Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Dhaka on Tuesday, calling for a boycott of French products and burning an effigy of President Emmanuel Macron, even accusing him of "worshiping Satan" after the latter defended the freedom to caricature the prophet Mohammed.
According to the police, more than 40,000 people participated in this march organized by an Islamist party and which was stopped before reaching the French embassy in the capital of Bangladesh.
Hundreds of police had erected barbed wire barriers to block the demonstrators who dispersed without violence.
Munir UZ ZAMAN / AFP
Mr. Macron has become the target of protests and calls for boycott in several countries after promising that France will continue to defend this kind of caricatures, during a national tribute last Wednesday to Samuel Paty, a professor beheaded in an attack Islamist on October 16 for showing some of them to his students.
The latest salient example to date, the grand mufti of Chechnya described Macron as "the number one terrorist in the world", according to a correspondent for Le Monde.
"You are the most miserable creature, the enemy of Allah, of mankind and of all Muslims," he added.
"France is the enemy of Muslims"
"Macron is one of the few leaders who worship Satan," a senior IAB official told Dhaka Baitul Mukarram.
The protest, organized by Islami Andolan Bangladesh (IAB), one of Bangladesh's main Islamist parties, started outside the country's main mosque, the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in the center of the capital.
The demonstrators chanted slogans calling for a "Boycott of French products" and "punish" Mr. Macron.
He called on the Bangladeshi government to “kick out” the French ambassador.
Another Islamist leader, Hasan Jamal, for his part said that the protesters would “knock down every brick” of the embassy if the ambassador was not fired.
Caricatures of Mahomet: French products boycotted, Macron's portrait burnt
“France is the enemy of Muslims.
Those who represent it are also our enemies, ”said Nesar Uddin, a young leader of the organization.
After the demonstration stopped, protesters continued to march through adjacent streets shouting slogans calling for a boycott of France and assuring that "Macron will pay dearly".
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