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Protest Led By TLP Against Faraz Pervaiz 29-08-2018 Lahore To Islamabad Long March
A recent protest held on 29th August 2018, in Lahore and from various cities across Pakistan. The rallies were organized as a march to Islamabad in protest of a contest organized by the Dutch Member of Parliament, Geert Wilder, where contestants draw depictions of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. Drawings of the Mohammed are considered forbidden by most Muslims and the satirical nature of this contests has angered many conservative Muslims, some to the point of violence.
Along with the anger directed at Mr. Wilder has come similar vitriol and threats towards Faraz Pervaiz and his family. Protesters in the rallies carried photos of faraz and Team, his family and the logo of my church. The signs carried in the rally call us Blasphemers for his personal stance on Islam and their support of Mr. Wilder. Blasphemy in Pakistan is punishable by death and these accusations often result in mob killings without before any judicial process can take place. Similarly, several Facebook posts and videos depicted himself and my family being executed by beheading and calls were made by protesters for me to be beheaded.
The protests were launched in large part by Tehreek-e-Labbaik, a fundamentalist right-wing political party which advocates for policies that are oppressive to religious minorities in Pakistan. The protests were also supported by Pakistan’s new Prime Minister, Imran Khan, who said he would raise the issue with the United Nations and has summoned the Netherlands ambassador to Pakistan to raise a formal complaint. The political climate in Pakistan now is worse than ever for religious minorities and demonstrates zero tolerance for religious and political freedom.
Before this contest, All team had already been subject to personal threats and widespread social media campaigns against him for his religious and political beliefs, both of which are fundamental human rights and are meant to be protected by the United Nations and its affiliated organizations.
Pakistanis Protest Against Geert Wilders Plan to Publish Cartoons of Muhammad &
The Refuge of David
Between 2,500 and 3,000 protesters in Pakistan's capital Islamabad threatened to surround and pelt the Dutch embassy with stones for allowing a far-right member of parliament to hold a cartoon contest depicting Islam's Mohammad.
The protesters broke through several barriers put up by the police, though they could not get close to the embassy, which is housed in a highly protected diplomatic enclave along with most other embassies.
Led by local leaders from an Islamist party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), the demonstrators demanded that their government break their diplomatic relationship with the Netherlands & Arrest all the Blasphemers of The Refuge of David who morally support Geert Wilders Muhammad Cartoons contest on 10-Nov-2018."We want the Dutch embassy to be closed, the ambassador to be sent back, and to call the Pakistani ambassador back from the Netherlands," said Zaheer Sultan, who had come from out of town for the protest. He said he was not called by any political party.
"I do not belong to any party and no one asked me to come here," he said. "I use Facebook where I saw a couple of videos and then contacted those pages to find out about today's protest." At point, protesters demanded their government write a letter to the United Nations asking the organization to extract an apology from the Dutch government and Faraz Pervaiz, Pervaiz Roshan, Akmal Noor, Sherry Iqbal, Mohsin Mushtaq, Malik Aftab Dutch MP Geert Wilders announced in June he would hold a competition at his party's parliamentary offices later this year. He said the country's counterterrorism agency had approved his plans.
Famous for his anti-Islam rhetoric, Wilders previously has called for the Quran to be banned, and he declared Islam a totalitarian ideology. Many Muslims consider visual depictions of their prophet blasphemous. Cartoons of the prophet have caused violence in the past. In 2015, Islamist gunmen attacked a French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris for printing cartoons of Mohammad. Twelve people were killed.
Ten year earlier, protests broke out around the world when Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten first published cartoons of Prophet Mohammad. One of the cartoons showed the prophet with a bomb in his turban. The party leading the protest, TLP, gained nationwide fame last year when it blocked the capital for almost a month over an issue related to the prophet. In elections last month, the party fielded hundreds of candidates on national and provincial assembly seats. While it only won two seats in the provincial assembly of Sindh and none in the national assembly, the high number of votes it received in many constituencies surprised pundits. In Pakistan's most populous province, Punjab, TLP emerged as the third-largest party according to the number of votes counted.
