Pakistani cabinet approves proposal to ban Tehreek-e-Labbaik party after days of violent protests

ISLAMABAD: A proposal from Pakistan’s interior ministry seeking a ban on the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) religious party under the country’s anti-terrorism laws has been approved by Pakistan’s cabinet, a top official said on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Pakistan government said it would send a proposal to the federal cabinet to impose a ban on the TLP religious party for killing two policemen, attacking law enforcement forces and disrupting public life through nationwide protests.
Demonstrations erupted in major Pakistani cities and quickly turned violent after Saad Rizvi, the head of the TLP, was arrested on Monday.
A top information ministry official confirmed to Arab News that the cabinet had approved a ban on TLP. He declined to be named until an official circular was issued.
“A notification for it [the ban] is expected to be issued today [Thursday],” Pakistan’s Geo News had reported on Thursday morning.
Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said protesters had killed two policemen and injured another 340 during violent attacks on law enforcement forces.
“We have decided to slap a ban on the TLP,” he said. “A file [for the purpose] is being dispatched to the federal cabinet for formal approval.”
“The police personnel who were kidnapped [by the protesters] have also reached back to their respective police stations,” he said, adding that demonstrators had blocked ambulances and obstructed oxygen supply to the hospitals as a third wave of the coronavirus swept through the country.
The minister also ruled out negotiations with the protesters and said their demands would not be met.
On Sunday, a day before his arrest, TLP chief Rizvi had threatened the government with protests if it did not expel France’s envoy to Islamabad over blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Rizvi had called on the government to honor what he said was a commitment made to his party in February to expel the French envoy before April 20 over the publication in France of depictions of the Prophet (pbuh), which has enraged Muslims around the world.
The government of Prime Minister Imran Khan says it had only committed to debating the matter in parliament.
The interior minister congratulated law enforcement officials for clearing all blocked roads including motorways in eight to ten hours.
“They [the protesters] were well prepared and wanted to reach Islamabad at any cost,” Ahmed said, adding that the government had tried its best to resolve the issue through negotiations, but failed to convince TLP leaders.
“We are banning them not for any political reason, but due to their character,” he said, adding that if the government met the TLP’s demands, it would send the world a signal that Pakistan was an ‘extremist state.’
Earlier in the day, the interior minister had said while chairing a meeting to review the violence: “The writ of the state must be ensured at any cost.”
In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, TLP told the government: “You will have to expel the French ambassador under all costs … The country will remain jammed until the French ambassador is expelled.”
In a separate statement, TLP said its protests would go on until Rizvi was released.
Saad Rizvi became the leader of the Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party in November last year after the sudden death of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi.
Tehreek-e-Labiak and other religious parties denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October last year, saying he tried to defend caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as freedom of expression.
Macron’s comments came after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in class. The images had been 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 in Pakistan and elsewhere who believe those depictions are blasphemous.
Rizvi’s party gained prominence in Pakistan’s 2018 federal elections, campaigning to defend the country’s blasphemy law, which calls for the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam. It also has a history of staging protests and sit-ins to pressure the government to accept its demands.
In November 2017, Rizvi’s followers staged a 21-day protest and sit-in after a reference to the sanctity of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was removed from the text of a government form.

Pakistani cabinet approves proposal to ban Tehreek-e-Labbaik party after days of violent protests