Prime Minister Imran Khan has formed a five-member committee to hold talks to end the ongoing protests.
Protest leader Khadim Rizvi has, however, rejected the idea of any negotiation being held before the resignation of Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar.
The premier chaired an emergency meeting of the federal cabinet yesterday to review the current situation, and accorded approval for talks with the protesters.
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Minister of State for Interior Sheheryar Afridi, Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony Minister Noorul Qadri, and Minister for National Food Security and Research Sahibzada Mohamed Mehboob Sultan make up the committee.
Qadri will meet the protesters while the Khan will overlook the dialogue process himself, sources said.
Religious parties are staging protests in major cities across the country following the Supreme Court’s decision to free a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy.
Thousands of members of Islamist groups blocked major highways and rail tracks, bringing the country to a grinding halt.
The followers of a cleric blocked three of the four major entrances into the capital Islamabad, police said, forcing commuters to look for alternative routes, while many people chose to stay at home.
Traffic jams held up ambulances and forced mothers to feed their babies by the side of the road, while authorities shut schools across most of the country.
Footage from the protests shows anti-blasphemy campaigners clubbing and throwing shoes at posters of Pakistan’s chief justice and the Prime Minister Khan.
“We are ready to sacrifice our lives for this noble cause,” one told the Guardian, “and have rejected whatever rubbish the prime minister said in his speech.”
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 judgment was hailed as a landmark by rights activists.
Members of Islamist group Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) clashed with police in the central province of Punjab as they blocked roads leading into cities, including the provincial capital of Lahore.
“We will lay down our lives but never go back,” TLP leader Khadim Rizvi told his supporters at a rally in Lahore.
In public speeches, he has said that his only demand is that Bibi, a mother of five, be put to death, the punishment for blasphemy under Pakistan’s penal code.
“Our sit-in will go on until the government accepts our demand,” he told the Guardian in a phone interview, denying reports that the sit-in would soon be over.
The police have so far shied away from arresting protesters and the powerful armed forces have yet to issue a statement, despite TLP leaders calling for mutiny.
Yesterday, right-wing religious organisations, including the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), a charity founded by UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed, and the Jamaat-Ulema-e-Islam, announced that they would join the TLP protest today, in what could become an unmanageable conflagration.
Deputy Interior Minister Shehryar Afridi said the government is negotiating with the protest leaders to seek a peaceful way out of the situation.
Rights activists urged the government not to make any concessions to the Islamists.
Activist and lawyer Jibran Nasir told DPA that doing so would amount to “surrender by the state”.
Late on Wednesday Prime Minister Khan called for calm and warned protest leaders not to confront the state in a televised address to the nation.
The government has 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 Punjab in 2010, for allegedly committing blasphemy in a dispute with some Muslim women while working on a farm.
A higher court in Lahore upheld the sentence in 2014 under the country’s blasphemy laws.
The case attracted the global attention because it was the reason behind the murder in 2011 of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who sought reforms to blasphemy laws.
Bibi was shifted to an undisclosed place from a prison in the city of Multan overnight.
Prime Minister Khan is scheduled to return on November 5 from a diplomatic visit to China, Pakistan’s oldest ally.
Liberals hope that the prime minister, who echoed the TLP’s rhetoric on the campaign trail and has already backed down before the group, will stick to his newfound principles under the most severe test of a turbulent first 10 weeks in power.
“It’s up in the air,” said analyst Fasi Zaka. “You still get the feeling they are figuring out what to do.”
Shipping containers are seen near Islamabad’s Faizabad junction, placed by the authorities to stop protesters after the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy against Islam.
