Pakistan on Thursday banned a radical Islamist party whose followers clashed with the police in recent protests that left at least five people dead.
The decision to ban the party, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, or TLP, comes just over a week after the clashes with police, which took place on the outskirts of Lahore, the capital of Punjab province and Pakistan’s second-largest city by population, after Karachi.
The office of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement that the ban had been approved by the cabinet and was justified because of the group’s “violent and terrorist activities.”
The ban underscores Pakistan’s uneasy struggle to contain religious extremism without provoking a wider confrontation with influential clerics who can summon thousands of supporters to the streets. Mr. Sharif’s office said that the party had violated commitments made in 2021, when a previous ban on the group was lifted on the condition that it would renounce violence. There was no information about how long the latest ban would be kept in place.
TLP was founded in 2016 and has made advances by claiming to be a guardian of religious honor and propriety, particularly regarding any perceived slights against the Prophet Muhammad. Its rise has been particularly strong in Punjab, the country’s most populous province, where sermons by its leaders draw large followings.
Critics, however, say the party has used Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws as a pretext to exert pressure on the government, silence critics and rally religious fervor that can lead to violence.
The clashes near Lahore came after the party announced plans for a march from the city to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, the capital, in what was said to be solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
During the clashes, the police said that marchers had hurled gasoline bombs, used spiked batons and opened fire on officers, who returned fire. At least one police officer, three TLP protesters and a passerby were killed, and dozens of others injured, according to the police.
But the former prime minister Imran Khan, who is still an influential opposition leader despite being in prison on corruption charges, posted criticism of the authorities on social media. “To use violence against unarmed people and open fire on them is completely unacceptable,” he wrote.
Since the clashes, the whereabouts of TLP’s leader, Saad Rizvi, and of his younger brother remain unknown. The police say the two men are in hiding. The Punjab authorities have frozen the group’s bank accounts and shuttered its offices and mosques.
Analysts said that the latest ban reflected a broad consensus among Pakistan’s security agencies and political leadership that TLP’s street power had become untenable.
Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, said the state was trying to defang the TLP. “They are banning it, freezing its assets, isolating it from the rest of the religious community, and probably creating rifts within its ranks,” he said.
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