In the past two days, a video of a "lynching execution" has gone viral on foreign social media:
In the streets of the city of Sialkot in northern Pakistan, hundreds of men surrounded a middle-aged man dressed in red and beat him with stones and steel pipes until he stopped moving.
Subsequently, someone poured gasoline on the man, ignited it and burned him alive...
The horrific video quickly spread, attracting the attention of netizens in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and alarming the heads of government of the two countries.
The man lynched in the video is none other than a Sri Lankan, and the reason for his "lynching" is allegedly a "blasphemy against the Prophet".
The crowd lynching has now been officially classified as terrorism by Pakistan, with more than 900 people accused of participating and 126 arrested...
It began on the morning of December 3, when Priyantha Diyawadanage, a 48-year-old Sri Lankan general manager, was working in his office at a machinery company factory in Sialkot when he suddenly heard a noise outside.
A dozen Pakistani workers slammed his door outside, shouting as they slammed it:
"Why blaspheme our prophets? Why tear up his portrait?! ”
Hearing such accountability, Diyawadanage inhaled a cold breath.
As a man who has lived in the Islamic regions of Pakistan for nearly a decade, he has been careful to pay attention to his behavior and avoid offending local customs and religious beliefs.
Diyawadanage quickly recalled that recently, because the factory was being rebuilt, he had people remove from the walls of the factory building some posters with the Prophet Muhammad of Islam and the words of the Quran, which were supposed to be posted back after the renovation.
However, the situation of the crowd at the scene has not allowed Diyawadanage to go out to explain clearly, and more and more people have gathered outside the door, and Diyawadanage decided to find a place to hide first.
So Diyawadanage left through another door and began to flee.
Angry Pakistani workers rushed into the office, looking left and right without seeing Diyawadanage himself, and began to search around the factory.
During this period, more and more people gathered, some of them not workers, but passers-by who mixed in from the surrounding area, and all of them gathered together and shouted that they would arrest the "blasphemer" Diyawadanage for questioning.
At this moment, Diyawadanage, who had no way to escape, gritted his teeth and stomped his feet onto the roof of the factory building.
Unexpectedly, he was still found, and a large number of people climbed onto the roof of the factory and finally captured Diyawadanage.
Among the crowd, someone held up slogans from Pakistan's far-right party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP).
The Rabaik party has long been known for supporting the "blasphemy bill" and has long advocated the use of sharia lynchings against "blasphemous" people.
Under the circumstances, when there were far-right elements in the crowd fanning the flames, no one cared whether Diyawadanage really had "blasphemy" behavior, and the crowd of people flocking to it had only one thought -
Lynch Diyawadanage!
They pulled Diyawadanage into the street, threw him to the ground, tore his clothes wildly, punched and kicked him.
Subsequently, someone lifted a steel pipe and a stone and slammed it at Diyawadanage, whose body was hit and made a terrible muffled sound.
Gradually, Diyawadanage became completely incapacitated and lay motionless on the ground.
However, the group still did not give up, and then the most terrible scene appeared:
Someone took gasoline and poured it on Diyawadanage, and then set his whole body on fire, and Diyawadanage was burned to death in a raging fire.
The scene where Diyawadanage was burned to death, and some people took out their phones to take selfies for a group photo...
At 11:45 a.m., local police rushed to the scene of the crime and saw billowing smoke and Diyawadanage's already carbonized corpse.
They arrived at the scene fifteen minutes after receiving the report, but still could not prevent Diyawadanage from being killed...
That's how things get bigger...
After the incident, the head of the Pakistani government quickly instructed the police to solve the case, the police immediately characterized the case as a terrorist act, and the anti-terrorism department also quickly intervened to launch an investigation and arrest operation.
Soon, counterterrorism authorities locked up and charged more than 900 participants on charges of murder and terrorism, and tracked and arrested 126 people through a central surveillance system at the scene of the crime.
But the damage caused by this incident is ultimately irreparable.
The deceased, Diyawadanage, said tearfully of the case of her husband being "lynched":
"My husband never tore up the prophetic portrait of the factory, he was completely innocent!"
The confessions of many parties also indicate that Diyawadanage ordered the temporary removal of the prophet's portrait at that time, just for the purpose of rebuilding the factory area and cleaning and sanitation, and hanging it back.
The whole process complied with the regulations of the factory area and did not have any bad behavior of tearing up the portrait and offending the prophet.
The egregious lynchings also sent Pakistani people out of anger, and people spontaneously gathered to protest such extreme terrorist acts.
As things unfolded, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan also took note of the case.
He commented on Twitter that the killing of Sri Lankan citizen Diyawadanage in the city of Sialkot was an incident that angered and humiliated the entire country and promised to bring the more than 100 thugs involved in the incident to justice.
Speaking of which, an incident like Diyawadanage's murder for "blasphemy" is not the first in Pakistan.
As many as 77 people have been killed in violent clashes triggered by so-called "blasphemy" since 1990.
Part of the reason is that "blasphemy" has been a sensitive topic in many parts of Pakistan, and the social conflicts surrounding it have been ongoing.
Part of the reason is that since 2017, far-right parties like pakistan's Rabaiq TLP have been on the rise, and they have been committed to promoting and supporting the implementation of the so-called "blasphemy bill", which invisibly fueled similar sensitive conflicts, resulting in the terrible tragedy of Diyawadanage being lynched...
In the past two days, Diyawadanage's body is being transported back to Sri Lanka, and I hope that in the days to come, his family will wait for a justice that belongs to him...