Tag Archives: Prime Minister Imran Khan

‘Ashamed’: Pakistan grapples with fallout from mob killing

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A shocking and deadly mob attack on a Sri Lankan factory manager accused of blasphemy in eastern Pakistan last week prompted days of soul searching as the man’s remains were flown to his home country.

The violence, which was condemned by rights watchdogs including Amnesty International, also drew intense responses from politicians, celebrities and journalists on social media.

“Ashamed!! Sick to my stomach!!,” actress Mahira Khan wrote on Twitter shortly after the lynching.

The mob of factory employees in Pakistan’s Punjab province tortured and burned a Sri Lankan manager on Friday in an attack that Prime Minister Imran Khan said brought shame on the country.

The killing raised alarm over the potential for accusations of blasphemy to fuel crowd violence in Pakistan, coming just weeks after at least seven policemen were killed in clashes with the radical TLP movement, which has built its identity on fighting what it sees as blasphemy.

Mob killings over accusations of blasphemy are frequent in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where the crime can carry the death sentence.

Other politicians and the country’s powerful military also released statements condemning the attack.

“Mob violence cannot be acceptable under any circumstance as (the) state has laws to deal with all offences,” said Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari on Twitter.

The victim’s body was returned to Sri Lankan officials over the weekend and then flown to his home country, a government source in Punjab province told Reuters.

Punjab’s police said arrests were continuing.

“In the last 12 hours, police have arrested seven more key figures, including one involved in planning an attack on a Sri Lankan manager,” they said in a statement.

Some politicians and activists argued that broader societal and political change was needed, beyond legal consequences for those involved.

“Arrests should of course be made, but there has to be a clear appraisal of why mobs feel the impunity,” said Senator Sherry Rehman, a member of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

In an editorial entitled “Horror in Sialkot,” leading newspaper Dawn on Sunday criticized Pakistan for “appeasing religious extremists.”

“Once again, we are reminded how far this nation has descended into the abyss,” the editorial said.

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

U.S. finds Pakistan useful only to clean up mess in Afghanistan -Khan

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan accused the United States of seeing his country as useful only in the context of the “mess” it is leaving behind in Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting.

Washington has been pressing Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban to broker an elusive peace deal as negotiations between the insurgents and Afghan government have stalled, and violence in Afghanistan has escalated sharply.

“Pakistan is just considered only to be useful in the context of somehow settling this mess which has been left behind after 20 years of trying to find a military solution when there was not one,” Khan told foreign journalists at his home in Islamabad.

The United States will pull out its military by Aug. 31, 20 years after toppling the Taliban government in 2001. But, as the United States leaves, the Taliban today controls more territory than at any point since then.

Kabul and several Western governments say Pakistan’s support for the insurgent group allowed it to weather the war.

The charge of supporting the Taliban despite being a U.S. ally has long been a sore point between Washington and Islamabad. Pakistan denies supporting the Taliban.

Khan said Islamabad was not taking sides in Afghanistan.

“I think that the Americans have decided that India is their strategic partner now, and I think that’s why there’s a different way of treating Pakistan now,” Khan said.

Pakistan and India are archrivals and have fought three wars. The two share frosty ties and currently have minimal diplomatic relations.

A political settlement in Afghanistan was looking difficult under current conditions, Khan added.

He said he tried to persuade Taliban leaders when they were visiting Pakistan to reach a settlement.

“The condition is that as long as Ashraf Ghani is there, we (Taliban) are not going to talk to the Afghan government,” Khan said, quoting the Taliban leaders as telling him.

Peace talks between the Taliban, who view Ghani and his government as U.S. puppets, and a team of Kabul-nominated Afghan negotiators started last September but have made no substantive progress.

Representatives of a number of countries, including the United States, are currently in the Qatari capital of Doha talking to both sides in a last-ditch push for a ceasefire.

U.S. forces have continued to use air strikes to support Afghan forces against Taliban advances, but it remains unclear if such support will continue after Aug. 31.

Khan said Pakistan had “made it very clear” that it does not want any American military bases in Pakistan after U.S. forces exit Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Gibran Peshimam; editing by John Stonestreet and Jonathan Oatis)

Pakistani train smashes into derailed carriages, 36 killed

By Asif Shahzad and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -A train in Pakistan smashed into derailed carriages of another train on Monday, killing at least 36 people, authorities said, the latest accident to highlight the decrepit state of a railway system that dates to the 19th century.

Several passengers were still trapped in mangled coaches strewn across the tracks in the southern province of Sindh, according to railway officials.

Police officer Umar Tufail said at least 36 people were killed and his men could see four more bodies in the wreckage.

“We have not been able to take them out so far, but an operation is underway for that,” he told reporters at the site. “We have saved three more people; they are injured.”

More than 70 passengers were admitted to various hospitals, another police officer Kamran Fazal told Reuters.

An injured passenger, who had been travelling on the train that derailed, recounted how one calamity led to another.

“We felt as if we had been thrown away,” the man, who had a bandaged head, told a television reporter from hospital, speaking of the initial derailing of his train.

“The second train then hit our train (and) that caused more damage,” he said, adding most of the passengers were sleeping at the time in the pre-dawn hours.

A Pakistan Railways spokesman said several carriages of the first train spilled across the adjacent track after the derailment in the Ghotki district. Within minutes, the second train, coming from the other direction, smashed into them.

“The driver tried to apply emergency brakes but the locomotive hit the infringing coaches,” Pakistan Railways said in an initial report.

“The track has got issues on several points, the coaches are old, some as old as 40 years,” railway official Tariq Latif told Geo News TV. “I’ve told high-ups several times: ‘Please do something about it’,” he said.

Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Twitter he was shocked by the “horrific” accident and was ordering a comprehensive investigation into railway safety.

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry blamed the crash on what he said was corruption by previous government, saying the exact cause of the accident was yet to be known, and an inquiry had been opened.

The two trains were carrying a total of 1,388 passengers, he told parliament in a speech telecast live.

Accidents on the decaying rail system are common.

In 2005, in the same district, about 130 people were killed when a crowded passenger train rammed into another at a station and a third train struck the wreckage.

Successive governments have for years been trying to secure funds to upgrade the system from a planned laying of a new rail track called ML-1 as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative of energy and infrastructure projects.

Due to certain technical issues the ML-1 project has yet to get under way despite final approval late last year, said Pakistan Railways Chairman Habib-ur-Rehman Gilani.

Certain technical issues have held up the launch of the ML-1 project despite final approval late last year, said Pakistan Railways Chairman Habib-ur-Rehman Gilani.

He told Geo News TV that any spending now to upgrade the track where the crash occurred would be a waste of resources.

“I would say that until we get a permanent solution (ML-1), this track can’t be foolproof,” Gilani said.

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad and Gibran Peshimam in Islamabad, Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru, India; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Mark Heinrich)