Meyer Werft Agrees with Union to Reorganization as Part of Proposed Bailout

Meyer won orders for two additional 180,000 GT cruise ships from Carnival Cruise Line extending its order book to 2028 (Meyer Werft)

PUBLISHED JUL 3, 2024 2:05 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

Germany cruise ship builder Meyer Werft and the union IG Metall reached important agreements as the first step toward a proposed reorganization and bailout of the financially troubled yard in Papenburg, Germany. Meyer Werft is facing with a liquidity crisis as an after effect of the pandemic and rising costs.

The company is in negotiations with the state government to provide critical loan guarantees for the next few years. While the Papenburg shipyard was able to maintain its orderbook during the pandemic and has added to it with new contracts, it faces a cash shortage in order to build and deliver these cruise ships. Typically, the cruise lines provide a 20 percent upfront payment with the order and the shipyard must finance the materials and pay employees and contractors during the construction period.

The company and union announced their agreements at a press briefing in Papenburg this afternoon, July 3. The union has agreed to job cuts for 340 employees at the Papenburg yard, down from an original proposal to cut 440 positions immediately. Further, the shipyard agreed to attempt to avoid layoffs. It will not renew 100 temporary positions when they expire and will launch a voluntary separation scheme. If by April 2025 they have not reached the 340 number then layoffs may be implemented.

Meyer Werft made several key concessions which CEO Bernd Eikens called “important building blocks,” for the future. The company agreed to relocate its headquarters, which have been in Luxembourg since 2015, back to Germany. Following the required structure for German companies, they will institute both a supervisory board and a group works council in the “near future.” The Papenburg shipyard also agreed to a minimum staffing level of 3,100 employees, including at least 1,200 in production, through 2030.

Meyer Werft is a large employer in Germany’s Lower Saxony region and supports a broad network of contractors and suppliers. Estimates are that at least 10,000 jobs are associated with the shipyard’s work.

Eikens said today’s agreements will be followed by “further steps” in the next few days. He took the reigns of the company from the Meyer family in December 2023 and has brought in a reorganization specialist. He has said the shipyard must and will become more profitable.

Meyer Werft is reported by the German media to be seeking €270 million in financing with government loan guarantees to carry the company through 2027. The state government has expressed its support for the company while calling for the reorganization steps that were agreed to today. However, they will also need the support of the federal government due to the size of the proposed guarantees. The media reports that Meyer is also looking for investors and may require as much as £400 million in new capital.

The German news outlet NDR is reporting that talks are beginning today with the Federal Ministry of Economics. Two of the leading political wings have expressed their support for the discussions and concern over the potential impact on jobs. Media reports are saying that a deal must be reached by September to shore up the weak finances of the Papenburg yard.

The broader Meyer Group, which also has shipyards in Turku, Finland and Rostock, Germany, is reported to employ 7,000 people. The bailout is focused on Papenburg. 

Meyer has recently expanded its work winning its first contracts for offshore platforms. It is also contributing to the construction of a German research vessel. The yard traces its origins to Willm Rolf Meyer, who started building small wooden sailing boats in 1795 in Germany. It transitioned into cruise ships in the 1980s after a downturn in the tanker market and today is one of only three major builders in Europe for large cruise ships

 

Anglo considers options to sell coal assets after fire

Thomas Biesheuvel and Dinesh Nair, Bloomberg News

Anglo American Plc is considering options to push ahead with a sale of its coal business after an explosion at its flagship Australian mine, including the possibility of selling individual assets or excluding the damaged operation from a potential deal. 

The plan to exit coal formed part of a dramatic restructuring program announced earlier this year by Anglo, as the London-based miner was trying to fend off a takeover pursuit by larger rival BHP Group. 

While it also intends to spin off its platinum unit and either sell or separate diamond miner De Beers, the company had been planning to tackle the coal sale first, seen internally and by investors as the most easily achievable part of the restructuring. Anglo has said it already received interest in the assets and a deal for the highly attractive coking coal mines in Australia would have demonstrated early progress to investors looking for signs that Anglo’s go-it-alone approach offers better value than the rejected bid from BHP. 

The plan was thrown into question on Saturday when a methane explosion deep underground started a huge fire at Anglo’s Grosvenor coal mine in Queensland. It’s likely to be several months before the company is able to safely reenter the mine, let alone restart mining. 

