ISLAMABAD, 12 December 2006 — Authorities detained over two dozen workers of the Muttaheda Majlis-e-Amal yesterday to prevent them from holding a protest rally against the Women’s Protection and Empowerment Bill.
The call for the rally was given by the Jamaat-e-Islami and another organization Shabab-e-Milli. Police were deployed in all major Punjab cities to foil the planned rally.
In Faisalabad, police beat up participants of a motorcycle rally taken out by Jamaat workers who were going to the venue of the main procession.
Police said 13 people were arrested while a Jamaat spokesman claimed 20 people were detained. Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, another party in the MMA grouping, held a massive rally near the Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum in Karachi.
Meanwhile, border guards arrested 90 Afghans yesterday for illegal entry into Pakistan and deported 43 others back to Afghanistan weeks after arresting them for illegal stay in the country, officials said.
The 43 men were handed over to Afghan authorities in the town of Chaman, the main border crossing between southern Afghanistan and Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, said Abdul Basir, a border security official in Chaman. The deported Afghans were arrested about 20 days ago in Gwadar, an Arabian Sea coast town in Balochistan, Basir said.
