Pakistan TLP Protests

[Khafee]

Undeterred, thousands of TLP workers head for Gujranwala as protest continues for 2nd week ​

Published October 28, 2021 - Updated about an hour ago
Iqbal Mirza | Imran Gabol

The rally comprising thousands of workers of the proscribed Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) left Kamoke and neared Gujranwala city on Thursday morning, as life in the areas surrounding its route continued to remain disrupted.

Some 4,000 TLP workers travelled on the Grand Truck Road in large trucks and buses along with their supplies, as stick-wielding activists of the group guarded the procession from all sides.

The rally was expected to continue its journey towards Islamabad after crossing the Qila Chand bypass.

The TLP demonstrators have blocked the GT Road in Gujranwala district from both sides since Wednesday, causing hardship to the area residents in their commutes. From Kamoke tehsil to Jhelum, cellular services have been suspended for 24 hours.

Educational institutions along GT Road have also been closed because of the uncertain situation.

Also read: Is the government prepared for the coming storm?

Meanwhile, Rangers and police personnel took positions near the Chenab river and Wazirabad border. Security officials plan to stop the TLP activists near the Wazirabad-Chenab river area instead of Gujranwala city, according to police sources.

At a high-level meeting held to review the security situation, Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar directed officials to "take every step possible" to establish peace in the province, according to a statement.

He said nobody could be allowed to disturb people's daily lives, stressing that "the protection of people's lives and properties is the state's foremost responsibility."

In view of the situation caused by the TLP rally, the Pakistan Railways announced that three trains between Lahore and Rawalpindi — Subak Kharam, Islamabad Express and Rawal Express — would remain suspended today for both inbound and outbound services.

The Peshawar-Quetta Jaffar Express will also be suspended for the Peshawar-Lahore leg today, while the Green Line will remain suspended between Lahore and Rawalpindi.

All other trains will function according to their schedule and route, a PR spokesperson said.

'Sheer chaos'​

Meanwhile, PML-N president and opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif criticised the government's handling of the situation arising out of the TLP rally, saying "federal ministers are giving contradictory statements on the prevailing situation."

He quoted a minister as saying that Prime Minister Imran Khan "was unaware of [the] 2020 agreement with TLP".

"There is a sheer chaos & lack of leadership & the government machinery is totally clueless. This is IK's way of governing Pakistan!!" Shehbaz wrote.

But Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari denied his allegation, calling Shehbaz a "confused soul" and saying the person he had quoted was not a federal minister.

"There is absolutely no confusion in the govt led by the PM as the cabinet decision yesterday made abundantly clear the position on TLP. Seems massive confusion persists in your information!" she wrote.

As security forces braced for more violence, one more policeman succumbed to injuries from yesterday's clashes with the TLP, Punjab Chief Minister's Focal Person for Digital Media Azhar Mashwani said on Thursday.

The policeman, identified as Ghulam Rasool, was posted in the province's Kasur district.

"He was injured in #TLPTerrorism on 27th October and was under treatment in THQ Hospital Muridke," Mashwani said in a tweet.

"These so-called lovers [of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)] did not even spare someone whose name was Ghulam Rasool," he wrote.

The developments come a day after the government decided to crush the TLP by all means and resolved that the army, Rangers and police would stop participants of its long march from entering the federal capital.

The decision was taken by the federal cabinet in its meeting presided over by Prime Minister Imran Khan following which Rangers were requisitioned in Punjab for 60 days to maintain law and order in the province.

The government categorically announced that it could not meet the TLP’s demand of closing down the French embassy in Pakistan and revealed that there was no French ambassador in the country.

“The cabinet has decided to treat TLP as a militant organisation and it will be crushed as other such groups have been eliminated. The Pakistani state has defeated major terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda,” Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said at a post-cabinet meeting press conference.

TLP-police clashes​

The government's announcement had come after at least four police officials were killed and another 263 wounded, many of them seriously, when violent activists of the TLP clashed with police near Muridke and Sadhuke on Wednesday.