However, the company is reluctant to abandon the sales process despite the setback, given the strong early interest it received in the mines, according to people familiar with the matter. Before the accident, Anglo had been planning to kick off a sales process in the coming months with a view to reaching a deal by the end of the year, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. 

While the company had not laid out how it was going to sell the unit, its options now could include selling the rest of the coal business without Grosvenor or selling the other mines individually, the people said, emphasizing that no final decisions have been made.

While excluding Grosvenor from a sale would result in a lower price, Anglo is keen to move forward and demonstrate that it’s making progress after its board unanimously rejected the approach from BHP in May. The world’s biggest miner is currently restricted from making a fresh approach for Anglo but a six-month regulatory standstill will expire later this year. 

A spokesman for Anglo declined to comment. 

Anglo rose as much as 2.1 per cent in London to 2,447 pence. The stock slumped as much as four per cent Monday after news of the explosion.

Besides a sale of its coal business, Anglo is also working on plans to spin off its majority stake in Anglo American Platinum Ltd. and exit its ownership of De Beers. The company would prefer to wait for a recovery in the diamond market, the people said, as the internal view at the company is that De Beers should command a price that reflects its status as a trophy asset.

 THE BOSSES FUCKED UP

WestJet says operations 'stabilized' after long weekend strike

The Canadian Press

WestJet says its operations have "stabilized" after a strike by its mechanics over the long weekend upended plans for thousands of Canadians. The WestJet check-in area at Pearson International Airport is photographed in Toronto, Saturday, June 29, 2024. , THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christophe

WestJet says its operations have "stabilized" after a strike by its mechanics over the long weekend upended plans for thousands of Canadians. 

About 680 workers walked off the job Friday evening despite a directive for binding arbitration from federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan.

A tentative deal was reached late Sunday night and the airline said in a statement Monday that further cancellations would be required over the coming days.

WestJet says it projects minimal future cancellations due to the strike, with 30 today and eight for Thursday. No cancellations related to the strike are expected on Friday.

The airline says the total number of cancellations due to the strike was 1,171. 

Workers still have to vote on the tentative deal, which the union has said gives the mechanics a 30-per-cent boost in total compensation over the contract’s five-year term. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 3, 2024.

How arbitration plans went awry in WestJet mechanics strike

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

Arbitration doesn't typically spur a strike. If anything, the reverse occurs.

But on Thursday, a directive for binding arbitration from Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan was met with job action by WestJet plane mechanics just one day after it was issued, catching the airline and the government off guard and marking a turbulent start to one of the busiest travel weekends of the summer.

The work stoppage, which ended late Sunday night, raises questions about a dispute resolution process that pushed tensions to the breaking point and how consumers should respond to the threat of an airline strike.

Given the minister's broad authority "to secure industrial peace" under the Canada Labour Code, O'Regan had the power to bar a strike in a directive to the country's labour tribunal that imposes binding arbitration, said a union official and aviation experts.

In their public statements last week, both the airline and the federal government seemed to presume a strike was off the table after the order, but a ruling Friday by the Canada Industrial Relations Board said the union's 680 WestJet workers could still walk off the job because the directive had not explicitly suspended that right.

The decision forced WestJet to call off more than 1,100 flights affecting roughly 150,000 travellers — many of whom received less than a day's notice — according to figures from the Calgary-based company and tracking service FlightAware.

The strike sparked outrage in the C-Suite.

"In my 25 years in aviation, I have never encountered such an unreasonable counterparty. Calling for a strike despite the minister ordering arbitration is a misuse of the right to strike," said CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech in a post on LinkedIn.

He said in the statement that the move served no purpose other than disrupting customers and "creating damage" to the carrier. 

"Once the parties are in arbitration, there is no more bargaining taking place, so a strike no longer influences the outcome."

That turned out not to be the case. Talks did resume over the weekend, and they yielded a tentative deal that would see the mechanics receive a 30-per-cent boost in total compensation over the contract's five-year term, according to Ian Evershed, a representative for the Airplane Mechanics Fraternal Association who helped lead the negotiations.

Now, arbitration will only kick in if workers vote to turn down the agreement. They overwhelmingly rejected an initial offer in a mid-June vote, prompting WestJet to request binding arbitration and setting in motion the manoeuvres that culminated in the Canada Day long weekend strike.

The work stoppage took a toll on consumer goodwill, with travellers venting their frustration on social media in sometimes colourful language.

