Pro-Palestinian activists disrupted the speech of German Ambassador to Pakistan Alfred Grannas when he took the podium to speak at the Asma Jahangir Conference 2024 in Lahore on Saturday.
The German envoy was called out by the representatives of the Progressive Students’ Collective when he began his speech during the annual conference, the theme of which this year is ‘The People’s Mandate: Safeguarding Civil Rights in South Asia’.
As Grannas started speaking, one of the guests at the event, an activist, who was standing in the middle of the conference hall, said: “Excuse me Mr ambassador. Excuse me. I’m shocked by your audacity that you are here to talk about civil rights.”
The activist also questioned the envoy about his government’s complicity in the ongoing genocide, as his speech was largely aimed at exploring the state of human and civil rights in South Asia, including Pakistan.
“Why your country is brutally abusing the people speaking for the rights of Palestinians,” the activist said, addressing the German envoy.
Ambassador Grannas, who was visibly taken aback, began shouting while asking the protesters not to shout. He also gestured at the students while waving his left hand in the air, asking them to “go out”.
“If you want to shout, go out, and there you can shout because shouting is not a discussion. That it is [sic]… if you want to discuss…,” the envoy said, soon after which the conference went off-air for a while on a digital media platform’s YouTube channel. However, the speech by Ambassador Grannas resumed in a matter of few minutes. The protest by the activist came days after the conference organisers shared that the envoy would participate in the event.