The fierce clashes broke out after the TLP tried to resume its march on Islamabad to pressurise the government to accept its demands.

Punjab Inspector General of Police Rao Sardar said the charged mob of the proscribed organisation martyred four police officials and injured 263 others.

While briefing the media, he said: “TLP activists were armed with automatic weapons and shot straight fire on the police,” The use of arms against the law-enforcement agencies by the banned outfit was a matter of serious concern, the IGP added.

On its part, the TLP claimed that two workers of the organisation had died in the clashes with police and 41 had been wounded.

A TLP spokesman said police had used excessive force against their peaceful rally. However, the group’s claim of deaths of its workers could not be confirmed independently.

Police said the TLP was trying to mislead the public by making false claims on social media and posting some video clips from the past.

TLP denies it was behind cops' deaths​

In a statement on Thursday, the TLP Central Shura claimed that it was being held responsible for the deaths of three policemen but that they had died in a collision between a police van and a Mazda truck.

The statement also denied officials' statement that TLP workers had used weapons during the clashes, demanding proof of the same.

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Additional reporting by Imtiaz Ali in Karachi

 

[Khafee]

Storm landing​

Khurram Husain
Published October 28, 2021
The writer is a business and economy journalist.

HERE we go again. One more time we are witness to a familiar spectacle: a government flying into a political and an economic crisis at the same time. The TLP rioters marching up GT Road, the quiet but meaningful ending of the notification saga and the impending economic crisis (temporarily postponed due to a critical injection of $3.2 billion from Saudi Arabia) are now raising the same question that arises whenever one of these affairs gets going: will the government survive? A storm is landing on the shores of Pakistan, and how far its devastation stretches is the key question of the day.

From Lal Masjid to the long march and the sit-in of Tahirul Qadri that ended in January 2013, from Qadri’s second long march in 2014 in which he provided the street power and Imran Khan provided the speeches till the Faizabad dharna of Khadim Hussain Rizvi till the Azadi march of Fazlur Rehman in October 2019, all these episodes were the outward manifestation of a power struggle at the top.

Most likely it is no different today with the TLP march, although it is too soon to say who is playing what game here. What is patently obvious, however, is that the PTI government’s key lifeline, the most critical prop that enabled it to defeat the no-confidence motion against its Senate chairman in the summer of 2019 as well as win the election to the same slot in 2021, has now been severed. From here on the ruling party is left to its own devices. Recall that Imran Khan won 176 votes to become prime minister on Aug 17, 2018. In his vote of confidence in March 2021, he obtained 178 votes while the opposition boycotted the event. The minimum requirement is 172. By contrast, his immediate predecessor, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who contested the slot in the aftermath of the Panama decision, fetched 221 votes.

The numbers get more precarious in the Senate, and even more so in Punjab. A government whose own majority depends on the support of six coalition partners contributing around 25 seats is in no position to do battle with the opposition and anger the military while presiding over a powerful inflationary spiral at the same time. Yet that is where the PTI stands today. No wonder the question is being asked everywhere: will the government survive?

The notification saga has ended, but so has the ‘same page’.

The lifeline from Saudi Arabia has bought them time, nothing more. In a sense it has brought us back to how the story of this government began back in 2018 and 2019. Then too they faced an inevitable approach to the IMF to shore up the foreign exchange reserves that had dwindled to less than one month’s worth of import cover by the time the government was sworn in. Then too they were unable to stomach the conditions the Fund attached to its bailout when talks began in November 2018. Then too they bought some time by recourse to almost $6bn in support from China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

But eventually they had to sign on the dotted line, like they will have to again this time. All those billions bought them little more than a few months. And the embrace of the inevitable adjustment from July 2019 onwards ate away whatever reservoirs of goodwill they had brought with them to power. The economy ground to a halt and as fortunes withered around the country the sheen came off Khan’s persona.