One customer said on the X platform the airline informed them only at 11:12 p.m. on Saturday that their next-day flight out of Las Vegas was cancelled, calling the last-minute move "scumbag behaviour." 

While most travellers could receive refunds from WestJet, those with related costs tied to hotel or other flight bookings — that they missed, or that they made while stuck abroad — might not get that money back without coverage for trip cancellation or interruption, said Marty Firestone, president of insurance firm Travel Secure Inc.

"This has been a nightmare for people," he said. "Getting that refund for your airfare is the least of your problems."

The strike also left both sides in the standoff embittered.

In the conference room at a hotel near Toronto's Pearson airport, the mood see-sawed wildly from day to day, Evershed said.

"When the ministerial referral came through we felt completely defeated. And then likewise over the course of the next day or two where the CIRB upheld our right to strike ... we were elated," he said.

"I'm sure that the company was just devastated by that."

As the weekend wore on, the friction only intensified.

“Emotions are running high. The big contributing factor is fatigue ... There are points where frustration takes over," Evershed said.

“Some of the things that have been said publicly — it’s unfortunate that it went that far," he added, referring to both parties. In an update Sunday morning, the union negotiating committee said it was "the victim of WestJet’s virulent PR campaign that (members) are scofflaws," citing "calumnies" against workers around their right to strike.

Eventually, a hard-headed resolve to hash out a deal took hold. Von Hoensbroech joined the talks Sunday morning, a WestJet spokesperson confirmed. The CEO and Evershed spoke via video conference late Sunday afternoon, and the two sides reached an agreement at 10:30 p.m. MDT, said the union rep — a mechanic at the carrier for more than 15 years.

“At the end of this, I’m a WestJet employee."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 2, 2024.

Feds announce $11 million in funding for clean energy projects, mostly in Alberta

The Canadian Press

Eleven clean energy projects, most of which are based in Alberta, have been selected to receive a total of $11 million in federal funding. Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson rises during Question Period, Monday, June 17, 2024 in Ottawa. , THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Eleven clean energy projects, most of which are based in Alberta, have been selected to receive a total of $11 million in federal funding.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson made the announcement in Calgary Wednesday where he was attending a conference with provincial and territorial ministers.

Of the funding, $2.5 million will go to small modular nuclear reactor research at the University of Alberta and University of Regina.

The remaining $8.5 million will be divided between seven Alberta companies doing work in the area of hydrogen.

Recipients of the funding will include Atco Gas, which is working to develop the first commercial 100 per cent hydrogen-heated building in Canada; Innovative Fuel Systems, which is developing a retrofit system to convert heavy-duty diesel truck engines to hydrogen engines; and New Wave Hydrogen, which aims to use shock-wave heating to produce clean hydrogen from natural gas without producing any carbon dioxide emissions in the process.

Interest in low-carbon hydrogen and other low-carbon fuels has increased significantly in recent years. 

There are now more than 80 low-carbon hydrogen production projects currently in various stages of development, according to the federal government. The government's own estimate pegs the economic opportunity of hydrogen development in Canada at over $100 billion. 

"Hydrogen presents a massive opportunity," said Wilkinson. "(It's) a clean energy source that can build on existing strengths, and simultaneously support energy security and climate objectives."

Both hydrogen and small modular nuclear reactors are areas of focus for the feds, as it works toward its goal of getting Canada to net-zero emissions by 2050.

A new report from clean energy think-tank the Pembina Institute and Simon Fraser University says Canada is on track to make significant progress toward that goal thanks to government policies that are accelerating the shift to clean energy.

"If all governments stay the course on the plans and policies that they have already implemented (or announced plans to implement), Canada would be on track to significantly reduce emissions by the end of this decade," the report's authors state.

The report gives high marks to the federal government as well as the governments of B.C. and Quebec for supporting the energy transition, but says Alberta and Saskatchewan are lagging behind.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 3, 2024.

 WORKERS CAPITAL

OMERS selling LifeLabs to U.S.-based Quest Diagnostics

P3: PUBLIC PENSIONS FUND PRIVATIZATION

The Canadian Press

Ontario pension fund manager OMERS has signed a deal to sell medical lab company LifeLabs to U.S.-based firm Quest Diagnostics in a deal valued at $1.35 billion including debt.

