DHAKA, 22 September 2007 — Street clashes broke out in Bangladesh yesterday as several thousand Islamists defied emergency rule to protest the publication in a major newspaper of a cartoon deemed blasphemous. More than 50 people were injured.
The protesters joined the rally outside the Baitul Mukarram Mosque in the center of the capital Dhaka even though demonstrations are strictly prohibited under the country’s eight-month-old state of emergency.
Hijbut Tahrir activists were joined by Islamic Shasantantro Andolon and Islamic Oikya Andolon workers shouting slogans against the newspaper Prothom Alo and its editor. The newspaper’s magazine Alpin published the cartoon that caused the row.
Police baton-charged some of the activists as they tried to break through barricades put up to prevent them reaching the offices of the newspaper.
Demonstrators chanted slogans demanding the execution of newspaper editor Matiur Rahman and burned effigies of him and copies of the Bengali-language daily.
“More than 9,000 people protested against the cartoon in front of the mosque and tried to march to the Prothom Alo office,” said a police official speaking on condition of anonymity.
A doctor at the city’s main hospital said five people had been treated for “very minor” injuries.
The cartoon appeared in Prothom Alo’s weekly satirical magazine “Alpin.” Its cartoonist, Arisur Rahman, 23, was detained earlier this week and later remanded in custody by a court.
Matiur Rahman on Thursday apologized for the cartoon.
International press freedom body Reporters Without Borders called for the immediate release of the cartoonist.
The protests came as Bangladesh’s military-backed emergency government seized copies of another magazine for allegedly insulting Islam. “The government has banned the Eid issue of the Bengali language weekly magazine Shaptahik 2000 for publishing an autobiographical article where the writer desecrated the Grand Mosque in Makkah,” said Shahenur Mia, senior information officer at the Home Affairs Ministry.
“The government has ordered the seizure of all copies of this issue of the magazine,” added Mia.
Bangladesh, with a population of 144 million, is the world’s third-largest Muslim-majority country. It has been under emergency rule since Jan. 11 after elections were canceled over vote-rigging allegations and an army-backed government took power.
The temporary government has promised to reinstate democracy by holding fresh elections in late 2008 after cleaning up the nation’s corrupt politics.
Last month Reporters Without Borders criticized the government for being heavy handed toward the media.
It said its record had been “badly marred” by censorship and violence by security forces against journalists during a spate of unrest.
