Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said he was deeply concerned by the lynching of a Sri Lankan man in Pakistan but expressed faith in Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s commitment to "ensure justice" in the case. He also called for ensuring the safety of the remaining Sri Lankan workers in Pakistan. 

“Deeply concerned by the incident in Sialkot, Pakistan. Sri Lanka trusts that PM Imran Khan and the Government of Pakistan will ensure justice is served and ensure the safety of the remaining Sri Lankan workers in Pakistan,” he said on Twitter on Saturday. 

For hours Friday, Sri Lankan officials were too stunned to give a reaction; neither did senior Pakistani leaders. As anger kept mounting in Sri Lanka with the circulation of chilling videos and images from Sialkot, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa said on Saturday in a tweet, “My heart goes out to his wife and the family,” calling the attack by an "extremist mob" as “shocking”. However, he added, “Sri Lanka and her people are confident PM Imran Khan will keep to his commitment to bring all those involved to justice.” 

Priyantha Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan national who was working as an export manager in Rajco Industries in Pakistan, was on Friday first brutally assaulted by an Islamist mob of over a thousand people, then burnt alive to death in full public. The mob accused him of blasphemy—a crime punished by death, according to Pakistanis laws. 

Acknowledging the assurance given by the Pakitan government, Sri Lankan cabinet Minister for Youth and Sport said, “The brutal murder of Priyantha Diyawadana by extremist mobs in Pakistan is incomprehensible…..we should be mindful that this could happen to anyone if extremist forces are allowed to act freely.” 

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan put out a tweet later in the evening, calling the "horrific vigilante killing"......“a day of shame for Pakistan”, and assured he was “overseeing the investigation” and all those responsible would be punished with “full severity of the law”. However, “law”, Khan has mentioned in his tweet, often takes a back seat, when it comes to cases related to alleged blasphemy. 

Police officials, who were sent there to rescue him, stood there while his body burst into flames—a spectacle ghastly enough to force one to think where the Pakistani society is going. 

Reports suggested over 100 have been arrested by police so far. But, just weeks ago, the Pakistan government had released over 1000 people, who were arrested for killing seven policemen during the violent rallies of the TLP, a radical Islamist group that championed the cause of the country’s infamous blasphemy laws.  

 Sialkot, the district where the incident took place, is in Punjab, the country’s most politically influential province. It is also a stronghold for the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a group known for its advocacy of strict blasphemy laws and which has recently almost brought the Imran Khan government to its knees through violent protests.   

The Pakistan government had recently signed a secret deal with the same group.  

It took the youngest of Rajapaksas in the Sri Lanka cabinet, Namal Rajapaksa, to call a spade a spade. Appreciating the promise of Khan, Namal added in one of his tweets, “we should be mindful that this could happen to anyone if extremist forces are allowed to act freely” — a veiled reference to the rampant rise of extremism in Pakistani society.   

A photo that went viral drew the most attention. It was the bizarre image of a man, who was part of the mob, taking a selfie with the burning body in the background—a scene that seemed to eptimosise the malaise that had Pakistan in its grip. 

(SAM)