After government deal

Al Jazeera has a nice peaceful-sounding headline about it.

Pakistan: Blasphemy protests called off after government deal

Well, yes, protests called off, at the price of detaining Asi Bibi in Pakistan so that the religious fanatics can find her and murder her. The “government deal” is to prevent her from leaving Pakistan, even though she did nothing wrong, so that the screaming rioting mob can get its hands on her.

Pakistan’s far-right Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party has called off protestsagainst the acquittal of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy which have rocked the Muslim-majority South Asian democracy in recent days.

TLP on Friday signed an agreement with the Pakistani government to end the demonstrations, which also involved a number of other religious parties, party spokesperson Zubair Kasuri told Al Jazeera by telephone from Lahore.

All of them murderous and fanatically concerned with a false accusation of doing a thing that doesn’t matter anyway.

According to Kasuri, protesters will be granted legal amnesty under the terms of the deal and Aasia Bibi – the 53-year-old Christian woman at the centre of this week’s furore – will be placed on Pakistan’s Exit Control List.

This means she is effectively barred from leaving the country.

Blasphemy is a sensitive subject in Pakistan, where the country’s strict laws prescribe a mandatory death penalty for some forms of the crime.

Increasingly, blasphemy allegations have led to murders and mob lynchings, with at least 74 people killed in such violence since 1990, according to an Al Jazeera tally.

And now Asia Bibi is condemned to be the at least 75th.

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