A crackdown by Pakistani safety forces on protesting supporters of a banned Islamist social gathering left not less than three folks useless and 20 others injured Sunday, a police official and a celebration spokesman stated.
Lahore police spokesman Rana Arif stated supporters of the hard-line Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan social gathering attacked police with a petroleum bomb and took custody of 5 law enforcement officials, together with Deputy Superintendent Umar Farooq Baluch. Arif alleged the officers have been tortured.
(*20*)Police stated 11 of the injured have been police who wanted to be hospitalised.
Shafiq Ameeni, spokesman for Tehreek-e-Labaik, posted a video clip on social media saying that police moved in on the social gathering’s supporters on the group’s places of work in Lahore at about 8 a.m.
Ameeni stated a number of of the group’s supporters have been killed and others wounded in the violence.
Pakistan’s authorities banned Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan final week after supporters took to the streets to protest the arrest of their chief, cleric Saad Rizvi.
Rizvi had referred to as on the federal government to honor what he stated was a dedication it made in February to his social gathering to expel the French envoy over the publication in France of depictions of Islams Prophet. The authorities stated that it solely dedicated to discussing the matter in Parliament.
TLP helps the nation’s controversial blasphemy legal guidelines and has a historical past of staging violent rallies to affect the federal government.
A video clip on social media apparently recorded on the TLP’s places of work in Lahore exhibits pictures of what seemed to be useless and injured TLP supporters. An injured police officer who identifies himself as Muhammad Umar Farooq says three folks have been killed and 10 to fifteen have been injured when police have been attacked by enraged protesters.
Tehreek-e-Labaik and different Islamist events have denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October final 12 months, saying he tried to defend caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad as freedom of expression. Macrons feedback got here after a younger Muslim beheaded a French college instructor who had proven caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
The pictures had been republished by the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the trial over the lethal 2015 assault towards the publication for the unique caricatures. That enraged many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who consider these depictions have been blasphemous.
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