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Protests against the lynching in Sialkot, Pakistan: "Played a religious card"?
Photo: KM Chaudary / AP
In Pakistan, police arrested more than a hundred people for alleged blasphemy after lynching a factory manager.
Among them are the main suspects identified with the help of television images, said a police spokesman.
The lynching occurred on Friday in Sialkot in the Pakistani part of Kashmir, around 200 kilometers southeast of the capital Islamabad.
More than half of the soccer balls produced worldwide are made here.
An angry crowd had beaten the Sri Lankan manager of a sporting goods company to death and set his body on fire.
According to the police, the fatal vigilante justice was triggered by blasphemy rumors.
"It was rumored that the manager tore off a religious poster and threw it in the trash can," said one police officer.
Was blasphemy just a pretext?
Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan. The slightest suspicion of insulting Islam can spark protests and lead to lynching. A few days before the lynching, a crowd had rioted in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and set a police station on fire because another man had been detained for blasphemy.
According to human rights activists, the charge of blasphemy is also often used as an excuse to carry out personal feuds.
According to the Pakistani government's special envoy for religious harmony, Tahir Ashrafi, the police are also investigating the case in Sialkot in the same direction.
Workers complained that the factory manager was "very strict," Ashrafi said.
Some factory workers may have "played a religious card" to get revenge on the manager.
Prime Minister Imran Khan had strongly condemned the incident and spoke of a "day of shame for Pakistan".
He said he would oversee the investigation himself.
Fok / AFP / dpa
