attributed to them in pornographic content material.
He acknowledged that the ladies participated in following and arresting the boys, however that they weren’t members of their group.
Instances can take years in court docket, though demise sentences are sometimes commuted to life in jail on attraction to the Supreme Courtroom and Pakistan has by no means executed anybody for blasphemy.
The Human Rights Fee of Pakistan (HRCP) reported that a number of vigilante teams had been working “dedicatedly” to “witch hunt” folks for expressing themselves on-line or fabricating proof of blasphemy utilizing social media with “created agendas.”
“All of those teams are formalized by self-proclaimed defenders of mainstream Islam,” the group stated in a report revealed in 2023.
Printed – October 15, 2024 10:00 am IST
