Pakistan protests met with violent crackdown

U.S. urges Musharraf 'to quickly return to a constitutional path'

Arif Ali / AFP - Getty Images Pakistani riot police confront lawyers during a protest in Lahore, on Monday. Several lawyers were wounded and dozens more arrested as protests erupted outside courtrooms in a number of cities.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Police fired tear gas and battered thousands of lawyers protesting President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s decision to impose emergency rule, as Western allies threatened to review aid to the troubled Muslim nation. Opposition groups put the number of arrests at 3,500, although the government reported half that.

Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup and is also head of Pakistan’s army, suspended the constitution on Saturday ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether his re-election as president was legal. He ousted independent-minded judges, stripped media freedoms and granted sweeping powers to authorities to crush dissent.

His prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, said on Monday that Pakistan will hold a national election on schedule. "Our thinking about the election is that it will be held according to schedule," Aziz told a news conference.

But he did not elaborate on whether the schedule is a new one or the previous one, which set January as the election month.

Separately, Attorney General Malik Abdul Qayyum said there would be no delay in the election.  "By Nov. 15, these assemblies will be dissolved and the election will be held within the next 60 days," he told Reuters.

Though public anger was mounting in the nation of 160 million people, which has been under military rule for much of its 60-year history, demonstrations so far have been limited largely to activists, rights workers and lawyers. All have been quickly and sometimes brutally stamped out.

A spokesman for former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s party said Monday that authorities had rounded up around 2,300 of its supporters. Other opposition parties, human rights groups, and lawyers said another 1,200 had been arrested.

U.S. reaction
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was reviewing its assistance to Pakistan, which has received billions in aid since Musharraf threw his support behind the U.S.-led war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

At a news conference in the West Bank on Monday, Rice urged Musharraf to follow through on past promises to “take off his uniform.”

“I want to be very clear,” she said, as a team of U.S. defense officials postponed plans to travel to Islamabad for talks Tuesday because of the crisis. “We believe that the best path for Pakistan is to quickly return to a constitutional path and then to hold elections.”

The White House also weighed in with spokeswoman Dana Perino urging a quick return to civilian rule and the release of people detained under an emergency decree.

Britain also said it was reviewing its aid package to Pakistan, and the Dutch government suspended its aid on Monday.

Musharraf reiterated to foreign ambassadors Monday that he was committed to complete the transition to democracy, though, under a state of emergency, elections scheduled for January could be pushed back by up to a year, according to the government.

He also denied rumors that he had been placed under house arrest by junior officers. "It is a joke of the highest order," Musharraf told Reuters from the presidency building after the meeting with foreign envoys.

Critics say Musharraf imposed emergency rule in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power.

His leadership is threatened by the Islamic militant movement that has spread from border regions to the capital, the re-emergence of political rival and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, and an increasingly defiant Supreme Court, which has been virtually decimated in the last two days.

Hundreds of arrests
Since late Saturday, between 1,500 and 1,800 people have been detained nationwide, an Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. They include opposition leaders, lawyers and human rights activists who might mobilize protests.

At least 67 workers and supporters of Bhutto — who has held talks in recent months with Musharraf over an alliance to fight extremism — had been arrested, said Pakistan People’s Party spokesman Farhatullah Babar.

Lawyers — who were the driving force behind protests earlier this year when Musharraf tried unsuccessfully to fire independent-minded chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry — attempted to stage rallies in major cities on Monday, but were beaten and arrested.

Chaudhry was removed from his post on Saturday, just as the Supreme Court was preparing to rule on whether Musharraf’s Oct. 6 re-election. Opponents say he should be disqualified because he contested the vote as army chief.

In the biggest gathering Monday, about 2,000 lawyers congregated at the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore. As lawyers tried to exit onto a main road, hundreds of police stormed inside, swinging batons and firing tear gas. Lawyers, shouting “Go, Musharraf, Go!” responded by throwing stones and beating police with tree branches.

Police bundled about 250 lawyers into waiting vans, an Associated Press reporter saw. At least two were bleeding from the head.

In the capital, Islamabad, hundreds of police and paramilitary troops lined roads and rolled out barbed-wire barricades on Monday to seal off the Supreme Court.

Only government employees heading for nearby ministries were allowed through. Two black-suited lawyers whose car was stopped by police argued in vain that they should be granted entry. They were eventually escorted away by two police cars.

A few dozen activists from hard-line Islamic parties gathered nearby, chanting slogans including “Hang, Musharraf, hang!”

As well as calling for protests, lawyers’ groups have vowed to boycott all court proceedings held in front of new judges sworn by Musharraf.

Rana Bhagwandas, a Supreme Court judge who refused to take oath under Musharraf’s proclamation of emergency orders, said he has been locked inside in his official residence in Islamabad and that other judges were being pressured to support the government.

“They are still working on some judges, they are under pressure,” Bhagwandas told Geo TV in a phone interview.

Authorities have imprisoned or put under house arrest key Musharraf critics, among them Javed Hashmi, the acting president of the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; cricket star-turned politician, Imran Khan; Asma Jehangir, chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan; and Hamid Gul, former chief of the main intelligence agency.

Pakistan’s largest religious party Jamaat-e-Islami reported that more than 500 of its workers and supporters had been detained since Sunday, including its leader, according to senior members of the party and police.

Attorney General Malik Mohammed Qayyum said Sunday a new panel of Supreme Court judges would rule “as early as possible” on Musharraf’s eligibility for a new five-year presidential term.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21609019/

Pakistan protests View images from the protests by lawyers and students against Pakistan’s government.

     Lawyers rioting in the streets? Some how such a scenario seems an oxymoron to me, as lawyers usually do their fighting in the courtroom. However in Pakistan where President and  military Chief of Armed Forces,  President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has among other things removed from office and detained Pakistan's Supreme Court Justices, there is no courtroom to fight in. Clearly, at least for the present, Musharraf is suspending "the rule of law" in Pakistan, which is in no way conducive to democracy in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto makes an astute observation when she says, " Well, General Musharraf has tried to justify the imposition of martial law or emergency claiming that there has been an ascendancy in the activities of extremists. I agree with him that there has been ascendancy in the activities of the extremists, but I don't believe in the solution. In my view, dictatorship fuels extremism. The extremists feed off dictatorship, and dictatorship feeds off the extremists. The dictatorship needs the extremists to justify its existence, and the extremists need dictatorship to expand and spread. So I believe the solution lies in respecting the constitution, respecting the rule of law, and investing in the people, trusting the people, and allowing the people to determine their future. " ( Please view the above You Tube interview with Benazir Bhutto on the imposition of martial law in Pakistan) I pray the democracy loving Spirit will be with Benazir Bhutto, the brave judges and lawyers of Pakistan and the Pakistani masses yearning for a democratic Muslim society under "the rule of law" (not the Taliban or al-qaeda sharia law)

tags: pakistan  benazir bhutto  pervez musharraf  martial law  constitution  human rights  musharraf  society  trial lawyers  

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