Pakistan hit by deadly riots over anti-Muslim film

SEBASTIAN ABBOT

Asso­ci­ated Press

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s “Day of Love for the Prophet” turned into a deadly day of gun­fire, tear gas and arson.

Thou­sands angered by an anti-Muslim film ignored pleas for peace­ful ral­lies and ram­paged in sev­eral Pak­istani cities Fri­day in bat­tles with police that killed 19 peo­ple and touched off crit­i­cism of a gov­ern­ment deci­sion to declare a national hol­i­day to pro­claim devo­tion for the Prophet Muhammad.

The film, which was pro­duced in the United States and den­i­grates the prophet, has out­raged many in the Mus­lim world in the 10 days since it attracted atten­tion on the Inter­net, and there were new, mostly peace­ful protest marches in a half-dozen coun­tries from Asia to the Mid­dle East.

But it is Pak­istan that has seen the most sus­tained vio­lence, dri­ven by a deep well of anti-American sen­ti­ment and a strong cadre of hard-line Islamists who ben­e­fit from stok­ing anger at the U.S. At 49 peo­ple — includ­ing the U.S. ambas­sador to Libya — have died in vio­lence linked to the film around the world.

Ana­lysts accused the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment of pan­der­ing to these extrem­ists by declar­ing Fri­day to be an offi­cial hol­i­day — call­ing it a “Day of Love for the Prophet.” Offi­cials urged peace­ful protests, but crit­ics said the move helped unleash the worst vio­lence yet caused by the film, titled “Inno­cence of Muslims.”

In addi­tion to those killed, nearly 200 oth­ers were injured as mobs threw stones and set fire to cars and movie the­aters, and bat­tled with police who responded with tear gas and gunfire.

“The peo­ple were just wait­ing for a trig­ger,” said Imtiaz Gul, direc­tor of the Islamabad-based Cen­ter for Research and Secu­rity Studies.

In an attempt to tamp down the anger, the U.S. Embassy in Islam­abad pur­chased spots on Pak­istani TV on Thurs­day that fea­tured denun­ci­a­tions of the video by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton. But their com­ments, which were sub­ti­tled in Urdu, the main Pak­istani lan­guage, appar­ently did lit­tle to mod­er­ate the out­rage that filled the country’s streets.

Police fired tear gas and live ammu­ni­tion to push back the tens of thou­sands of pro­test­ers they faced in Pakistan’s cap­i­tal, Islam­abad, and the major cities of Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar. They were suc­cess­ful in pre­vent­ing the pro­test­ers from reach­ing U.S. diplo­matic offices in the cities, even though the demon­stra­tors streamed over ship­ping con­tain­ers set up on major roads to block their path.

The demon­stra­tors, who were led by hard-line Islamist groups, hurled rocks at the police and set fire to their vehi­cles. They also ran­sacked and burned banks, shops, cin­e­mas and West­ern fast-food restau­rants such as KFC and Pizza Hut.

Clin­ton thanked the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment for pro­tect­ing the U.S. mis­sions in the coun­try and lamented the deaths in the protests.

“The vio­lence we have seen can­not be tol­er­ated,” she said, speak­ing along­side Pak­istani For­eign Min­is­ter Hina Rab­bani Khar in Wash­ing­ton. “There is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for violence.”

Khar thanked Obama and Clin­ton for speak­ing out against the video, say­ing it sent “a strong mes­sage, and that mes­sage should go a long way to end­ing the vio­lence on many streets on the world.”

The dead­liest vio­lence occurred in the south­ern port city of Karachi, where 14 peo­ple were killed, said hos­pi­tal offi­cials. More than 80 peo­ple were injured, said the top gov­ern­ment offi­cial in the city, Roshan Ali Shaikh. At least three of the dead were police­men, one who died when hun­dreds of pro­test­ers attacked a police station.

“We are all ready to die for Prophet Muham­mad,” said Karachi pro­tester Moham­mad Arshad. “We want to show the world that Mus­lims are one and united on the issue.”

Five peo­ple were killed and 60 wounded in the north­west­ern city of Peshawar, said police offi­cial Bashir Khan.

One of the dead was iden­ti­fied as Moham­mad Amir, a dri­ver for a Pak­istani TV sta­tion who was killed when police fired at pro­test­ers torch­ing a cin­ema and hit his vehi­cle, said Kashif Mah­mood, a reporter for ARY TV who also was in the car. The TV chan­nel showed doc­tors at a hos­pi­tal try­ing unsuc­cess­fully to save Amir’s life.