Quest Diagnostics chairman and CEO Jim Davis says the deal is based on the belief that the company can help LifeLabs accelerate growth and improve health care.

OMERS purchased LifeLabs in 2007 and helped grow the business.

Under the deal, the companies said LifeLabs will retain its brand, Canadian headquarters and management once the deal is closed.

Quest is expected to help LifeLabs with improved online appointment scheduling and faster patient service centre processing.

OMERS is the pension fund manger for municipal employees and retirees in Ontario.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 3, 2024.

 

Waterloo software firm OpenText cuts 1,200 jobs as part of business optimization plan

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

OpenText Corp.'s chief executive says the company plans to shed about 1,200 roles as part of a business optimization plan.

In an open letter to stakeholders released Wednesday, Mark Barrenechea describes the cuts as a way of "placing the right talent in the right locations of our business, funding growth and innovations, and completing these objectives with higher productivity, lower cost, and expanded margin."

The Waterloo, Ont.-based software company did not immediately respond to questions about the extent and nature of the layoff, but data provided by LSEG Data & Analytics showed OpenText employed 24,100 staff last June.

Barrenechea's note said the job reduction will come with one-time costs of about $60 million but will generate about $150 million in savings per year.

The move will be combined with plans to create 800 new roles in sales, professional services and engineering and comes as the company is ushering in a new chapter.

Barrenechea's letter called that chapter "OpenText 3.0 – Information Reimagined" and said it builds on former stages of the company that centred on content management and then information management based in the cloud.

The new stage taking the form of a three-year plan focused on cloud, security and artificial intelligence innovations.

In the cloud segment of the business, Barrenechea said the company will find ways to automate and drive productivity for workers, and in the AI portion, it will seek out ways to transform business processes.

Across all of its technology, it will work to ensure it offers security and compliance for global businesses.

"We are very excited about opportunities going forward to continue our growth and increase our market share by helping our customers transform," Barrenechea said.

"Along with our plans to pursue large margin expansion opportunities and execute on strong capital allocation, we are confident we will deliver significant long-term value for all our stakeholders."

Richard Tse, an analyst with National Bank of Canada, believes the moves will drive "some organic growth in the interim until the company can pursue a more active level of acquisition activity."

"Overall, we believe the above actions signal challenging operating results in the short term, including the upcoming FQ4 results," he wrote in a note to investors.

In OpenText's most recent quarter, the company earned US$98.3 million, up from US$57.6 million a year earlier. 

Its revenues for what was the third quarter totalled US$1.4 billion, up 16 per cent from US$1.2 billion during the same period last year. 

During the quarter, the company completed the divestment of its AMC business to Rocket Software for US$2.3 billion in cash before taxes, fees and other adjustments.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 3, 2024.

Hope for Mekong dolphins as Cambodia numbers increase: minister


By AFP
July 1, 2024


Irrawaddy dolphins feature on the "Red List" of endangered wildlife by the International Union for Conservation of Nature - Copyright AFP TANG CHHIN Sothy

The number of Mekong dolphins has risen to more than 100 in Cambodia, the agriculture minister said Monday, raising a glimmer of hope for the endangered mammals.

Irrawaddy dolphins — small, shy creatures with domed foreheads and short beaks — once swam through much of the mighty Mekong, all the way to the delta in Vietnam.

But their population in the river has dwindled from 200, when the first census was taken in 1997, to just 89 in 2020, largely due to illegal fishing, habitat loss and plastic waste.

“Currently, we have some 105 dolphins,” Agriculture Minister Dith Tina said during a ceremony to mark National Fisheries Day.

In the first six months of this year, eight new dolphin calves were recorded, but there were also two deaths, the agricultural ministry said.

The boost to numbers follows the birth of eight dolphins last year, a ministry statement said, while 2023 also saw five deaths recorded.

“The ministry has strongly taken measures against fishing offences and the making and distributing of destructive fishing tools that seriously damage marine resources,” Dith Tina said.

Last year Cambodia’s then leader Hun Sen U-turned on a law to protect the species, saying “dolphins keep dying” while the fishing industry suffered from the conservation legislation.

Irrawaddy dolphins feature on the “Red List” of endangered wildlife by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Adding to concerns about their survival, around 70 percent of the population is now too old to breed.

The dolphins’ habitat has also been reduced by upstream dams in Laos and China and climate change, which have had a major impact on water levels in the river.

