LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) – Pakistan briefly blocked access to all social media on Friday, after days of anti-French protests across the country by radical Islamists opposing cartoons they see as blasphemous.
Sites such as Twitter and Facebook were blocked for four hours by order of the country’s interior ministry, said Khurram Mehran, a spokesman for Pakistan’s media regulatory agency. He gave no further details.
The move comes as police officials prepare for a major rally in the eastern city of Lahore, and just hours after the government said the now detained leader of the banned Islamic political party at the forefront of the protests urged his supporters to resign. .
By releasing a note they say was handwritten by Saad Rizvi, the government hopes to ease tensions after its Pakistani party Tehreek-e-Labiak sparked violent protests – killing two police officers and injuring 580. hit. France urged its citizens to leave the country.
Three protesters were also killed in clashes with security forces, and the government has banned the party.
A photo of the statement was previously released by an adviser to the prime minister on Twitter, but neither Rizvi himself nor any of his party leaders were immediately available for comment. Some of his followers insisted that they heard or saw the words of Rizvi himself before they stopped, and the protest in Lahore continued after Friday prayers.
On Thursday, the French embassy in Pakistan advised all its nationals and companies to leave the Muslim country temporarily after violence broke out over Rizvi’s arrest.
Violent protests have been going on in Lahore since Monday, damaging private and public properties and disrupting much-needed oxygen supplies to hospitals. Some of those affected were COVID-19 patients, who received oxygen.
In the statement, Rizvi asked his supporters to disperse peacefully for the good of the country and to end their main sit-in that began Monday, when police arrested the radical cleric for threatening protests if the government defeated the French. Ambassador would not expel before April 20.
Rizvi’s arrest sparked violent protests from his followers, who disrupted traffic by staging sit-ins around the country. Although the security forces have approved almost all of the demonstrations, there are still thousands of Rizvi’s followers in Lahore who promise to die to protect the Prophet Muhammad’s honor from Islam.
Rizvi became the leader of the banned Pakistani party Tehreek-e-Labiak in November after the sudden death of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi. His party also wants the government to boycott French products.
Rizvi’s party has denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October last year, saying he was trying to defend blasphemous caricatures of the prophet Mohammed as freedom of speech. Macron spoke after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in class.
The images were republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the 2015 deadly attack trial against the publication for the original caricatures.
That enraged many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who thought these images were blasphemous. Rizvi’s group has become known in recent years for resisting any change to the country’s strict blasphemy laws, under which anyone accused of insulting Islam or other religious figures can be sentenced to death if they become guilty found.