Chinese engineer arrested in Pakistan for ‘insulting Allah’ in Ramadan row, provoking angry mob

In their complaint to the police, the two drivers claimed Tian “insulted Allah and the Prophet Mohammed” during a heated conversation about their belated return from prayers while on duty during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, said the source, who was involved in the arrest.

As news of the worker’s alleged blasphemy spread to nearby villages in the mountainous Himalayan region, hundreds of men gathered to blockade the Karakoram highway, the sole overland road connecting Pakistan to China.

The protesters dispersed last night after about four hours, once officials had assured community leaders that legal action would be taken against the Chinese engineer.

Led by a council of some 100 local religious and tribal leaders, the protesters briefly blocked the highway again on Monday morning until the police registered the blasphemy case against Tian.

However, the council withheld its final decision on whether to proceed with the blasphemy prosecution against the Chinese worker after his two accusers admitted they had not personally heard Tian making the alleged blasphemous remarks.

Instead, they told the council they had been later told about his comments by Tian’s Pakistani interpreter, who did not answer the council’s summons.

Leader of the council Maulana Aziz-ur-Rehman urged residents to let the law take its course, and cautioned them against attacking other Chinese nationals working on the Dasu hydropower project and other infrastructure projects in the region.

Nonetheless, security for the arrested worker has been ramped up to ensure Tian is not attacked whilst in custody at the Komila police station or when he makes appearances at the local magistrate’s court.

Local journalists posting on social media reported that the Chinese worker has been flown out of Kohistan in a government helicopter and will instead be detained in Abbottabad, 135km north of Islamabad, where his case will be heard by an anti-terrorist court.

Security for Chinese nationals working on the World Bank-financed Dasu hydropower project has been tightened since nine were killed, alongside four Pakistani colleagues, in a July 2021 vehicular suicide bombing that targeted their shuttle bus.

Blasphemy is a non-bailable offence in Pakistan that carries punishments ranging from fines to the death penalty. An accusation alone often leads to deadly mob attacks in the predominantly Muslim South Asian nation.

A Sri Lankan factory manager working in the eastern city of Sialkot was lynched in December 2021 for removing the posters of an extremist anti-blasphemy political party from the factory’s walls.

Mustafa Hyder, executive director of the Pakistan China Institute, an Islamabad think tank, said the accusations against Chinese engineer Tian was likely “another abuse” of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

He pointed out that Chinese companies had been working in Pakistan for decades before the 2015 launch of the estimated US$62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a project that is part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“The Chinese are quite accustomed to local customs and the Islamic injunctions that the majority of Pakistanis follow,” Hyder said.

He said the blasphemy accusations levelled against the Chinese worker in Dasu were “examples of miscommunication and misrepresentation” at a time of heightened religious fervour, “leading to this situation”.

Security officials in Islamabad declined to comment.