Special Representative to Pakistani Prime Minister on Religious Harmony and the Middle East, Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi and renowned religious scholar Maulana Tariq Jamil met Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner Mohan Wijewickrama at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Islamabad on Wednesday, December 22.
They expressed grief at the lynching of Priyantha Kumara by a charged mob in Sialkot earlier this month.
Kumara, a senior manager at a factory in Sialkot, was tortured to death on December 3 by hundreds of protesters, including factory employees, and his body was later burnt.
Talking to the media following the meeting, Ashrafi, while condemning the Sialkot incident, said that the factory’s management had decided to bear all the expenses of the two children of Kumara, besides giving the position of senior manager to a Sri Lankan citizen in the factory. Maulana Tariq Jamil apologised for the incident and said that Islam does not permit such barbarity. Religion does not allow oppression at all.
Jamil said that Islam’s literal meaning refers to submission, surrender and peaceful reconciliation, especially compliance with divine directives.
The whole Pakistani nation is ashamed of that barbarity. No one has the right to burn anyone, he said. Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner said that the Government is fully satisfied with the steps taken by the Pakistani Government.
Earlier on December 7, clerics from various schools of thought visited the Sri Lanka Embassy in Islamabad and unanimously condemned the lynching of Kumara, calling it “un-Islamic” and “extrajudicial”. They had demanded that strict legal action be meted out to those responsible. (Source: ‘Pakistan Today’)