The Railways Minister, Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, said at a news conference in Peshawar he would personally finance a bounty aimed at the maker of the crude, low-budget video that denigrates the prophet Muhammad.
Mr Bilour acknowledged that incitement to murder was illegal but said he was ''ready to be hanged in the name of the prophet Muhammad''. And he invited the Taliban and al-Qaeda to be ''partners in this noble deed'', according to news reports.
The incendiary statements came a day after violent protests paralysed Pakistan's largest cities, leaving 23 people dead and more than 200 injured, and invited fresh criticism of the government's handling of the crisis.
Advertisement
A senior aide to Mr Bilour sought to qualify his statements, saying their purpose was to channel frustration away from the streets of Pakistan and towards the filmmaker in the US. But in Islamabad, the government distanced itself from the comments.
''We completely dissociate ourselves from the statement of Mr Bilour,'' the press secretary to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, Shafqat Jalil, said in an interview after several hours of silence from the government. Mr Jalil added that the prime minister had been trying to contact the leader of Mr Bilour's party, a minority member of the coalition. ''The PM will try to work something out with him,'' he said.
The bounty offer came during widespread criticism of the government, which declared a public holiday on Friday to facilitate what it hoped would be peaceful protests, calling it a ''Day of love for the prophet Muhammad''.
''Pakistan was truly leaderless on Friday,'' said Maleeha Lodhi, a former ambassador to the US. ''By ceding space to the mob, the government actually joined the mob. These statements only reinforce how playing to the gallery has very dangerous, long-term consequences for the country.''
Mr Bilour did not name the target of his bounty, but it was widely presumed to be Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, who lives in California and has been linked to the 14-minute video, described as a trailer for a movie named Innocence of Muslims.
Nakoula has not confirmed reports of his involvement, but he has been questioned by police near his residence south of Los Angeles. In Pakistan, a day earlier, at least six people died during protests in Peshawar, and rioters destroyed property that included a cinema belonging to Mr Bilour's brother, Aziz.
''It is not for us to destroy our country and our own poor people. That's why he said this,'' said Mr Bilour's aide, Zulfikar Ahmed, explaining the bounty's rationale.
Yet Mr Bilour's party has suffered many attacks at the hands of the Taliban, which has killed dozens of his party members.
Pakistan Railways, the state-owned company Mr Bilour presides over, is deep in debt and its performance has been marked by frequent strikes, poor service and train crashes - a fact some irate Pakistanis referred to in comments on social media after the reward was announced.
''Mr Bilour would better serve the prophet Muhammad by saving the railways,'' a person using the name Tariq Ahsan, wrote on Twitter.
0 comments:
Post a Comment