On Friday, tens of thousands of people protested across Pakistan against Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly French magazine, republishing cartoons from 2015 that mocked Prophet Mohammad.
Protests were held across Karachi, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Lahore, and Dera Ismail Khan. Tehreek-e-Laibak Pakistan (TLP), a hardline political party in Pakistan organised these protests.
Commenting on the situation, Razi Hussani, TLP district leader in Karachi said, “It (re-printing of cartoons) amounts to big terrorism; they repeat such acts of blasphemy against Prophet Mohammad every few years. It should be stopped”.
Protesters called for boycotting French products and were heard chanting “Death to France”.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, while condemning the reprinting of the cartoons, said that Pakistan believed in freedom of expression but that does not give one the right to offend religious sentiment.
Whereas, on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that it wasn’t his place as a president to pass judgement on the choice of Charlie Hebdo to again publish cartoons of Prophet Mohammad.
“It’s never the place of a president of the Republic to pass judgment on the editorial choice of a journalist or newsroom, never. Because we have freedom of the press,” Macron said during his visit to Lebanon.