Pakistan Sentences First Person To Death Over Social Media Posts
from the dislike dept
With the ubiquity of social media presence in people's daily lives, the past few years has seen the rise of concern over people's privacy of their social media accounts, as well as concern over how content shared on those accounts could be used against the account holder. In America, this commonly breaks mostly into concerns about prospective employers reviewing social media accounts during the hiring process and how government reviews social media accounts for law enforcement purposes. While there are real concerns to be had in both cases, however, it's useful to be reminded that there are places where it is so much worse. Useful in that it's good to be reminded what privacy advocates are fighting to keep us from. Such as death.
In Pakistan, the government there has reached the unfortunate milestone of sentencing its first ever person to death over content he put on Facebook.
On Saturday, 30-year-old Taimoor Raza became the first person to receive a death sentence in a Pakistan anti-terrorism court for "using derogatory remarks ... in respect of the Holy Prophet" on social media.
Amnesty International's Pakistan campaigner, Nadia Rahman, said in a statement the conviction set a "dangerous precedent."
"No one one should be hauled before an anti-terrorism court or any other court solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief online," she said.
While the rules and laws of countries vary greatly, it should be an uncontroversial stance to state that no person should be sentenced to death over what amounts to speech and thought. Even those confused into thinking that supporting multiculturalism requires the absence of a moral stance on whether criticism of any particular faith ought to come with any punishment whatsoever must be capable of acknowledging that death sentences ought not be on the table for consideration. But, should someone want to argue that point, it should at least be understood that these kinds of laws pretty much have abuse of the law baked into them.
A 2016 report by Amnesty International found the laws are "open to abuse" and anyone who is accused is usually presumed to be guilty, leaving them open to mob retribution. There were 91 blasphemy cases concerning the Prophet or his companions registered between 2011 and 2015, the report said.
Specific blasphemy laws which punished perceived insults to Islam were introduced between 1980 and 1986, during a period of martial law under the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq. They were never removed once martial law ended.
The genesis of these laws should tell you all you need to know about their virtue, which is to say they have none. It also demonstrates the fear that regimes of this kind have in regards to the sort of wide-ranging communications tool that Facebook represents. This all comes down to controlling thought within the citizenry out of fear of a change in social opinion, which would deprive that regime of the power it wields so perniciously. With that in mind, actions taken by governments of this kind deserve the broadest and harshest condemnation, and damn well ought to weigh on foreign policy as well.
Put more simply, if governments, including America's, can't take a stand against death sentences over Facebook posts, it cedes the moral high ground to an astounding degree.
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Filed Under: blasphemy, death penalty, free speech, pakistan, social media, taimoor raza
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death sentence
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Re: death sentence
IN any case as I am from the UK - which doesn't execute people and so I will feel free to criticise Pakistan on this - and note that I already raised this issue last week - here
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170611/11545237565/theresa-may-tries-to-push-forward-with-pl ans-to-kill-encryption-while-her-party-plots-via-encrypted-whatsapp.shtml#c120
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Re: Re: death sentence
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Re: death sentence
And when the US sentences someone to death for 'blasphemy'(one of the more absurd and stupid ideas out there), then you might have a point comparing the two. But they haven't, and I don't see it happening any time soon, so your comparison is completely empty of meaning.
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Re: death sentence
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Either way your point stands.
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Prison for blasphemy is still a thing in some Christian countries. And was in the United States less than a century ago.
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Which?
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Germany, Greece, Poland, Russia, New Zealand, a couple South American countries...
For the countries listed in the article as having only fines and restrictions, it can be more complicated than that. Here in Canada the criminal code states:
...but with the qualifier:
Happily, legislation to repeal the blasphemous libel law was introduced in Parliament two weeks ago.
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http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/cuol-mgnl/c51.html
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Christianity is just a couple centuries ahead of them when it comes to death penalties for blasphemy. A huge misreading of history here. Christianity itself has never imposed death penalties for blasphemy. What has actually happened is that Christianity, after 300 or so years of peaceful persuasion, was adopted by the Roman state. That state was in the habit of using religion as a means of control. When the state first wanted to kill someone for blasphemy the Church opposed it and both ordinary Christians and church authorities have taken that line ever since. The reality is that the ending of cruel punishments for such "crimes" is a triumph of Christianity. In addition - where the Chrsitian tradition has been removed by secularists (as in Soviet Russia) cruel punishments for "blasphemy" against atheist belief systems have been imposed.
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Every point you discussed about the state corrupting the values of Christianity to reinforce their own control over the population can equally be applied to the militant Islamic states today.
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Christianity as it has existed for the vast majority of its history and the direct predecessor to the Christianity of the present is the one that executed people rather than what you cite as the 'real' Christianity which hasn't existed for 1700 years. Beyond that, your history is so bad as to be laughable because whether or not the church opposed blasphemy executions 1700 years ago they gleefully endorsed them, and holy wars, over the next millennia and a half. Christianity has a long bloody history that has been largely halted in the last two centuries thanks to the rise of the secular state and democracies. When Islamic nations become democratic and then secular we should expect to see their equally bloody history slide to a halt as well.
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Anyone who thinks this is something unique to a specific religion, rather than something that any theocracy would happily do, is fooling themselves.
