Pakistani protest turns violent
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, February 14, 2006
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Protesters ransacked Western businesses in the city of Lahore and stormed a diplomatic enclave in the capital Tuesday to vent their anger over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the worst such violence in Pakistan since the cartoon controversy erupted last month.
Thousands of men and young people marched in the streets of Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, and started a riot when a security guard shot protesters threatening a bank; two protesters were killed. The mob burned or stoned outlets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, a Holiday Inn hotel and an office of Telenor, a Norwegian mobile phone company.
In Islamabad, hundreds of young men pushed past security guards and made their way into the heart of the main enclave for foreign embassies here. They vandalized cars, smashed windows of a branch of British bank Standard Chartered and shouted slogans such as “Expel European ambassadors” and “Death to Denmark,” the country where the cartoons originally were published in a newspaper. The Danish Embassy is situated outside the enclave.
Tuesday’s rally was held under an agreement between Punjab province officials and a loose religious alliance, the Tehrike Tahafuz-e Namoos-e Resalat (Movement for the Defense of the Honor of the Prophecy of Muhammad). The movement is headed by a militant Lahore cleric, Maulana Sarfraz Naeemi, who blamed police for provoking and then failing to control protesters.
Punjab’s top elected leader, Chief Minister Pervez Elahi, expressed support for the campaign to condemn the cartoons.
“But things got out of hand,” Elahi said. Rally organizers had promised that “things would not become violent,” he said, “but the irresponsible people overwhelmed the responsible ones and tried to promote … their own agenda.”
More rallies are scheduled for this week, leading to a planned nationwide protest March 3, about the time that President Bush is to visit Pakistan. But TV channels here said Tuesday night that Punjab, by far the most populous province, has now banned public gatherings.
Protests also continued in at least a half-dozen other Pakistani cities Tuesday.