But back then he had powerful backing, described in the coded euphemism of the time as the ‘same page’. The powerful military stood behind him and so long as that was the case there could be no challenge to his rule from within the system. The vote of no-confidence against the Senate chairman in August 2019 showed this as 14 defectors appeared out of nowhere to kill an initiative that otherwise had the numbers in the run-up to the vote.

Today, that is no longer the case. The notification saga has ended, but so has the ‘same page’. From here on, they’re on their own. “All we have to do is step back” an establishment official was quoted in this paper as saying about the survival of the government. Now that the notification has been signed, the dates announced, the transfers set to take place, we will see how far Imran Khan’s government can walk on its own two feet. The ground ahead is raked with coals and the finish line suddenly seems very far off.

From 2019 onward, Imran Khan lost the street, even if he won every vote necessary for his own survival in the National Assembly. Today, he is losing the street again with a new and relentless inflationary spiral for which his government has no plan whatsoever, other than asking for help from Saudi Arabia. They intend to take the money and use it to stabilise the exchange rate and power ahead with their growth ambitions regardless of the destabilising impact that this growth is having on the country’s macroeconomic framework in the hopes that somehow the economy will burst onto the other side of the coming headwinds to find stable and sustainable shores.

Of course it won’t happen. The deficits that are fuelling the exchange rate depreciation are only the other side of the growth story. The two go hand in hand and powering on down this road with borrowed money brings you to the same place it did back in 2019: the doorstep of the IMF, staring down the barrel of an even more stringent adjustment than the one that is on offer today.

Desperate times breed desperate acts, and there is an unmistakable air of desperation in the government’s actions today. One day the interior minister says the TLP’s demands will be met and they were never banned. The next day the information minister is talking tough. Today, they’re not on the same page with each other, let alone with anyone else. Yet the clock ticks alike for them all.

 

[Khafee]

PM Imran summons NSC meeting tomorrow as TLP workers continue with long march​

October 28, 2021 - Updated 42 minutes ago

In this file photo, Prime Minister Imran Khan chairs the meeting of the National Security Committee. — Photo courtesy: PMO/File

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry on Thursday said that Prime Minister Imran Khan had summoned a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC) for tomorrow (Friday) due to the continuing protests by the proscribed Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP).
In a tweet, the minister said that the meeting had been summoned in light of the situation arising out of the "illegal activities" by the banned group. "Other issues related to national security will also be discussed in the meeting," he said.

Chaudhry's statement comes as thousands of TLP workers left Kamoke and neared Gujranwala city on Thursday morning, continuing with their long march to Islamabad.

Meanwhile, federal Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari said that the state had laws against terrorism and militancy.

"Killing of policemen and other [law enforcement agencies] and any act of terrorism by the TLP or any group will be dealt with the full force of the law. Restraint by the government so far should not be mistaken as weakness. Let there be no ambiguity on that count," she said.

A day earlier, Chaudhry announced that the TLP would not be allowed to challenge the writ of the state and would be treated as a "militant" group – not a religious party.

“The cabinet has decided to treat TLP as a militant organisation and it will be crushed as other such groups have been eliminated. Pakistani state has defeated major terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda,” Chaudhry said at a post-cabinet meeting press conference on Wednesday.

The minister said the government had evidence that the TLP was being funded by some groups in India which also maligned Pakistan through social media.

The TLP, he said, was established in 2015 and since then, its modus operandi had been to come out on the roads and block them. “But there is a limit to the state’s patience.”

The same day, Minister for Interior Sheikh Rashid said that "like Karachi", Rangers were being deployed in Punjab for 60 days to maintain the law and order situation in the province.

He said Rangers were being deployed in Punjab under Section 4 (2) of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, read with Article 147 of the Constitution, on the requisition of the provincial government.

He warned that the way the TLP was behaving, it could be declared a global terrorist organisation. “In such a case, nothing will be in our control,” he said.