Controlling electrical pulses may offer promise for treating mild traumatic brain injury


ByDr. Tim Sandle
July 1, 2024

DIGITAL JOURNAL

Brain preserved in formaldehyde. — Gaetan Lee (CC BY 2.0)

New research has been examining brain connectivity and trauma. The timing pattern of electrical signalling plays a role in regulating the strength of synaptic connections after brain injury, particularly strengthening them with the same patterns that would otherwise weaken those connections in the normal brain.

Brain stimulation is increasingly being used in the clinic to treat a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders such as depression, Parkinson’s disease, chronic pain, and Alzheimer’s disease but little attention, until now, has been paid to the patterns of the stimulation other than frequency.

Virginia Tech scientists with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC have demonstrated that specifying the timing pattern of neurostimulation – impulses used to activate the brain’s own electrical signalling mechanisms – can rebalance the strength of synaptic connections between nerve cells, selectively up- or down-regulating those connections.

The research shows the importance of considering the use of more natural, noisier patterns of impulses of activity for neurostimulation as a means to effectively treat brain disorders like concussions and other mild traumatic brain injuries.

According to lead research Michael Friedlander: “Our results suggest that we may be able to use different patterns of brain stimulation to help treat mild traumatic brain injuries.”

He adds: “By adjusting things like the timing, frequency, and consistency of the stimulation, we might be able to strengthen specific connections in the brain, which could help improve brain function after injury. It has not escaped our attention that the electrical and synaptic signalling in the living brain is generally anything but regular.”

Elaborating on the process, Friedlander says: “We wanted to build on that natural noisiness that the brain uses to see if patterns that mimic those might have some intrinsic capacity to activate signalling pathways to re-adjust strengths between nodes in living neuronal networks that have otherwise been functionally compromised such as occurs after injury.”

“While our study in laboratory rats is directed specifically at mild traumatic brain injury, it may also provide useful information to be applied to treatments of other brain conditions in people,” Friedlander said.

The new research is the first to look at the effects of systematically and precisely controlling the timing patterns of neurostimulation.

Notably, the researchers found that irregular patterns at certain frequencies appear to affect injured brains differently than normal brains, strengthening their connections with other nerve cells, while in the normal brain, those same patterns weakened the connections.

This demonstrates how neurostimulation can be delivered in a way that is more irregular. While highly irregular patterns of stimulation in the normal brain led to a decrease in the strength of connections between neurons, yet in the injured brain, that same irregular pattern of stimulation, at the same frequency and continuity, resulted in a strengthening of those connections.

The research appears in the Journal of Neurotrama. It is titled “Synaptic plasticity in the injured brain depends on the temporal pattern of stimulation.”

Exclusive-India asks utilities to order $33 billion in equipment this year to boost coal power output, sources say


 A loader loads coal in the truck at an open cast coal field at Topa coal mine in the Ramgarh district in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand

Wed, Jul 3, 2024, 
By Sarita Chaganti Singh

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has asked power companies to order equipment worth $33 billion this year to fast track capacity additions of coal-fired power in the years ahead, as the South Asian nation struggles to meet booming electricity demand, two government officials said.

The unprecedented move by the government, which would result in record tendering in a year for the equipment by major power firms such as state-run NTPC and SJVN as well as by private companies Adani Power and Essar Power, will help add 31 gigawatts (GW) in the next 5-6 years, the sources said.

Normally, the government leaves the tendering timing to the companies themselves.

Expediting equipment orders for new coal-fired plants was discussed at a meeting held by Power Minister Manohar Lal, soon after the formation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's federal cabinet early last month, the sources said.

The targets are ambitious given the country has ordered equipment for about 2-3 GW capacity annually in prior years, barring last year's orders for 10 GW.

India is rushing to add fresh coal-fired plants as it is barely able to meet high power demand with the existing fleet in non-solar hours.

Post pandemic, the country's power demand scaled new records on the back of the fastest rate of economic growth among major economies and increased instances of heatwaves.

India saw its biggest power shortfall in 14 years in June, and had to race to avoid night time outages by deferring planned plant maintenance, and invoking an emergency clause to mandate companies to run plants based on imported coal and power.

State-run Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), which bagged all power equipment contracts in auctions in the last year, is likely to get most of the contracts for the new equipment, the sources said.

Larsen & Toubro, the only other power equipment producer in the market, had not participated in most of last year's bids, they said.

