Dhaka: At least 20 Bangladeshis were killed on Monday in clashes between police and hardline Islamists demanding religious reforms, as violence spread beyond the capital Dhaka to other parts of the country.
The clashes began on Sunday after 200,000 Islamist supporters marched in Dhaka to press demands critics said would amount to the "Talibanisation" of a country that maintains secularism as state policy, but they were met by lines of police firing teargas and rubber bullets.
On Monday, hundreds of protesters, many wearing white Muslim skull caps and throwing stones, re-grouped and police fired teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse them.
Protesters set fire to vehicles, including two police cars, and stormed a police post on the outskirts of the capital, police said....
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06:53 AM, May 07, 2013
Dhaka: Bangladesh's police and paramilitary troops on Sunday night dispersed a huge demonstration by thousands of Islamist protesters after violent clashes in Dhaka left seven people dead and scores injured. "The Motijheel is now under our control...Hefazat-e-Islami has quit the area," a police spokesman told newsmen after a combined force of some 10,000 riot police, elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) troops carried out...
09:24 AM, May 06, 2013
Dhaka: Members of a hardline Muslim group in Bangladesh on Saturday held rally across Dhaka demanding enactment of anti-blasphemy laws to punish people who insult Islam. The massive rally in Dhaka took place amid heightened security. The protestors targeted bloggers who have held street protests demanding execution for convicted war criminals. In a separate incident, a ruling party supporter has been killed and 15 others injured in the clashes between...
05:17 PM, Apr 07, 2013
A mob went on the rampage in a Christian-dominated neighbourhood in this eastern Pakistani city on Saturday following reports that a Christian man had committed blasphemy, burning scores of houses and driving out about 150 families. The trouble began, when over 2,000 enraged Muslims gathered around Joseph Colony at Noor Road and pelted stones at the homes of 150 Christian families. The mob was led by one Shafiq Ahmed, who...
09:45 PM, Mar 09, 2013
Islamabad: A group of Muslim men who damaged a temple and attacked homes of Hindus during a recent protest in Karachi against an anti-Islam film have been charged under Pakistan's harsh blasphemy law, a media report said on Sunday. Nine men, including Maulvi Habibur Rehman and his accomplices, have been named in the police complaint regarding the ransacking of the Sri Krishna Bhagwan Mandir in Gulshan-e-Maymar area of Karachi. The...
01:56 PM, Sep 30, 2012
Islamabad: The teenage girl accused of burning pages of the Quran has been released on bail and is now back with her family. But she still fears for her life. 14-year-old Rimsha Mahsee said, "Yes, I'm scared. I'm scared scared that someone might kill me. I'm scared of anyone who might want to kill us." That fear first came last month in Rimsha's neighborhood when she was accused of burning...
12:24 PM, Sep 12, 2012
Islamabad: The blasphemy law has become a death warrant at the hands of mob vigilantism, a Pakistani daily said after an 11-year-old girl afflicted with Down syndrome was accused of blasphemy and sent to jail. In an editorial "Another mad act", Daily Times on Monday cited news reports as saying that Rifta Masih, 11, has been sent to jail for committing blasphemy. "She was caught tearing and dumping a few...
12:53 PM, Aug 21, 2012
Pakistani authorities on Monday arrested an 11-year-old Christian girl with Downs' Syndrome after her neighbours claimed that she burnt pages of the Quran. ...
10:48 AM, Aug 21, 2012
Islamabad: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Saturday handed down death sentence to the police guard who assassinated Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer for calling for changes in the country's controversial blasphemy law. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, the policeman who gunned down Taseer outside a restaurant in the heart of Islamabad on January 4, was awarded two death sentences on two counts of murder and terrorism by Judge Parvez Ali Shah during...
11:32 AM, Oct 01, 2011
Islamabad: In another setback for the liberals in Pakistan, the country's only Christian Cabinet minister Shahbaz Bhatti was gunned down on Wednesday. Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, was killed outside his parents' home in Islamabad, allegedly by the Taliban. Like Salman Taseer, Shahbaz Bhatti had also campaigned for the reform of Pakistan's blasphemy law. "As Shahbaz Bhatti's car came here, a white Toyota Mehran came from the other side. Two...
08:31 PM, Mar 02, 2011
