By PTI
LAHORE: Hundreds and thousands of members of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) on Monday ended their over week-long sit-in in Punjab province after the Imran Khan-led government said it has accepted “some legitimate demands of the radical Islamists.
The TLP protesters had been camping at Wazirabad, 150 km from Lahore, since the last week of October, making three main demands to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government — expel the French ambassador over blasphemous sketches of Prophet Muhammad, release its chief Saad Hussain Rizvi and revoke the group’s proscribed status.
The federal government on Sunday had lifted the ban on the TLP, citing “in the larger national interest and in line with the secret agreement signed with it on October 31.”
“The release of its chief Rizvi is ‘days away’. However, the expulsion of the French ambassador does not feature in TLP’s current demands,” a source in the Punjab government told PTI on Monday.
The TLP, in a statement, said: “We announce ending the TLP sit-in in Wazirabad as the protesters will now move to their headquarters in Lahore after fulfillment of half of the demands in the agreement.”
It said the TLP hopes that the government will fulfill the remaining demands of the agreement within the ‘promised time’.
The government has also set free over 1,200 TLP workers so far arrested during the clashes with the police in Lahore and on way to Wazirabad, in which 11 Islamists and eight policemen lost their lives.
The TLP had launched protests on October 18 from Lahore and announced to march to Islamabad to force the government to accept its demands.
Soon, Prime Minister Khan is reported to have circulated a report seeking revocation of the ban on the TLP, which was approved by his Cabinet.
“In exercise of the powers conferred under sub-section (I) of Section 11U of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 (as amended), the federal government is pleased to remove the name of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan from the First Schedule of the said Act as proscribed organisation for the purpose of the said Act,” the notification read.
The government’s agreement with the TLP had been announced by known Sunni cleric Mufti Munib ur Rehman along with Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
Interestingly, just before reaching a ‘secret agreement’ with the radical Islamists of the TLP, Prime Minister Khan had categorically announced that his government would not meet the TLP’s demand of closing down the French embassy in Pakistan.
In a similar vein, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry had earlier said: “The Cabinet had then decided to treat the 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.”
