Caving to Islamists, Pakistan’s Parliament Debates Expelling French Ambassador

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/20/world/asia/pakistan-france-ambassador.html

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Pakistan’s Parliament on Tuesday began debates on a resolution calling for the expulsion of France’s ambassador, a move widely seen as a capitulation by the government to a militant Islamist party that has led large protests and clashed with the police.

The resolution proposed by the government illustrates how deeply unsettled Prime Minister Imran Khan’s administration feels amid a reeling economy, a new wave of coronavirus infections and spreading social unrest. It also suggests the party, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, which has capitalized on public anger over the publication in France of caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad, could pose a major threat to Pakistan’s stability.

Just a week ago, the government declared Tehreek-e-Labaik a terrorist group and banned it. At least four police officers have been killed in clashes with the group, and at least 11 officers have at one point been taken hostage. Police officials acknowledged the death of three protesters, but the party claims that a larger number of their supporters have been killed.

Intermittent protests since last winter were sparked by President Emmanuel Macron of France, who last year gave a defiant eulogy for a French teacher who was murdered after showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a classroom. Mr. Macron said the teacher, Samuel Paty, was killed “because the Islamists want our future and they know that with quiet heroes like him they will never have it.”

That provoked members of Tehreek-e-Labaik, which sees itself as a protector of Islam’s honor at home and abroad. The party has built a wide base of support in recent years, rallying around cases of perceived blasphemy, which is punishable by death in Pakistan.

The protests intensified after the government last week arrested Saad Hussain Rizvi, the party’s 26-year old leader, in a pre-emptive move to scuttle his calls for large gatherings.

In a deal reached in November to call off similar protests, Mr. Khan’s government agreed to hold a parliamentary vote on the expulsion of the French ambassador. In an effort to hold the government to the agreement, the group returned to the streets last week. Soon after the government declared the group a terrorist organization, it found itself in the awkward position of negotiating with it.

Pakistan has long struggled with militant groups on the margins. The Pakistani Taliban, for instance, has waged an insurgency from the vast tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Tehreek-e-Labaik poses a thornier challenge. It draws its support from the Barelvi school of Islam, to which a majority of Pakistanis belong.

It has shown it can mobilize large crowds to major urban centers by targeting emotional issues like protecting the honor of the Prophet Muhammad. The group’s main rallying cry has been to call for decapitation as the only response to those who disrespect the Prophet.

With their anti-blasphemy campaigns, the party seems to have drawn such wide appeal that even the Pakistani Taliban and its allied groups, who in the past killed Barelvi leaders and bombed Sufi shrines associated with them, recently announced support for the Tahreek-e-Labaik protests.

“We stand with those who sacrificed their lives for the honor of the Prophet,” the Pakistani Taliban in a statement, advising that “armed struggle against them is the only solution.”

Tahreek-e-Labaik first came to prominence as an organized force when it protested for the release of Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard who in 2011 gunned down his own boss, Salman Taseer, the sitting governor of Punjab Province. At the time, Mr. Taseer sought justice for a Christian woman who had been jailed on dubious charges of blasphemy.

Mr. Qadri was eventually sentenced and hanged in 2016, but the group tried to free him by justifying his killing of Mr. Taseer. Since then, it has shaped itself into a political party contesting elections and continuing to unsettle governments.

On Tuesday, it was clear Mr. Khan’s government had made some concessions to the group, while trying to give itself political cover by putting the ambassador’s expulsion to a vote in Parliament.

Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, Pakistan’s interior minister, said the 11 police officers who were taken hostage during the week of protests had been released. He also said that Tehreek-e-Labaik had pledged to call off a nationwide protest while the government offered the resolution to assuage their demand for the French ambassador to be expelled. Local media also reported that Mr. Rizvi, the party’s leader, had been set free, but it could not be confirmed officially.

“After long negotiations between the government of Pakistan and Tehreek-e-Labaik, it has been agreed that the government will present a resolution on the expulsion of the French ambassador to the National Assembly today,” Mr. Ahmad said in a video message early on Tuesday.

Mr. Ahmad said that, as part of the agreement, any judicial proceedings against the members of the group would also be scrapped. The National Assembly, Pakistan’s legislature, which was not scheduled to meet on Tuesday, announced a special session for the afternoon to take up the expulsion resolution.

At the legislature, lawmakers could not agree on a way forward, and the session was adjourned until Friday when the issue of expelling the French ambassador would be taken up again.

Instead, the session turned into a virtual competition among lawmakers, with many standing to give speeches testifying to their piety and devotion. The speaker of the house repeatedly urged members that the issue was “sensitive” and that the sides shouldn’t politic over it.

According to Pakistan’s Center for Social Justice, a Lahore-based human rights group, at least 1,855 people have been charged under the blasphemy laws between 1987 and February 2021, with 2020 marking the highest number of accusations. (The data does not include the targeted killings of members of sects considered heretic or apostate without leveling any allegations.)

Opposition groups were critical of the prime minister for what they described as holding the parliament hostage by forcing it to take up the resolution in order to soothe Tahreek-e-Labaik. Bilawal Zardari Bhutto, the leader of Pakistan Peoples Party, boycotted the session.

“It’s your mess, prime minister,” he said on Twitter. “Clean up or go home.”