TLP caravan leaves for Islamabad

LAHORE: Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) on Wednesday called for the expulsion of the Dutch ambassador as it launched a protest against a Dutch politician’s plan for a cartoon competition featuring caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed (SAW).

Several thousand activists gathered in Lahore for the demonstration as they launched their march on Islamabad.

TLP chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi set out from Lahore’s historic centre at the head of a protest he aims to take through the towns of Punjab province to the capital Islamabad, where protesters will stage a sit-in to pressure Prime Minister Imran Khan to cut diplomatic ties with the Netherlands.

"The Dutch ambassador should immediately be deported," TLP spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi said. "We will only stop when the government meets this demand. "Pakistan has already complained to the Dutch government about far-right parliamentarian Geert Wilders’ plans for a cartoon contest that will upset and provoke Muslims. Wilders intends to display the cartoons on the walls of his political party’s room in Parliament. He says he had "hundreds" of entries.

"The Foreign Office called the charge d’affaires of the Netherlands and issued him a Demarche´ to record a protest," the Pakistani prime minister´s office said in a statement on Wednesday. The Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said last week that the cartoon competition "was not something I would do" and his government was not associated with it. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said he planned to take up the issue with the United Nations and several world leaders.

"They don´t understand how much they hurt us when they do such acts," Imran Khan said on Tuesday, a day after the Upper House of Parliament condemned the proposed cartoon competition. Officials from the Punjab provincial government met with Labbaik leaders in Lahore in a vain attempt to persuade them to call off their protest. "We told them to stop the protests because the Pakistan government is taking up the issue effectively," an official involved on the talks said, adding that Labbaik representatives insisted the protest would only end once the Dutch envoy was expelled. Meanwhile, Dutch police arrested a 26-year-old man suspected of threatening to attack politician Geert Wilders over his plan to hold a contest of cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (SAW), a police spokesman said on Wednesday. The man, whose nationality has not been determined, was taken into custody on Tuesday at Central Station in The Hague, spokesman Jan Rensen said. He is believed to have posted a video on Facebook on Monday in which he said he was five minutes from the parliament building. "Only that blasphemer (Wilders) is my target," a man said in the video, which was shown on national broadcaster NOS.

"I believe that God will help me succeed. They’re making jokes about our Prophet (SAW). "Images of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) are traditionally forbidden in Islam as idolatrous.”