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Pakistan bans Islamist Tehreek-e-Labiak as violent unrest continues over leader’s arrest

PAKISTAN banned the extreme Islamist Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan (TLP) party today as huge protests over the arrest of its leader continued.

The party would be banned under anti-terrorism legislation, Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed said.

Five people have so far been killed in the unrest, including two police officers.

Security forces smashed up sit-ins by TLP activists before dawn in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, laying into protesters with truncheons and firing tear gas.

Police cleared a blocked road into the capital Islamabad, but officials said they were still trying to “bring the situation under control” in Lahore.

TLP leader Saad Rivzi was arrested on Monday after threatening to bring his supporters onto the streets to force the expulsion of the French ambassador over the publication in France of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. He argues that Prime Minister Imran Khan promised to do this by April 20 as part of a truce agreed with the TLP in February, but Mr Khan says the agreement was merely that parliament would debate the measure.

The TLP, which regularly stages mass protests for the imposition of sharia law and demanding the execution of “blasphemers” such as Christian woman Asia Bibi, is also demanding a complete ban on French imports. 

Its recent activism is in response to a decision by French magazine Charlie Hebdo to republish cartoons of the prophet that provoked a terrorist attack on it in 2015, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron’s “anti-separatism” legislation, which is widely seen as an attack on French Muslims.

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