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As in "rest in peace" in a grave.
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Did they teach you all about American foreign policy there too?
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/06/06/muslims-outraged-billboard-proph et-mohammed/373120001/
Of course, it's all alternative facts anyway...
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When you make Gollom's long-lost brother look sane...
Erdogan may be a thin-skinned thug, but as far as I know he's never sentenced someone to death for saying mean things about him, so at least he hasn't sunk as low as the pathetic ninnies in Pakistan.
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Re: When you make Gollom's long-lost brother look sane...
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Re: Re: When you make Gollom's long-lost brother look sane...
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Re: Re: Re: When you make Gollom's long-lost brother look sane...
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That makes perfect sense - if you're a rapid right wing ideologue that doesn't know anything about anything. Actually he is right - and it is you who knows nothing about islam - apart from the plausible lies that are so often told to defend it. It is a source of great sadness to me that so many on the left of politicis have been hoodwinked by these lies.
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Re: Re: Re: When you make Gollom's long-lost brother look sane...
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Re: Re: When you make Gollom's long-lost brother look sane...
Christian Europe - from France in the east to the Ukraine in the west - killed six million Jews a few decades back. It wasn't just the Germans taking part. There were pogroms AFTER the war. And plenty of other examples of Christian violence against "infidels" before and since.
And yet we still find Christianity "compatible with the west." Just not the extremist interpretations. You can say, "Those extremists don't represent Christianity!" But they do, to the same extent that the extremists in Pakistan represent Islam.
Here in Canada a decade ago a small group of Muslims called for court-recognized Islamic arbitration panels based on sharia law, that their own people could use. They were shouted down - marches even held to protest them - by a much, MUCH larger group of Muslims who had had enough of that crap in the old world and wanted no part of it here. The extremists do not represent them.
(The upshot: Someone pointed out that there were similar Jewish arbitration panels recognized by the Ontario government. Canadians went "Wait.... what?" and those were shut down.)
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Re: Re: Re: When you make Gollom's long-lost brother look sane...
You seem to be confusing the Jewish old testament with the new testament. The old testament was pre-Chist. If you want to talk about the teachings of Christ, you need to look at the new testament.
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So, no. The new testament does not nullify the old one.
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Well, that's obviously what some believe. Challenging the old Jewish laws even got Christ crucified.
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Teaches the history, which is different from instructing.
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http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/08/02/islamic-state-muslims-command-terror/
And before you try to pull any nonsense: just because it's Breitbart link, that doesn't make it untrue. I'm simply not gonna link to the original PDF, you can google it if you like.
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No, but it does make any commentary surrounding it extremely trustworthy, and raises questions as to why you supply such a biased source rather than something more independent. You apparently claim to have a primary source available but refuse to supply it or a neutral source, in favour of a source known to lie regularly about this particular subject (especially since you give so little information - a PDF of what, exactly? Which terms should he be Googling?)
You apparently understand that some sources are so tarnished by their regular attacks on the truth that people won't accept them as sources, yet also apparently expect people to click on links to understand what you're talking about. Not good.
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U.S. Moral High Ground?
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Re: U.S. Moral High Ground?
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Re: U.S. Moral High Ground?
Like the concept of 'original sin', one of the many things that turned me away from Christianity, or organized religion in any form, no one alive today had or has anything to do with the original outrage.
It is possible to grow, and learn, and in the process of doing so stake out a better moral position. Whether flaunting that position over the failing of others to achieve such 'superiority' is another question entirely. Don't conflate them.
A better question would be about how thin skinned those other leaders have to be to demand retribution for some slight, perceived or actual. Unfortunately, a certain current president's crusade against free speech and the media seems quite similar.
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Like the saying goes ... absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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Re: Re: U.S. Moral High Ground?
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Thou shalt not rule and if you think you rule then you're a part of a fundamental problem - you are not, in fact, better than anyone.
Fuck blasphemy. Religious pricks.
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Interestingly Jesus agrees with you...
But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, "You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.
Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.
Mark 10 42-43
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Genesis of the laws
The genesis of these laws should tell you all you need to know about their virtue, which is to say they have none.
I presume that by this you mean the military government of the 1980's. However that would be misleading as the military government was merely pandering to opinion within the populace. The real cause goes back to the "prophet" himself He is on record as saying "Whoever curses a prophet kill him," and there is a list of people who were killed for this on his orders here https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Islam_and_Freedom_of_Speech#Qur.27an
The fact is that this is not a one off aberration of a military junta - in fact military juntas in islamic countries are often better than the alternatives. This is an endemic problem in the islamic world.
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Re: Genesis of the laws
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Or is Pakistan like Saudi Arabia, which eagerly chops the heads off people for the crime of thinking the wrong thoughts.
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There is also the question of whether this sentence will actually be carried out.
The odds are that it will not be carried out by the state - in fact (AFAIK) despite many such sentences being imposed in recent years the state has yet to execute anyone - BUT in practice this is immaterial because the mob will carry out the sentence themselves if they get the chance. Worse than that any lawyer who defends a blasphemy case is a target, any judge who shows leniency is a target and any politician who suggests repealing the law is a target. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Bibi_blasphemy_case
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It has to be said:
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Re: It has to be said:
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Social Listening Tool
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