Akhmal Shaikh, British citizen of Pakistani descent, took a trip to China one day, armed with nothing but a song he hoped to use to land a recording contract, in the hopes his charming little tune would usher in world peace in the name of Allah.
He got off the plane in Beijing. He was stopped and interrogated and then jailed by the Chinese authorities. They heard his pleas, and I guess they got around to playing his song, featured in the YouTube video below.
Then they killed him.
Oh, okay, he was also carrying a suitcase stuffed chock full of heroin, enough to kill more than twenty-five thousand people. According to his supporters, he was tricked into carrying it into China by drug smugglers, while in Poland.
He was supposedly bi-polar, so the British objected to his pending execution, but the Chinese were unrelenting. Personally, I still think it was partly because of the song. It certainly didn't help his cause. Somebody wanting to put out a song in the name of Allah for the ostensible purpose of ushering in world peace might want to try a different venue than the People's Republic of China. They seem to have this thing about religious fanatics. Ask the Falon Gong.
In the meantime, go over to the YouTube page and join the fun in the comments section.
3 comments:
You raised enough questions, to show why execution was wrong.
I'm undecided as to this particular case. It might have been a little harsh. Still, China has a zero tolerance policy towards convicted drug smugglers, so there it is. As a general rule, I think we should adopt the same policies towards heroin smugglers, or with other hard drugs smugglers.
This guy might not have been the tool he has been portrayed as. When he was stopped, according to one report he told the Chinese authorities he had looked inside the suitcase and there was nothing in it. If that's true, that's probably where he hung himself.
Another thing, heroin smuggling is a major finance operation of Islamic radicals. This guy was a fifty-year old Pakistani Muslim smuggling a large quantity of heroin who recorded a song praising Allah.
Put two and two together and it don't add up to anything good in the eyes of a lot of people.
Sounds like he was a believer in "noetics"... a billion minds all thinking the same thing, thereby altering reality.
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