After four days of protests at D-Chowk, the mob supporters of the former Punjab governor’s murderer have agreed to call off their sit-in and disperse following a ‘successful’ round of negotiations with the government a little while ago
According to sources, the government has agreed to at least six demands of the murderer Mumtaz Qadri’s supporters, which include the release of non-violent protesters, no amendment in blasphemy laws, and withdrawal of cases against ulema to be considered, among others.
Several thousand protesters had marched in Islamabad Sunday, clashing with security forces before setting up camp outside key government buildings along the capital’s main Constitution Avenue.
Earlier during the day, protesters said they would not end their days-long sit-in and were “willing to die”, as armed security forces readied to clear the camp.
The protesters – who numbered some 25,000 at their peak – had gathered in support of Qadri, who was hanged in late February five years after he assassinated later Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer over his calls to reform the country’s blasphemy laws.
The government gave the demonstrators an ultimatum to leave late yesterday, but it went unheeded, prompting the government to issue a second call saying security forces would begin an operation to clear the area today morning.
“If the protesters do not disperse peacefully tonight, then we will evict them in the morning in front of everyone,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters late Tuesday.
A police source said more than 7,000 security forces were poised to clear the sit-in, including the paramilitary Rangers and Frontier Corps with reinforcements from the Punjab Police.
Army troops had been standing guard at government buildings near the protest camp.
Qadri’s hanging, hailed as a “key moment” by analysts in country’s war on religious extremism, has become a flashpoint for the deep divisions in the conservative Muslim country.
His funeral earlier this month drew tens of thousands in an extremist show of force that alarmed moderate Muslims in the country, while the call to hang Bibi along with the Easter attack in Lahore has underscored a growing sense of insecurity for Pakistan’s minorities.
“It’s a sense of great grief, sorrow and fear,” Shamoon Gill, spokesperson for the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, told AFP.
The Lahore blast had left Christians feeling that “no place is safe”, he said, while the “mob situation” in Islamabad was “dangerous”.
“They are a serious threat to Asia Bibi’s life… there is a chance the government could bow down to pressure on this issue,” he warned.
