Pakistan has said it will outlaw an anti-blasphemy extremist party after its supporters caused nationwide havoc and killed at least two policemen during days of rioting.
Members of the far-right Tehrik-i-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) have blocked motorways and fought police while demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
Makeshift roadblocks and sit-ins left large numbers of people stranded on highways when the protests began on Monday, while police have been beaten with weapons as they clashed with the protesters.
At least two policemen have died and some 340 have been wounded.
Mobile phone footage shared on social media, appearing to show senior officers being held captive by the mob, or bloodied and overpowered constables being frogmarched by armed protesters, has led to widespread calls for the government to do more.
Sheikh Rashid, the interior minister, said the party would be banned under antiterror legislation.
“The government of Punjab has forwarded a recommendation to ban the TLP,” Mr Rashid told a press conference in Islamabad.
“It has been decided to ban it not on the basis of political grounds but due to creating upheaval and a summary would be forwarded to cabinet for approval,” he said.
The TLP was founded only six years ago and has made the denunciation of blasphemy against Islam a hugely successful rallying cry.
The party has quickly become notorious for its ability to mobilise crowds and hold governments to ransom by paralysing the country.
TLP members protested in major cities across Pakistan for three days in 2018 in protest at the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman and farmhand who spent nearly a decade on death row after being wrongly convicted of defaming the Prophet Mohammed.
Rattled by the scale of the unrest, Imran Khan's government put Bibi under house arrest and kept her from leaving the country for several months afterwards, even though she had been cleared.
The grass roots support of its firebrand leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, was further demonstrated in November 2020 when vast crowds gathered for his funeral in Lahore.
The gathering appeared to be one of the biggest crowds ever seen in the Punjab city of more than 11 million people, and local observers estimated that several hundred thousand supporters had attended.
Mr Rizvi's son, Saad Rizvi, has since taken charge, mobilising protesters who continue to demand the removal of the French ambassador over France's response to the killing of a teacher who showed cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed to pupils during a civics lesson.
Mr Khan's government was accused of appeasing the TLP after endorsing a ban on French goods and agreeing an April 20 deadline for a parliamentary resolution to expel the French envoy.
Rizvi was arrested in Lahore on Monday, setting off the latest wave of protests.
Roads were quickly closed and local news outlets reported incidents of protesters overpowering police.
In one video, which The National could not verify, a group of defeated looking officers are seated on the ground surrounded by protesters, with one bleeding and appearing to be badly hurt.
The mass demonstrations also disrupted deliveries of oxygen to hospitals in Lahore, health authorities said.
Oxygen supplies for critically ill Covid-19 patients are now being delivered under the protection of police escorts.
Analysts have viewed the appeasement and encouragement of the TLP as the latest attempt by members of the country's military establishment to harness religion as a political weapon.
The opposition Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) has accused the military of encouraging the TLP during the 2018 general election to eat into the PML-N's conservative Punjab heartlands.
Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Programme at the Washington-based Wilson Centre think tank, said the ban was “the kind of tough move you want to see”.
“But will it work? The TLP has a substantial support base. It could well return under a new name. We’ve seen this movie before.”
