LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) – A parliamentarian from Pakistan’s ruling party on Tuesday sparked a debate over whether the French ambassador should be expelled over the publication in France of controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet of Islam Muhammad.
The resolution Amjad Ali, a parliamentarian from Tehreek-e-Insaf, was seen as a test to see if the government was giving in to threats from radical Islamists. It came hours after the country’s interior minister announced success in talks with an outlaw Islamist group, Teherek-e-Labaik, Pakistan.
He also appeared after 10 people, including four police officers, were killed in protests that erupted on April 12 after the arrest of Saad Rizvi, the leader of Tehreek-e-Labaik. Rizvi had threatened the government with mass protests if the French envoy was not expelled.
Earlier on Tuesday, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad said that in the parliamentary resolution, criminal cases against Islamists involved in deadly anti-France protests would be withdrawn. However, the resolution did not mention the release of Rizvi or his supporters.
Asad Qaiser, the president of the National Assembly, postponed the session amid heated debate until Friday, urging the government to address the opposition’s concerns over the wording of the resolution.
Tensions arose last year when the French president defended the publication of caricatures of the prophet Islam Muhammad by a satirical newspaper as a matter of freedom of expression, attracting condemnation from around the Muslim world.
Members of Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Labaik are also protesting the arrest of Rizvi, a cleric who emerged as the group’s leader in November after the sudden death of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi.
Rizvi and his party want the French ambassador expelled under an agreement between the government and Rizvi’s party in February.
The government said it had pledged to discuss the issue in parliament before April 20, when Ahmad said a resolution would be proposed in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.
Rizvi’s supporters took to the streets across the country last week when police arrested him. Rizvi’s supporters’ reaction to his arrest was so rapid that violence spread rapidly across the country. Four police officers and at least six protesters were killed in the violence.
___
Ahmed reported from Islamabad.