Pakistan police fire tear gas at hardline Islamists blockading Islamabad; TV channels ordered to go off air during crackdown

Islamabad: Pakistani authorities ordered private television channels to go off air on Saturday during a police and paramilitary crackdown on Islamist protesters in the capital.

The suspension was ordered by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority for violating media regulations showing live coverage of a security operation, a statement from the regulator said. State-run Pakistan Television continued to broadcast but aired a talk show discussing politics.

Pakistani police used tear gas and water cannon and fought running battles with stone-throwing Islamist activists, as they moved to clear a protest by the religious hard-liners who have blocked main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks.

The clashes began on Saturday when police launched an operation, involving some 4,000 officers, to disperse around 1,000 activists from Tehreek-e-Labaik, a new hard-line Islamist political party, and break up their camp, police official Saood Tirmizi told Reuters.

Dozens of protesters were arrested, Tirmizi said, and a hospital reported at least 27 people were being treated for injuries.

The mass protest, plus the recent gains of two new Islamist parties in Pakistan, demonstrated the religious right’s gathering strength ahead of what are expected to be tumultuous elections next year.

Television footage showed smoke billowing and fires burning in the streets as officers in heavy riot gear advanced. Protesters, some wearing gas masks, fought back in scattered battles across empty highways and surrounding neighbourhoods.

“We are in our thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until the end,” Tehreek-e-Labaik party spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters by telephone from the scene.

The protesters have paralysed daily life in the capital, and have defied court orders to disband, demanding that the minister of law fired.

Tehreek-e-Labaik blames the minister, Zahid Hamid, for changes to an electoral oath that it says amounts to blasphemy. The government puts the issue down to a clerical error.

“Death to blasphemers” is a central rallying cry for Tehreek-e-Laibak, which was born out of a protest movement lionizing Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform strict blasphemy laws.

The party, which advocates strict rule by Islamic Sharia law, won a surprisingly strong 7.6 percent of the vote in a by-election in Peshawar last month.

Since Tehreek-e-Labaik began its sit-in, the government has blocked several roads with shipping containers to corral the protesters, but that has caused hours-long traffic jams in and around the capital.

The government had tried to negotiate an end to the sit-in, fearing violence during a crackdown similar to 2007, when clashes between authorities and supporters of radical Islamabad mosque led to the deaths of more than 100 people.

By late morning, Tehreek-e-Labaik supporters were coming out on the streets in other Pakistani cities in support of the Islamabad protesters.

About 500 demonstrators blocked one of the main roads in Karachi, the southern port that is Pakistan’s largest city, a Reuters witness said, though the gathering was peaceful.

In the eastern city of Lahore, party supporters blocked three roads into the city, provincial government spokesman Malik Ahmad Khan said.

“We want them to disperse peacefully. Otherwise, we have other options open,” he said. “We don’t want to use force, but we will if there is no other option left.”