Tens of thousands of people attended Thursday, October 27 the funeral of a Pakistani journalist killed by police in Kenya, a few months after fleeing his country to escape arrest.
Arshad Sharif, outspoken critic of Pakistan’s all-powerful military and supporter of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, was killed on Sunday when Kenyan police opened fire on his vehicle at a roadblock some 40 kilometers from the capital Nairobi.
Evoked error
The star TV presenter left Pakistan in August to avoid sedition charges. His death sparked a wave of speculation in his country about the possibility that he was murdered. The Kenyan police mentioned an error: the police officers who had erected the roadblock would have fired thinking of shooting at a stolen car and used in a kidnapping, which they were looking for.
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The funeral, held at Islamabad’s largest mosque, was attended by around 40,000 people, according to Pakistani police. Among the crowd were many media figures and a large proportion of supporters of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, Pakistan Justice Movement), Imran Khan’s party, who chanted slogans in honor of Arshad Sharif.
“Arshad Sharif sacrificed his life to expose the faces of the corrupt and we should not allow this sacrifice to be in vain“, told AFP Muhammad Iqbal, a trader supporter of the PTI. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced on Wednesday the opening of an investigation into the circumstances of the journalist’s death.
disobey orders
In August, Sharif had interviewed on the Ary News channel a close adviser to Imran Khan, Shahbaz Gill, who had on this occasion urged the army officers to disobey contrary orders “at the will of the majority” People. These statements had been considered seditious by the authorities. Ary News was then briefly stopped from broadcasting and an arrest warrant was issued for Sharif, who had by then left the country.
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Shahbaz Gill had been arrested after his interview. Imran Khan then claimed that his adviser had been tortured and sexually abused in custody, which had earned him several court appearances, on charges of contempt of court and breach of the anti-terror law. then abandoned. Criticism of the military and powerful security services has long been seen as a red line in Pakistan, ranked among the world’s most dangerous countries for media professionals.