TLP-police clashes​

The government's announcement had come after at least four police officials were killed and another 263 wounded, many of them seriously, when violent activists of the TLP clashed with police near Muridke and Sadhuke on Wednesday.

The fierce clashes broke out after the TLP tried to resume its march on Islamabad to pressurise the government to accept its demands.

Punjab Inspector General of Police Rao Sardar said the charged mob of the proscribed organisation martyred four police officials and injured 263 others.

While briefing the media, he said: “TLP activists were armed with automatic weapons and shot straight fire on the police.” The use of arms against the law-enforcement agencies by the banned outfit was a matter of serious concern, the IGP added.

On its part, the TLP claimed that two workers of the organisation had died in the clashes with police and 41 had been wounded.

A TLP spokesman said police had used excessive force against their peaceful rally. However, the group’s claim of deaths of its workers could not be confirmed independently.

Police said the TLP was trying to mislead the public by making false claims on social media and posting some video clips from the past.

 

[Khafee]

Pakistan Islamist group vows to march on capital after clashes with police​

By Mubasher Bukhari and Asif Shahzad
October 28, 2021

A general view of a highway with shipping containers blocking the entry point to stop the protest rally of the banned Islamist political party Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) demanding the release of their leader and the expulsion of the French ambassador over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, in Islamabad, Pakistan October 27, 2021. REUTERS/Waseem Khan

LAHORE, Oct 28 (Reuters) - A banned Islamist group prepared to march on Pakistan's capital Islamabad on Thursday even as authorities vowed to hold them back with force, following deadly clashes the previous day.

Thousands of members of the banned Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakitan (TLP) group had been gathered since Friday on a highway, just outside the eastern city of Lahore, with a series of demands including the release of their imprisoned leader. On Wednesday they began marching north towards Pakistan's capital.

"We have started marching towards Islamabad, police have barricaded the road, but we will remove them," a TLP spokesman told Reuters.

Clashes on Wednesday evening killed around four police officers and several TLP members, and wounded dozens. The country's information minister had said they would be treated with full force as a militant group and not allowed to enter the capital, where shipping containers had been set up to block roads.

"Police from three districts have been called while Rangers are on the alert," a senior police official told Reuters requesting anonymity, referring to paramilitary troops that the government had called on to help contain the protesters, who were blocking Pakistan's busiest highway.

A government team was negotiating on with the TLP, with talks led by its chief, Saad Rizvi, from a prison in Lahore, two government sources told Reuters. A provincial Punjab government spokesman did not immediately respond to request for comment. The talks were confirmed by the TLP.

"The government initiated another round of talks with TLP ... Saad Rizvi and two other leaders are participating in talks with the TLP side," a TLP spokesman said.

Besides demanding the release of their leader, the TLP activists have been calling for the expulsion of France's ambassador over the publication of a series of caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammad by a French satirical magazine.

It is the group's third countrywide protest campaign since 2017 over caricatures that are considered deeply insulting by Muslims.

Reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore, Asif Shahzad in Islambad; writing by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Steve Orlofsky

 

[aliraza]

things are looking not good for the system
but for state its the plan all along
this government is a trojen horse for the system its a selfe destruct setup
wrap up should have been done long ago but establishment is going very very slow and buying more time

 

[aliraza]

the next onw is either presidential or one unit or anything hybrid has to be seen
but i dont see this system running too far

 

[Humble Analyst]

I agree this was mishandled from the get go. The cause this group is taking up is very sensitive. They really don’t understand and folow tge teachings of Aap SAW but definitely are ready to kill people of Pakistan, disrupting peace, destroying peoples businesses, property put put Pakistan in precarious position. Is this the teaching of the Aap Mohammad SAW? Definitely not but the power is a strange things as it knows how to play with the sentiments of people. Now external hidden forces will capitalise this.
I want to ask who was the brilliant person agreed to these terms while negotiating the end of first protest?