Germany’s Ambassador to Pakistan Alfred Grannas asked a pro-Palestine protester to leave the hall after the latter disrupted the former’s speech on civil rights at a conference in Lahore on Saturday.

“If you want to shout, go out. There you can shout because shouting is not a discussion,” the envoy said as the Gaza protester interrupted his speech at the 5th Asma Jahangir Conference titled ‘People’s Mandate: Safeguarding Civil Rights in South Asia’.

The two-day conference, announced by the Asma Jahangir Legal Aid Cell, is being organised in collaboration with the Supreme Court Bar Association and the Pakistan Bar Council.

When the ambassador began his speech, the protester can be heard saying: “Excuse me, Mr Ambassador. I am shocked by the audacity that you are here to talk about civil rights while your country is brutally abusing the people speaking for the rights of the Palestinians.”

Some of the members in the hall joined the protester while a few chanted slogans of “Free, Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea”.

In some of the clips, which have gone viral on social media, the ambassador can be heard losing his temper and asking the protester to leave.

The organisation muted the ambassador’s speech and later disabled the live-stream for a few minutes.

In a social media post on X, the Progressive Students Collective claimed that its members had “exposed the hypocrisy of the German ambassador” by questioning him on the role of Germany in the deaths in Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry has said that at least 34,388 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during more than six months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, AFP reported.

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The tally includes at least 32 deaths in the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 77,437 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

When Grannas resumed his speech, he said that the “mother of all basic human rights is the protection of human dignity”.

He added: “This actually brings [Germany] in commonality with Pakistan, because there are not too many countries in the world that have an explicit guarantee of the inviolability of human dignity.”

A similar type of situation occurred when US President Joe Biden made a campaign speech at a historic South Carolina church in January this year.