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Schools are closed and roads are deserted in Pakistan as Islamic groups continue to protest the Supreme Court’s decision to free a Christian woman convicted and sentenced to death for blasphemy.
The followers of a hardline cleric blocked one of the major entrances into the capital Islamabad, police said, forcing commuters to look for alternative routes, while many people chose to stay at home to avoid the protesters.
The protests broke out on Wednesday after a three-judge tribunal ordered the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who had been on death row since 2010. The judgement was hailed as a landmark by rights activists.
The members of Islamist group Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) protested in all major cities and its leaders vowed to continue their demonstrations.
“We will lay down our live but never go back,” TLP leader Khadim Rizvi told his supporters at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore on Thursday.
Prime Minister Imran Khan called for calm and warned protest leaders not to confront the state in a televised address to the nation late on Wednesday.
The government also deployed troops in major cities to guard official buildings after protest leaders called for death to the judges who overturned Bibi’s sentence.
Bibi was sentenced to death by a district court in the central province of Punjab in 2010 for allegedly committing blasphemy in a row with Muslim women while working on a farm.
A higher court in the provincial capital Lahore upheld the sentence in 2014 under the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.
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