Lahore, Pakistan – Chanting “down with Talibanization,” hundreds of human rights activists marched through Pakistani cities Thursday, urging the government to rein in clerics who have launched an anti-vice campaign in the capital.
About 500 activists gathered for a rally in the eastern city of Lahore to condemn the vigilante campaign. “We reject Talibanization. We reject mullah-ism,” Asma Jehangir, a prominent rights activist, told the rally.
Similar rallies drew about 150 activists in Islamabad and Karachi and 70 in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
Earlier this year, burka-wearing female students at a seminary in Islamabad occupied a municipal library to protest the demolition of illegally built mosques. The students later kidnapped an alleged brothel owner and held her for two days.
The students also are calling for video shop owners to close their allegedly “un-Islamic” businesses. And a cleric from the Red Mosque adjoining the seminary has warned of suicide attacks if authorities try to interfere.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has condemned the students’ attempt to impose Taliban-style social edicts in the capital. However, police have taken no action against the hard-line clerics.
