ISLAMABAD - A Pakistani opposition leader on Sunday accused President Pervez Musharraf of trying to crush dissent after police held dozens of people who vowed to protest against the military rulerÂ’s re-election.
Police served four leaders of a pro-democracy alliance with 30-day detention orders on Saturday night and kept them under heavy guard at their parliamentary lodgings in Islamabad.
"Hokay, into da wagon wit yez!" | Security forces arrested dozens more activists in raids on their homes, while party officials said other opposition figures have gone underground to avoid being rounded up.
Javed Hashmi, the acting chief of exiled former premier Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party, said his lawyer would challenge his ‘illegal’ detention in court. ‘They want to crush every voice of dissent,’ Hashmi told AFP from the parliamentary apartment where he is being held.
Seems like they're making some headway ... | The other leaders held are Raja Zafar ul-Haq, from the same party and Hafiz Hussain Ahmad and Mian Aslam of the pro-Taleban Jamiat-ulema-e-Islam party. Party sources said they would also appeal against their detention.
The opposition coalition, called the All Parties Democratic Movement, has vowed to block MusharrafÂ’s bid to win another five-year term in a vote by the federal and provincial assemblies on October 6.
‘They have confined me for 30 days, but we will continue to raise our voice for the rights of the people of Pakistan, for democracy and against military dictatorship,’ Hashmi said. ‘They want power by the use of force, not by the power of the ballot,’ added Hashmi, who was freed from jail by the Supreme Court in August after serving three years on sedition charges.
Deputy information minister Tariq Azeem said the ‘preventative detentions’ were justified. ‘These people were threatening to storm the Supreme Court and attack the election commission. No government can allow them to take the law into their hands,’ Azeem told AFP. ‘Some leaders are under preventative detention to ward off any threat to law and order to protect the sanctity of the institutions,’ he said.
Because the sanctity of the institutions could be sullied by having, you know, a fair vote ... | The alliance staged protests on Friday and says that it will blockade the election commission to stop Musharraf filing his nomination papers on Thursday. It has also vowed to resign from parliament.
Don't they threaten that about every other week or so? Somehow they never seem to get around to actually doing it ... | As police sources said that more arrests were likely, Sharif’s party and the biggest coalition of religious parties, the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Front, said most of their leaders had gone into hiding. ‘The leadership has gone underground to keep the movement alive. Hundreds of our workers have been detained,’ said Shahid Shamsi, a spokesman for the Islamist alliance.
Sharif’s party said its leaders have ‘left their homes for safer places’ while several dozen had been detained. ‘This is sham democracy,’ spokesman Ahsan Iqbal said. ‘The regime is proving our point that it is autocratic not democratic.’
Police would not confirm the full number of arrests.
Coppers in a police state generally don't. | Musharraf has faced mounting protests and slumping popularity ever since his failed bid to sack the Supreme Court chief justice in March.
Dumb, dumb, dumb move; beginning of the end for him right there. | The Supreme Court has shown increasing autonomy, ruling in August first that Hashmi could be freed and then that party leader Sharif himself was allowed to return from seven years in exile. But when he did so nearly two weeks ago Pakistani authorities immediately dumped Sharif, the man Musharraf ousted in a 1999 coup, on a plane to Saudi Arabia.
"But they said I could stay!"
"And we say you go! Into the baggage compartment wit yez!" |
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