PAKISTAN: Tight security in Rawalpindi and Islamabad ahead of banned anti-cartoon rally

Record ID: 872885

  • Title: PAKISTAN: Tight security in Rawalpindi and Islamabad ahead of banned anti-cartoon rally
  • Date: 19th February 2006
  • Summary: POLICEMAN WITH GUN STANDING IN MARKET PLACE GUN POLICEMAN WITH GUN
  • Embargoed: 6th March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Pakistan
  • City:
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAAD0QOWLJLZJTO258KXOV20HBA
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Pakistani authorities detained the leader of the country's main Islamist alliance and more than 100 followers on Sunday (February 19) before a planned march to protest against cartoons printed by some European newspapers.
    Qazi Hussain Ahmed, president of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance of six Islamist parties, was put under house arrest in the Punjab province capital Lahore before he could travel to Islamabad to lead the march, police and an MMA spokesman said.
    MMA sources said police in Islamabad and the nearby town of Rawalpindi had arrested 106 activists by Sunday morning and were stopping MMA supporters from travelling to the capital where the protest march was to take place in the afternoon.
    Reuters cameramen saw police and paramilitary forces stopping and searching buses and other vehicles headed to Islamabad from Rawalpindi and the neighbouring MMA-ruled North West Frontier Province.
    Dozens of people found on the streets without National Identity cards were arrested and hustled into police vans.
    MMA supporters burned old tyres on several roads in Rawalpindi as a mark of protest.
    The federal government imposed a ban on the Islamabad march on Saturday (February 18) but the MMA said its followers would defy the ban.
    A government statement on Saturday night said the rally had been banned "in the interest of public peace" after similar protests in the country led to violence in which at least five people have been killed in the past week.
    The authorities seemed worried by the timing of the protest march that was set for a day when President Pervez Musharraf was to leave on a five-day state visit to China.
    The government said the Islamabad administration had previously agreed to allow the march but had to ban it "in the wake of reported threats to people's lives and property".
    On Tuesday (February 14), hundreds of student protesters had penetrated into Islamabad's highly protected diplomatic enclave housing most of the foreign embassies and were greeted with police batons and tear gas.
    There were more violent demonstrations later in the week in Lahore and and the Frontier province capital Peshawar, where protesters also targeted foreign businesses.
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