ISLAMABAD/KARACHI, 20 February 2006 — Tens of thousands of protesters took to streets in several major cities of Pakistan yesterday to protest against the publication of blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in some Western newspapers.
Hundreds of youths gathered in Islamabad to protest against cartoons in defiance of a government ban on rallies, sources said. Police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the demonstrators who gathered near the capital’s Aabpara market and pelted police with stones.
Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao confirmed the use of tear gas but denied that police resorted to firing. The federal government imposed a ban on the Islamabad march on Saturday after similar protests earlier led to violence.
In Karachi, thousands of protesters staged a peaceful rally yesterday, carrying banners saying “We are slaves of our Prophet,” witnesses said. Hafiz Ahmad Taqi and professor Ghafoor Ahmad led the procession which started from Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum and ended at Tibet Center.
Peaceful rallies were taken out in other Sindh cities of Hyderabad, Thatta, Larkana, Sukkur and Mirpurkhas.
However, in an unrelated incident, hundreds of people attacked two churches in Sukkur yesterday after allegations that a Christian boy had desecrated the holy Qur’an, a government official said, adding that no one was hurt.
Addressing the rally Hafiz Ahmad said that the successful rallies have proved that the government was defeated in its cause to protect its Western friends.
Groups of youths burned tires to block traffic in Rawalpindi and the city mayor said more than a dozen people including two local MPs had been taken into custody. The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six Islamist parties, had said its followers would defy the ban.
Aside from chanting “Allah-o-Akbar,” or God is greatest, demonstrators also lampooned President Pervez Musharraf as a lackey of US President George W. Bush.
Police and paramilitary troops patrolled streets in the capital, while barbed wire was placed across main routes leading to Parliament and elsewhere. Buses and other vehicles were stopped and searched at entry points into the city, witnesses said.
But around 100 protesters eventually broke through the cordons and were joined by hundreds of others from side streets.
Police fired teargas, and when the protesters retaliated by throwing stones police responded by firing warning shots into the air and what a local official said were rubber bullets into the crowd. Helicopters later flew over the area.
Earlier, yesterday morning police put MMA President Qazi Hussain Ahmed under house arrest in Lahore before he could travel to Islamabad to lead the march.
Another senior MMA leader, Fazul-ur-Rehman and a group of around 30 followers, including parliamentarians, assembled at one of the main entry points to Islamabad, but were forced to abandon their march after police fired teargas.
Fazlur Rehman later broke a police cordon to stage the protest, witnesses said. “The whole Pakistani nation will continue and the Muslim world will continue coming on (to) the streets until an apology is offered for this sinister act and a promise made not to repeat it,” Fazlur Rehman told followers.
