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PARIS – The French embassy in Pakistan has advised French citizens to temporarily leave the country out of fears for their security, amidst ongoing violent anti-French protests.
“In light of the serious threats against French interests in Pakistan, it is recommended that French citizens and French companies temporarily leave the country,” read a message sent from the embassy to French citizens residing in Pakistan.
An extremist political group, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), has been agitating, through mass street protests, since November for the expulsion of the French ambassador and a ban on French goods after French President Emmanuel Macron defended the right of the French press to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which the TLP considers blasphemous.
The TLP has made blasphemy its cause célèbre and uses its ability to rally big protests to exert pressure on successive Pakistani government. In the fall, the Pakistani government reached a deal with the TLP to consider its demands by April 20.
This Monday, authorities arrested the group’s firebrand leader Saad Hussain Rizvi after he called for a march on the capital to renew his demand for the expulsion of the French ambassador. He was charged under anti-terrorism laws and on Wednesday, the government banned the TLP.
“We have decided to ban the TLP and the draft is going to the cabinet for approval,” Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told a news conference, adding the group risked making Pakistan look like a “radical nation.”
French authorities have been closely following developments in Pakistan since the fall, after Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan accused Macron of encouraging Islamophobia and a seemingly coordinated anti-French campaign erupted on social media after Macron defended the right of the press to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in his eulogy of a schoolteacher who was beheaded in a Paris suburb after showing the cartoons in a class about freedom of speech.
In February, the French foreign ministry summoned Pakistan’s top diplomat in France in Paris after Pakistani President Arif Alvi accused France of isolating its Muslim minority through a bill meant to fight against Islamist extremism and other forms of radicalization.
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