Pakistan is being swept toward violent chaos by a growing wave of Islamist extremism, newspapers said yesterday, one day after Taliban militants killed the country’s only Christian government minister.
The assassination of minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti in broad daylight in Islamabad threatens to further destabilize a nation where secular-minded politicians are imperiled by a rising strain of violent religious conservatism in the society.
“Mr Bhatti’s brutal assassination has once again highlighted the fact that we are fast turning into a violent society,” the liberal Daily Times said in its editorial. “This is not the time to be frightened into silence. It is time to implement the law and not surrender in front of extremists.”
Bhatti is the second senior official to be assassinated this year for challenging the country’s controversial blasphemy law, which sanctions the death penalty for insulting Islam or its Prophet Mohammed.
Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer was shot dead by his own bodyguard in January for calling for curbing abuses in the law.
“Terrorists silence another voice of interfaith harmony,” the daily Dawn ran a banner headline on its front page.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told a party meeting on Wednesday he would resist the slide towards extremism.
“We have to fight this mindset and defeat them. We will not be intimidated nor will we retreat the official APP news agency quoted him as saying.
Mehbood Ahmed, a senior police official, said about 20 people had been detained for questioning, but police did not yet know who was responsible.
“But we are confident we will get hold of culprits,” he said.
The government has repeatedly said it would not change the blasphemy law, and officials have distanced themselves from anyone calling for amendments for fear of a backlash from extremists, a move that dismayed moderates and liberals.
“Of course the silent majority, which keeps silent over these things, also must bear responsibility,” I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told the Express 24/7 television channel on Wednesday night. “There’s blood on their hands also.”
Meanwhile, a highway ambush and a car bomb attack targeting security forces in the northwest killed 13 people yesterday, officials said, in a sign of Islamist militants’ resilience despite army operations against them.
The bombing hit the Hangu area, just outside the tribal regions along the Afghan border, senior police official Rasheed Khan said.
A bomb hidden in a vehicle in a residential area where a small police station was located went off as a police vehicle carrying officers drove by, Khan said. Three police and four civilians died.
The blast also wounded 30 people and damaged around a dozen houses, he said.
Gunmen in the nearby Khyber tribal region ambushed another group of police, shooting and killing six, local government official Farooq Khan said.
The police had been driving to a security checkpoint in the area when they were attacked.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS