2 yıl önce

Pakistan decriminalises far-right party behind anti-France protests

The religious group was banned a year ago over violent rallies demanding the expulsion of the French envoy in Pakistan over caricatures insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad published in France.

AP

The group has been campaigning on the single issue of defending Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

The Pakistani government has lifted the ban on Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) that triggered violent anti-France protests, which left at least six officers and four demonstrators dead.

The interior ministry lifted the ban against the religious party, which was outlawed a year ago amid violent rallies over the publications of caricatures of Islam’s Prophet in France, late on Sunday.

The ban was lifted in the “larger national interest” amid assurances the party would not indulge in violent activities in future, the government said.

The move followed last week’s deal between the government and TLP that stipulated an end to the protest march on Islamabad, which started on October 22, and Islamabad’s pledge to drop pending charges against the party’s detained leader Saad Rizvi.

Authorities say they freed more than 1,000 detained TLP supporters last week, and a process is underway to release Rizvi, who was arrested a year ago.

TLP supporters are yet to formally announce the end of their march and scores of demonstrators are still sitting along a highway in the city of Wazirabad.

Anti-France sentiment

Rizvi’s party gained prominence in Pakistan’s 2018 elections, campaigning on the single issue of defending the country’s blasphemy law, which calls for the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam.

The party started demanding the expulsion of the French envoy in October 2020, when French President Emmanuel Macron tried to defend caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad as freedom of expression.

Macron’s comments came after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown caricatures of the prophet in class.

The images were republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the trial over the deadly 2015 attack against the publication for the original caricatures.

That enraged many Muslims to whom those depictions were blasphemous.