The Power Ministry, BHEL, Adani, NTPC, SJVN and L&T did not immediately respond to emails sent by Reuters. The sources did not want to be named because they were not authorised to talk to media.

"The last large orders for power equipment were placed for about 20 GW around 2009-10 when Chinese companies bagged a major pie," one of the sources said.

Policy flip-flops and lack of orders for coal-based plants over the past several years forced other equipment suppliers such as Thermax–Babcock, BGR–Hitachi and South Korea's Doosan to shut their manufacturing units in India.

The country, since 2020, discourages contracts with companies in countries sharing a land border such as China by mandating regulatory approvals.

Since late last year, India has fast tracked coal-fired power plants to meet its power needs, threatening to undermine progress made by the world's No.3 greenhouse gas emitter in weaning its economy off carbon.

In March Reuters reported private Indian firms have expressed interest in building at least 10 GW of coal-fired power capacity over a decade, ending a six-year drought in significant private involvement in the sector. ($1 = 83.5040 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Sarita Chaganti Singh in New Delhi; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Dozens rally in Pakistan after a Christian man is sentenced to death for blasphemy

Associated Press
Tue, July 2, 2024 




Pakistan Blasphemy
Members from Pakistan's minority community and civil society chant slogans during a demonstration against the conviction of a Christian man on charges of blasphemy and condemn the country's blasphemy laws, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. A court had awarded a death sentence to Ehsan Shan after finding him guilty of sharing "hateful content against Muslims on social media after one of the worst mob attacks on Christians in the eastern Punjab province last year. 

(AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Dozens of members from Pakistan's civil society rallied on Tuesday in the southern port city of Karachi against the death sentence handed down to a Christian man on blasphemy charges, nearly a year after one of the worst mob attacks on Christians in the country.

Several Christians also joined the rally which comes a day after a court in Sahiwal in the Punjab province announced the death sentence to Ehsan Shan after finding him guilty of sharing “hateful content" against Muslims on social media.

Shan's lawyer Khurram Shahzad said on Monday he will appeal the verdict.


He was arrested in August 2023 after groups of Muslim men burned dozens of homes and churches in the city of Jaranwala in Punjab after some residents claimed they saw two Christian men desecrating pages from Islam’s holy book, the Quran. The two men were later arrested.

Though Shan was not party to the desecration, he was accused of reposting the defaced pages of the Quran on his TikTok account.

At Tuesday's rally in Karachi, a Christian leader Luke Victor, called for Shah's release.

He also demanded action against those who were involved in burning churches and homes of Christians in Jaranwala.

Blasphemy accusations are common in Pakistan. Under the country’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death. While authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy, often a mere accusation can cause riots and incite mobs to violence, lynching and killings.

Pakistani Christian man given death penalty for posting ‘hateful content’ against Muslims

Maroosha Muzaffar
Tue, July 2, 2024 

Pakistani Christian man given death penalty for posting ‘hateful content’ against Muslims

A Pakistani court has sentenced a Christian man to death for posting defaced pages of the Quran on TikTok last year.

A mob attacked Christians in eastern Punjab province, burning their homes and churches, after two Christian men were accused of desecrating the Quran last year. The men were arrested for allegedly possessing pages of the Muslim scripture tainted with derogatory remarks scribbled in red.

Ehsan Shan wasn’t involved in the desecration but was accused of reposting the defaced pages on his TikTok account, his lawyer Khurram Shahzad told The Associated Press on Monday.

Shan is set to appeal the death sentence handed down on Saturday by a court in the city of Sahiwal in Punjab, the lawyer said.

Amir Farooq, the police officer who arrested Shan, said he shared “hateful content at a sensitive time when authorities were already struggling to contain the violence”.

Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan.

Critics argue that the blasphemy laws are often misused to target religious minorities.

Although blasphemy convictions are common in Pakistan, no one has ever been executed.

Most convictions are thrown out on appeal by higher courts but mobs have in the past lynched suspects before they could be put on trial.



In the wake of last year’s attack on Christians in Punjab, the local government launched a probe while police arrested over 100 people. But none of the suspected attackers have been convicted so far even though local media at the time described it as one of the deadliest attacks on the minority community in the country.

The nearly 100 Christians who lost their homes in the attack were each promised 2m rupees (£5,680) in compensation but it was not known if they had been paid yet.

Additional reporting by agencies.