Islamabad, Pakistan – A 36-year-old man was killed and his body burned in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in northwestern Pakistan, after being accused of desecrating the Quran, the holy book of Muslims.
The incident occurred on Thursday night in Madyan, a town in Swat district, a popular tourist spot located 280 km (174 miles) from the capital Islamabad.
Law enforcement officials in Swat reported that the man, whose identity has not been released, was a tourist from Sialkot, Punjab, accused of “insulting the Quran.” It’s unclear exactly what the man did.
“Our police team arrived at the main Madyan market to arrest the man and took him to the police station, but the crowd demanded that he be handed over,” a police officer told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.
Authorities added that a large group of hundreds of people gathered in front of the Madyan police station, where the man was being held by police, attacked the premises and dragged the man outside before killing him. It is not clear how he was killed, although a police source based at the Swat police headquarters, about an hour away from Madyan, told Al Jazeera by phone that the man had been “tortured to death”. Videos circulating on social media show a large crowd chanting religious slogans and surrounding a burning body.
A senior Swat police official, Zahid Ullah Khan, told media that the group also set fire to the police station and a police vehicle. He added that investigations into the incident are ongoing.
However, police have not confirmed whether a First Information Report (FIR) has been lodged into the incident or whether any arrests have been made.
Officials at Madyan Civil Hospital confirmed to Al Jazeera that at least eight people were brought in overnight with minor injuries due to the incident, and all were treated and discharged.
Although traffic was temporarily halted in the main market area of Madyan overnight, local authorities said the situation in the town had returned to normal, with businesses operating and tourist traffic flowing normally.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur also condemned the death of the tourist and asked the police for an immediate report on the incident.
According to a statement from the chief minister’s office, Gandapur has instructed the provincial police chief to take emergency measures to control the situation.
Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws
Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are based on the legal system of its British colonial rulers, who introduced religion-related laws in the 1860s to suppress Hindu-Muslim violence on the Indian subcontinent.
These laws remained unchanged after the creation of Pakistan in August 1947, but were changed for the first time in 1974, when a constitutional amendment declared the Ahmadiyya sect, a 500,000-member religious minority that considers itself Muslim, as “non-Muslim”.
During the rule of military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq from 1977 to 1988, laws were further strengthened with new crimes such as desecrating the Quran, insulting the prophet of Islam or using “derogatory” language about certain religious figures.
Blasphemy remains one of the most sensitive issues in Pakistan, where even hints of accusations can lead to widespread violence.
Since 1987, more than 2,000 people have been accused of blasphemy and at least 88 people have been killed over such allegations, according to the Center for Social Justice, a Lahore-based independent group advocating for minority rights, which compiles data relating to blasphemy cases in Pakistan.
Last month in Sargodha, Punjab, a 70-year-old Christian man was attacked and seriously injured by a group of people, who accused him of desecrating the Quran. The group then began a riot, setting stores on fire and damaging houses belonging to other Christian families in the region.
The police managed to control the violence and rescue the accused, but he died from his injuries nine days later.
In another incident in February last year in Nankana Sahib, Punjab, an angry mob attacked a police station and killed a man who had been accused of blasphemy after forcibly removing him from police custody.
In August 2023, Christian communities in the city of Jaranwala in Punjab faced widespread attacks on their homes and churches, following accusations of desecrating the Quran by two brothers. More than 22 churches were burned and almost 100 homes were damaged.
Arafat Mazhar, a Lahore-based academic who researches blasphemy laws in Pakistan, said the issue raises serious security and civil rights concerns. “There is nothing more terrifying than violence related to blasphemy.”
“In the 1980s, the Pakistani state made a promise that anyone insinuating or hinting at blasphemy, whether malicious or not, would be killed,” Mazhar told Al Jazeera. “This led to an increase in blasphemy accusations, and when people saw that the state did not fulfill its promise, however absurd it was, they took the law into their own hands.”
Mazhar emphasized that although there is growing intolerance in society as a result of the “expansion of far-right hate groups”, the fundamental problem lies in laws that criminalize blasphemy.
“The State must rethink the promise it made decades ago. It needs to counter the rise in blasphemy accusations, radically change the law and prevent its misuse against people.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
