PESHAWAR, Feb 16: Some businessmen are taking advantage of the law and order situation arising out of the violent demonstrations against publication of blasphemous cartoons in European newspapers and are targeting their rivals and damaging their businesses and property during the violent protests.

“There is some indication of this unfairness because demonstrators attacked some foreign businesses,” an official of the Norwegian mobile company, Telenor, in Pakistan said.

The mob went on a rampage in Peshawar on Wednesday apparently in protest against the publication of sacrilegious cartoons.

It attacked and looted shops instead and also burnt 16 buses, two vans and two cars of the South Korean transport company Sammi-Daewoo on the main G. T. Road.

The rioters, mostly teenagers, also ransacked one franchise, sales and customer service centre and burnt two franchises of the Norwegian Telecommunication Company Telenor.

Some of the rioters distributed handbills among people and offices appealing people to boycott Danish and Norwegian products.

“Stop using Telenor mobile connections and switch over to others as a protest against the blasphemous caricatures of the Holy Prophet (PBUH),” the anonymous body who had printed the handbill said. At the end of the handbill, the people were requested to make 10 copies and redistribute it among others.

“This is so saddening. We can not name anyone at the moment but we have come to know about some foul play behind all this,” an official of the Telenor told Dawn.

Telenor officials alleged that some competitor franchises, which can not be named at the moment, were supporting and financing such publications and targeting them during violent protests. The official termed such actions of its competitors “shameful and unfair”.

“Telenor is an easy target at the moment but we are not a guilty party,” the Telenor official said.

The offices of the company had been temporarily shut down for the safety of its employees and the company was not closing business, officials said.

An official of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said that it was the government’s job to provide protection to foreign investors, and added that the PTA could only protect the rights of its licences and rights of subscribers.

“These telecommunication companies can not be called foreign products as local people were being employed at the franchises of these companies,” a PTA official said.

An official of Sammi-Daewoo, Lahore, told Dawn by telephone that it could not say for sure who instigated the mob to burn its buses.

He criticised the NWFP government for not providing security to the transport company during Wednesday’s riots.

He said: “Company officials are negotiating with the NWFP government about security problems.”