Pakistan opened talks with radical Islamists on Monday after releasing 11 police officers who were abducted during a week-long protests against blasphemy against France, in which four officers were killed, the interior minister said.
Most major businesses, markets, shopping malls and public transport services have been closed in major cities in response to a strike call by Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) and its affiliated groups.
The PSX 100 stock exchange in Pakistan opened this morning with 500 points, although it recovered later that day.
Police officers were abducted during clashes outside the TLP headquarters in the eastern city of Lahore, which the group said also killed three members.
Photos of police officers, with their heads, legs and arms severely bandaged, were posted on social networks by their captors.
“They released the 11 policemen they had held hostage,” Sheikh Interior Minister Rashid Ahmad said in a video statement.
He said negotiations with the TLP are ongoing.
“There have been two rounds of talks and there will be another one later in the evening,” Religious Affairs Minister Noor-ul-Haq Qadri told parliament. “We believe in negotiations and reconciliation to resolve issues.”
The government outlawed the TLP last week after blocking major highways, railways and access roads to major cities, attacking police and burning public property. Four police officers were killed and more than 500 injured.
Violence erupted after the government detained TLP leader Saad Hussain Rizvi ahead of a nationally planned anti-France campaign to put pressure on the Islamabad government to expel the French ambassador in response to the publication of cartoons in France. last year, depicting the Prophet Mohammad.
The TLP made four main demands in talks with the government, officials on both sides said.
These included the expulsion of the French ambassador, the release of the TLP leader and about 1,400 arrested workers, the lifting of the group ban and the dismissal of the interior minister.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said the expulsion of the French ambassador would only harm Pakistan, and diplomatic engagement between the Muslim world and the West was the only way to resolve the disputes.
“When we send back the French ambassador and break relations with them, it means that we are breaking relations with the European Union,” he said in a televised address. “Half of our textile exports go to the EU, so half of our textile exports would disappear.”
Relations between Paris and Islamabad have deteriorated since the end of last year, after President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to a French history teacher who was beheaded by an 18-year-old man of Chechen origin for showing cartoons of the Prophet in -a free speech class.
Protests have erupted in several Muslim countries over France’s response to the teacher’s killing. The prophet’s cartoons were reprinted elsewhere.
At the time, Khan’s government signed an agreement promising to table a resolution in parliament by April 20 to seek approval for the French envoy’s expulsion and to support a boycott of French products.
Our standards: Thomson Reuters’ principles of trust.