Pakistan’s Islamists march on against Dutch cartoon event
ISLAMABAD/THEHAGUE: Thousands of hard-line Islamists angered over a far-right Dutch lawmaker’s plans to hold a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest marched toward Pakistan’s capital on Thursday after police briefly stopped them because of security reasons.
Some 10,000 supporters of the Tehreek-i-labaik group, which helped Imran Khan become prime minister following last month’s national elections, set out on the march on Wednesday, calling on Khan to cut diplomatic ties with the Netherlands.
The demonstrators were expected to camp out near Islamabad later on Thursday.
Physical depictions of the prophet are forbidden in Islam and deeply offensive to Muslims. Pakistan’s government has vowed to protest the contest at the UN.
Authorities are blocking the capital’s key roads by putting out shipping containers to prevent demonstrators from reaching near the area where the Dutch and other embassies are located.
Earlier, police halted the march in Jhelum, about 160 kilometers from Islamabad but later it was allowed to resume, party spokesman Eijaz Ashrafi told The Associated Press.
He said they refused to disperse, saying the police will have to “kill us” to stop the march.
Ashrafi said they told Khan’s government that it had two options: Cut diplomatic ties with the Netherlands or kill them and “send our dead bodies to Lahore.”
The party’s chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi in Jhelum also warned Khan to remove any hurdles.
The cartoon contest is being organised by Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker with a history of inflammatory statements about Islam. The Dutch government distanced itself from the contest but said it is committed to upholding the right to free speech.
Also on Thursday, a Dutch judge extended by two weeks the detention of a 26-year-old man, believed to be Pakistani, who allegedly threatened to attack Wilders.