A pair of hard-line clerics was jailed for inciting violence against Shiite Muslims, officials said Friday, as authorities stepped up a campaign against sectarian hate speech. A court in Shorkot on Thursday convicted Ghulam Yaseen and Sajid Ali for incitement in speeches to thousands of their followers in January, police official Rab Nawaz Warriach said.
Both clerics were handed two years in jail for attempting to intimidate the government away from its crackdown on extremist groups and for threatening to bomb Shias, Warriach said. They denied the charges during the trial but police produced a video of the speeches during which their followers expressed slogans labelling Shiites infidels and calling for them to be put to death.
Authorities responded by lifting a six-year moratorium on the death penalty, setting up military courts for trials of suspected terrorists and cracking down on hate speech. Since the institution of these measures, thousands of clerics have been charged in Punjab alone. Some have been arrested for as little as posting comments online, according to police.
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