ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Thousands of Pakistani Islamists clashed with police on Tuesday for a second day in protest of the arrest of their leader ahead of rallies denouncing French cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, officials said.
At least one activist and a police officer were killed in injuries sustained overnight after Islamists blocked roads, railways and main entry and exit routes, paralyzing business in almost every major city. .
Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters, government official Naveed Zaman told Reuters, refusing to march until the release of its leader, Saad Rizvi, who was arrested on Monday.
Rizvi is the leader of an extremist group, Tehrik-i-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), which gained prominence by turning the denunciation of blasphemy against Islam into its cry.
Protesters beat up an officer, who died Tuesday and injured at least 40, a police spokesman in east Lahore told Reuters.
A protester was killed in a southwestern district, a police chief said on condition of anonymity.
The video shows some protesters beating and dragging police and pedestrians, which government adviser Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi condemned. He told Reuters the law would go against those responsible.
The group blocked one of the main roads to the capital late last year and canceled their protest only after the government signed an agreement with them, agreeing to approve the boycott of French products.
At the time, protests had erupted in several Muslim countries over France’s response to a deadly attack on a teacher showing cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad to students during a civics lesson.
The Pakistani parliament had condemned the reprinting of the cartoons in France, urging the government to withdraw its ambassador.
For Muslims, the depictions of the prophet are blasphemous.
The agreement with the government was revised earlier this year to extend the deadline for a Parliamentary resolution to expel the French envoy until April 20, when the group planned to hold rallies across the country.
Police arrested Rizvi before the demonstrations.
“We are on the street because the government did not abide by the agreement,” the group’s spokesman, Ejaz Ashrafi, said.
He said he had received reports of eight protesters killed in the clashes.
The French embassy in Islamabad and the Pakistani Foreign Ministry did not respond to any requests for comment.
Reports of Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore; Additional reports from Umar Farooq in Islamabad and Gul Yousafzai in Quetta; Edited by Nick Macfie