France asks citizens to leave Pakistan amid violent protests

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — The French embassy in Pakistan on Thursday suggested all of its nationals and firms to quickly leave the nation after anti-France violence erupted within the Islamic nation over the arrest of a radical chief.

Saad Rizvi was arrested Monday for threatening the federal government with mass protests if it didn’t expel French envoy Marc Baréty over the publication depictions of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes Von Der Muhll mentioned about 400 to 500 French nationals reside in Pakistan and they are going to be ready to leave by way of industrial flights.

There was no fast remark by Pakistan’s overseas ministry.

The newest growth comes a day after Pakistan’s inside minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad introduced his authorities will a ban on the Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan get together, which is headed by Rizvi.

The arrest sparked violent protests by Rizvi’s followers, who disrupted visitors by staging sit-ins on highways and later blocked roads in main cities, together with the southern port metropolis of Karachi and the garrison metropolis of Rawalpindi.

They additionally staged a sit-in within the capital, Islamabad, and blocked a key street from Monday to Wednesday when police launched a nationwide crackdown, triggering clashes that killed two policemen and wounded 340 others. Three demonstrators additionally died within the clashes with police.

Thousands of Rizvi’s followers had been nonetheless rallying in Lahore, the capital of japanese Punjab province the place they’ve a powerful presence.

According to Ahmed, the nation’s inside minister, the Cabinet will rapidly approve his proposal for outlawing Rizvi’s get together. At a information convention in Islamabad, he mentioned Wednesday Rizvi’s demand couldn’t be accepted because the expulsion of the French ambassador and ban on French merchandise may hurt the nation’s nationwide curiosity.

He requested the supporters of Rizvi to finish their protest in Lahore.

Rizvi emerged because the chief of the Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan get together in November after the sudden dying of his father, Khadim Hussein Rizvi. His get together needs the federal government to boycott French merchandise and expel the French ambassador earlier than April 20 underneath an settlement signed by it.

Rizvi’s Tehreek-e-Labiak and different Islamist events have denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October final 12 months, saying he tried to defend caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad as freedom of expression. Macron’s feedback got here after a younger Muslim beheaded a French faculty instructor who had proven caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in school.

The pictures had been republished by the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the trial over the lethal 2015 assault towards the publication for the unique caricatures. That enraged many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who consider these depictions had been blasphemous.

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Associated Press Writer Sylvie Corbet contributed from Paris.