Mick Hartley

They’re rioting in Dhaka:

Street clashes broke out in Bangladesh Friday as Islamic activists defied emergency rule to protest over the publication in a major newspaper of a cartoon deemed offensive to Muslims.

Thousands of protestors joined the rally in the center of the capital, Dhaka, a witness said, even though demonstrations are strictly prohibited under the country’s eight-month-old state of emergency.

Police baton-charged some of the activists as they tried to break through barricades put up to prevent them reaching the offices of Prothom Alo, the newspaper that published the cartoon and Bangladesh’s biggest daily paper.

Demonstrators chanted slogans demanding the execution of newspaper editor Matiur Rahman and burned effigies of him and copies of the Bengali-language daily.

“More than 9,000 people protested against the cartoon in front of the national mosque and tried to march to the Prothom Alo office,” said a police official speaking on condition of anonymity.

A doctor at the city’s main hospital said that five people had been treated for “very minor” injuries.

The cartoon appeared in Prothom Alo‘s weekly satirical magazine Alpin. Its cartoonist, Arisur Rahman, 23, was detained earlier this week and later remanded in custody by a court.

Matiur Rahman Thursday apologized for the cartoon, which showed a small boy adding the name Mohammed to the name of a cat.

That’s right – it’s about a little boy saying his cat’s name is Mohammed cat. That’s it. So they’re demanding the execution of the paper’s editor. The cartoonist’s already in jail.

You can see the cartoon at lgf.