Pakistan Islamists block roads to protest acquittal of Christian

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan’s ultra-Islamist party blocked roads in major cities for a third day on Friday in protest against the acquittal of a Christian woman on death row for blasphemy allegations.

Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP) said talks with the government have failed, and called upon its followers to get ready for a show down.

“Talks have completely failed, Federal and provincial representatives and an Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) General Faiz took part in talks,” Khadim Hussain Rizvi, the leader of TLP said in a tweet early on Friday morning.

“Government has warned, ‘we will finish you off’,” Rizvi said in his tweet.

Knots of protesters from TLP blocked roughly 10 roads in the southern city of Karachi and others in eastern Lahore, Goer TV and other channels said. Private schools in both cites were shut, as well as in the capital.

Groups of about 200 protesters from TLP sat under large tents, listening to speeches on two blocked roads in Karachi, a Reuters witness said.

In one speech, a TLP speaker exhorted supporters to light new fires if the police managed to douse burning tires and other objects they had already set ablaze.

The demonstrators were protesting the court’s decision on Wednesday to free Asia Bib, a mother of four, who had been living on death row since 2010, as the first woman sentenced to death by hanging under Pakistan’s tough blasphemy laws.

Bib was accused of making derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbors objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim.

But a three-judge panel set up to hear the appeal, headed by Chief Justice Sahib Nissan, ruled the evidence was insufficient.

Supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan Islamist political party chant slogans, after the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy against Islam, during a protest at the Faizabad junction in Islamabad, Pakistan November 1, 2018. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood