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Demonstrations Enter Second Day In Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 31 (News Agencies) - Young demonstrators protested throughout this northwestern city for the second day Wednesday, setting fire to a cinema and blocking roads over a blasphemous letter to a local paper, police said.
Armed with sticks and bars, hundreds of protestors set their sights on anything considered "un-Islamic" as they vented their anger over a letter which appeared in the Frontier Post English-language daily on Monday.
About 400 members of the student wing of Pakistan's main Islamic party, the Jamaat-i-Islami, set the popular Shama cinema ablaze in central Peshawar, police said.
Witnesses said the mob, some armed with iron bars, torched the theatre's furniture in the street before ransacking the building and destroying the screen and movie projector.
They then set the building alight using bottles of petrol and gas cylinders as the frenzy gripped this conservative provincial capital situated close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
Police eventually fired tear gas and charged with batons to disperse the students, four of whom were arrested.
Other demonstrators forced the closure of several schools and blocked the main highway leading to the capital Islamabad for about an hour, police said.
They were shouting slogans such as "Hang the culprits" and "Blasphemy not allowed."
Several religious parties organized more rallies later Wednesday to show their anger over the letter titled "Why Muslims Hate Jews," signed under the name of BenDZac.
Hundreds took to the streets again in the afternoon following a call to arms by religious leaders at Peshawar's historic Mahabat Khan Mosque.
Police again fired tear gas and used batons against the protestors after they attacked shops in the Qissa Khawani and Khyber bazaars that had ignored a call to strike.
Emotionally charged mobs Tuesday torched the Frontier Post's printing press and clashed with police in various parts of North West Frontier Province.
Police have closed the Post's office and charged seven people, including the managing editor and chief reporter, under tough blasphemy laws that carry a maximum penalty of death.
The paper has taken out advertisements in rival dailies to publicly beg the nation for forgiveness, saying it was the victim of an unspecified "conspiracy" against Pakistan.
"We bluntly claim that the conspiracy sought to close down the Frontier Post, rendering the employees jobless, and to destabilize Pakistan," the daily said as it offered its "unqualified apology."
Military ruler General Pervez Musharraf was quick to condemn the letter.
He has come under fire for backing down from plans to withdraw the blasphemy law in the face of opposition from Islamist groups, which enjoy significant influence in rural Pakistan.
"It is the primary responsibility of the authorities to ensure that justice under the due process of law is meted out ... and violent elements in society are not permitted to subvert it," the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said.
"Responsibility cannot be abdicated by permitting the destruction of property or allowing other acts of irrational violence to take place without check," commission chairman Afrasiab Khattak said.
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