At least 45 peo­ple, includ­ing 28 pro­test­ers and 17 police­men were wounded in clashes in Islam­abad, where police fought with more than 10,000 demon­stra­tors in front of a five-star hotel near the diplo­matic enclave where the U.S. Embassy and other for­eign mis­sions are located. A mil­i­tary heli­copter buzzed over­head as the sound of tear gas being fired echoed across the city.

In north­west­ern Pak­istan, demon­stra­tors burned the Sarhadi Lutheran Church in the city of Mar­dan, but no one was injured, said senior police offi­cer Salim Khan

The gov­ern­ment tem­porar­ily blocked cell­phone ser­vice in 15 major cities to pre­vent mil­i­tants from using phones to det­o­nate bombs dur­ing the protests, said an Inte­rior Min­istry offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity because he was not autho­rized to talk to the media. Block­ing cell­phones also had the ben­e­fit of mak­ing it harder for peo­ple to orga­nize protests.

Pak­istani Prime Min­is­ter Raja Per­vaiz Ashraf urged the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to pass laws to pre­vent peo­ple from insult­ing the prophet, and the For­eign Min­istry sum­moned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Islam­abad, Richard Hoagland, over the film.

“If deny­ing the Holo­caust is a crime, then is it not fair and legit­i­mate for a Mus­lim to demand that den­i­grat­ing and demean­ing Islam’s holi­est per­son­al­ity is no less than a crime?” Ashraf said in a speech to reli­gious schol­ars and inter­na­tional diplo­mats in Islamabad.

Deny­ing the Holo­caust is a crime in Ger­many, but not in the U.S.

U.S. offi­cials have tried to explain to the Mus­lim world how they strongly dis­agree with the anti-Islam film but have no abil­ity to block it because of free speech guarantees.

Khar, the for­eign min­is­ter, said in an inter­view with The Asso­ci­ated Press on Thurs­day that declar­ing a national hol­i­day for Fri­day would moti­vate the peace­ful major­ity to demon­strate their love for the prophet and not allow extrem­ists to turn it into a show of anti-American anger.

Inte­rior Min­is­ter Rehman Malik defended the deci­sion, say­ing the hol­i­day made it eas­ier for police to tackle pro­test­ers in Islam­abad because the city was empty of peo­ple who nor­mally com­mute there to go to work or school.

But Rif­fat Hus­sain, a pro­fes­sor at the Islamabad-based National Defense Uni­ver­sity, said the gov­ern­ment mis­man­aged the sit­u­a­tion by call­ing for peo­ple to demon­strate and not pro­vid­ing a venue to do so peace­fully, such as a rally with reli­gious and polit­i­cal leaders.

“The gov­ern­ment thought that they were guid­ing the pub­lic sen­ti­ment,” Hus­sain said. “In doing that they lost control.”

Else­where on Fri­day, about 3,000 pro­test­ers in the south­ern Iraq city of Basra con­demned the film and car­i­ca­tures of the prophet that were pub­lished in a French satir­i­cal weekly. They burned Israeli and U.S. flags and raised a ban­ner that read: “We con­demn the offenses made against the prophet.”

U.S. flags and effi­gies of Obama were burned by about 2,000 peo­ple in a protest fol­low­ing Fri­day prayers in the Sri Lankan cap­i­tal of Colombo. They demanded that the United States ban the film.

In Bangladesh, more than 2,000 peo­ple marched in the cap­i­tal, Dhaka, and burned a makeshift cof­fin draped in an Amer­i­can flag with an effigy of Obama. Small and mostly orderly protests were also held in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Tens of thou­sands of sup­port­ers of the Shi­ite Hezbol­lah move­ment held a rau­cous protest in the east­ern Lebanese city of Baal­bek. Later, a few thou­sand sup­port­ers of a hard-line Sunni cleric gath­ered in the cap­i­tal, Beirut. Both demon­stra­tions directed out­rage at the U.S. and Israel over what they believed was a grave insult to Muhammad.

Police clamped a day­long cur­few in parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir’s main city of Sri­na­gar and chased away pro­test­ers oppos­ing the anti-Islam film. Author­i­ties in the region also tem­porar­ily blocked cell­phone and Inter­net ser­vices to pre­vent view­ing the film clips.

Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad lashed out at the West over the film and the car­i­ca­tures in the French weekly, Char­lie Hebdo.

“In return for (allow­ing) the ugli­est insults to the divine mes­sen­ger, they — the West — raise the slo­gan of respect for free­dom of speech,” Ahmadine­jad said at a speech in Tehran. He said this expla­na­tion was “clearly a deception.”

In Ger­many, the Inte­rior Min­istry said it was post­pon­ing a poster cam­paign aimed at coun­ter­ing rad­i­cal Islam among young peo­ple due to ten­sions caused by the online video.

Posted by AP News on Sep 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.