KARACHI, 25 May 2007 — Thousands of people rallied against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf yesterday for the first time since violent clashes in Karachi, as the military ruler headed to the still-tense city.
About 2,500 opposition supporters burned effigies of the president in the central town of Dera Ghazi Khan at the same time as Musharraf held a public rally of his own there, witnesses and officials said.
Another 3,000 lawyers, rights activists and opposition workers gathered in the eastern city of Lahore where they chanted slogans in support of the country’s suspended top judge, an AFP reporter said.
“We will continue our struggle and protests until the elimination of the dictatorship,” cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan told the crowd.
The opposition movement that has gathered around the figure of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry since his suspension by Musharraf in March has been quiet since May 12 and 13, when violent clashes erupted in Karachi.
About 40 people were killed there during the country’s worst ethnic bloodshed for two decades.
The violence started between pro- and anti-government camps but developed into fighting between mohajirs, or people whose families fled India after partition in 1947, and Pashtuns hailing from northwest Pakistan.
Musharraf told his rally in Dera Ghazi Khan that there were “certain elements who gave ethnic color to the crisis in a bid to create further chaos and cause more bloodshed in Karachi.” “However, the conspiracy hatched by these elements cannot work as political groups have already begun discussing ways to promote and preserve peace in Karachi,” he said.
He did not identify which “elements” were responsible.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has alleged that Musharraf’s government and his allies “deliberately sought to foment violence” in Karachi while police did nothing to stop it.
Musharraf was due to visit Karachi later yesterday in a bid to calm the tensions, officials said. Ahead of his arrival he received welcome news that Pashtun leaders had called off a three-day strike in the city that was to have started today.
“The president is due here tonight and all efforts will be made to break the ice, which has already started melting after Pashtun leaders postponed the strike,” Sindh provincial government spokesman Salahuddin Haider told AFP.
“Musharraf is expected to meet Pashtun elders as well as his government allies,” Haider said. Their demands include the arrest of those responsible for the killings.
Pashtuns and mohajirs have a long history of enmity in the city. Thousands of people have died in ethnic violence in Karachi since the 1980s.
Musharraf suspended Chaudhry, the head of the country’s Supreme Court, on March 9 on charges of misconduct, including that he used his position to get official jobs for his son.
The president’s opponents say he wants to weaken the courts ahead of possible legal challenges to his bid to remain army chief past the constitutional time limit of the end of the year.
