Pakistan keeps Chinese engineer in top-security jail to avoid mob attack over blasphemy charge

Pakistan has taken extraordinary precautions to protect a Chinese engineer arrested by police on Sunday amid a mob attack instigated by a group that accused him of blasphemy.

Under Pakistani law, blasphemy penalties range from fines to the death penalty.

Identified in police records as “Mr Tian, in-charge of heavy transportation” at the under construction Dasu hydropower plant in northern Pakistan, the engineer was evacuated by helicopter on Monday afternoon to the garrison city of Abbottabad, 217km away.

He has been placed in solitary confinement under heavy guard at the nearby Haripur top-security prison on the orders of an anti-terrorist court.

Police inspector Nasiruddin, the chief of Komila police station where Tian was initially held, said technical legal steps were taken on Monday to ensure he was not held in the Kohistan region, where Dasu is located.

Authorities there feared the Chinese engineer would be vulnerable to another mob attack, either at the police station or during any scheduled appearance at the local court, as long as he remained in the area, he said.

To avert the threat, Nasiruddin said police added several terrorism-related charges to the blasphemy complaint registered by Tian’s two accusers, both dump-truck drivers.

This extraordinary step ensured the charges against the Chinese engineer would be held at the anti-terrorist court in distant Abbottabad.

The judge hearing the case ordered that Tian should only participate in hearings via video link from the Haripur prison.

“Investigations will establish the facts of the case in due course,” said the police inspector.

Suspect arrested in Pakistan blast that killed 3 Chinese teachers

The Chinese foreign ministry said on Tuesday that it was working to verify Tian’s situation, and its embassy in Pakistan would provide consular protection and help if needed.

Appearing before a tribal council, or jirga, on Monday, Tian’s Pakistani interpreter alleged the Chinese national had used “abusive language against Allah and Prophet Mohammed” during a heated conversation with his accusers about time taken off to pray while on duty during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting.

Tian denied the accusations and said he had been falsely accused.

Formal prosecution proceedings were subsequently initiated against the Chinese engineer by local police on Monday under immense pressure from the jirga, which rallied hundreds of locals to twice blockade the Karakoram Highway, the only land connection with China, to press its demands of legal action.

Under pressure from the authorities, the jirga also issued a proclamation warning local residents not to vent their anger against Tian, or towards any of the several hundred other Chinese and other foreign nationals working at Dasu.

Nonetheless, Nasiruddin said police had asked Pakistan’s army to place a helicopter on standby in case of another flare-up and it became necessary to evacuate foreign nationals working in Dasu.

A military spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the helicopter deployment.

However, multiple sources based in the Dasu area said work had resumed on the 4,320 megawatt hydropower project on Tuesday morning.

They saw Chinese workers shuttling between various work sites as usual albeit under markedly heavier protection from army, paramilitary and police staff.

To visibly assert the writ of the state, the region’s top administrator and police chief undertook an early morning inspection tour of the increased security arrangements at all Dasu hydropower projects and residential camp sites.

In a press statement issued on Tuesday, the police chief of Upper Kohistan district, Mohammed Khalid Khan, said the security of foreign nationals working at Dasu was the administration’s “top priority”.

“In the light of the situation” there, he said further “foolproof” security measures have been put in place to ensure the well being of foreign workers, he said.

The World Bank-financed US$4.3 billion Dasu hydropower project has been plagued by delays, particularly after 13 employees of China based construction firm CGGC were killed during a suicide blast in July 2021.

Nine Chinese nationals were among those killed when their shuttle bus was bombed.

It remains the deadliest terrorist attack on Chinese nationals working overseas.

The Dasu attack prompted Beijing to order all Chinese companies working in Pakistan to temporarily suspend operations.

Since then, the terrorist threat to Chinese nationals from Taliban and ethnic Baloch and Sindhi insurgents has mounted, prompting Chinese leaders to repeatedly remind their Pakistani counterparts that security guarantees were the top precondition for the financing of a 3,000km Chinese infrastructure network project undertaken in Pakistan.

The programme was rolled out in 2015, barely a year after the successful conclusion of Pakistan’s eight-year war against Taliban insurgents.

China condemns ‘terror attack’ aimed at Chinese nationals in Pakistan

The blasphemy case and mob attack against Chinese engineer Tian “adds a ‘known unknown’ to the list of security challenges facing Chinese nationals working in Pakistan”, said Abdul Basit, a research fellow of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

“It will definitely add another layer to China-Pakistan relations”, particularly the security of Chinese nationals working in Pakistan, he said.

“I don’t think this is going to become a major issue because what matters to the Chinese [government} is that he has not been harmed,” Basit said.

However, he said the combined effects of the July 2021 suicide attack and Sunday’s mob violence would have deeply frightened Chinese nationals working at Dasu and they would be “very, very reluctant to continue working there”.

Likewise, the violence would discourage new recruits from joining the project, thereby inflicting a “big dent to this limited China-Pakistan cooperation”, Basit said.

Additional reporting by Reuters