ISLAMABAD, 6 December 2007 — Pakistani lawyers took to the streets of the capital yesterday, yelling slogans and punching the air in protest at President Pervez Musharraf’s purge of the judiciary.
Chanting anti-Musharraf slogans, members of the Islamabad Bar Association announced they were cutting their work-day in half indefinitely until Musharraf reinstates a host of judges he deposed to fend off challenges to his re-election.
“We want the judges who have been removed illegally and unconstitutionally from their offices ... to be reinstated, and the constitution should be restored and the fundamental rights of the people should be restored,” said Haroonur Rashid, president of the Islamabad Bar Association.
“Until then we will continue our protest,” he said. “Until the reinstatement of the other judges, we will not appear before the High Courts and Supreme Court of Pakistan.” At 11 a.m. sharp, lawyers in traditional black suits and ties and white shirts left the warren of court rooms and offices at the city’s district court complex and marched around them, extending a symbolic hourly boycott observed in recent weeks.
Some staged a token hunger strike, forgoing lunch. Lawyers boycotted the courts elsewhere, including in Peshawar in the northwest. Lawyers in the southern financial hub of Karachi continued to observe a one-hour work stoppage, and were expected to stage a full-day boycott today.
Lawyers in Lahore are boycotting high court proceedings, and yesterday protested outside the official residence of a deposed high court judge ordered to vacate the property.
The judge had a heart attack after receiving the order, and was taken to hospital, a lawyer said.
Some civilians left waiting outside the courts in Islamabad were frustrated, saying it was they who would lose out.
Lahore teacher Irfan Aized, 29, is still waiting for the court to approve settlement of a dispute over the theft of his car, and is worried he could lose his job.
“I am doing a private job. If I am not doing it at the proper time, they will kick me out, definitely,” he said. “This lawyers’ boycott is going to affect the lives of the common man.”
‘Polls Will Be Free, Fair’
Pakistan’s Election Commission yesterday rejected allegations from leading opposition parties that January polls will be rigged, insisting that the vote will be free and fair.
The body’s defense of its independence came amid claims by former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif that it is biased because it is appointed by President Pervez Musharraf.
“The Election Commission is a constitutional body and it is fully independent to hold free, fair and transparent polls,” the commission’s secretary Kanwar Dilshad told AFP.
“The entire election exercise is absolutely free, fair and transparent,” he said. “More than 95 percent of polling stations will be in schools or government buildings, but in some areas where there is no proper building, polling stations are established in tents or some other premises,” Dilshad said.
Addressing allegations that thousands of ballot papers would be stolen, Dilshad said they would be handed over to officials by Jan. 5 and “there is no question of somebody getting hold of them.”
An aide to Sharif said yesterday that a committee set up by the opposition could finalize its “charter of demands” for the government.
“The demands will be finalized today hopefully, or maybe tomorrow,” Ishaq Dar, a close confidant of Sharif, told private Dawn television.
“If after a given cut-off date demands are not met, then... in that case the choice will be nothing but the boycott,” Dar added.
Dar said the parties had agreed on two demands — independence of the judiciary and restoration of the constitution to its status before Musharraf toppled Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999.
Any boycott would remove all credibility for the elections, which are being touted by Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led “war on terror,” as an important step in the country’s transition to democracy.
Musharraf gave up his position as army chief last week in an apparent concession to international and domestic pressure.
He was then sworn in for a second term as a civilian president following the rubber-stamping of his victory in an Oct. 6 presidential election by the new Supreme Court.
In a sign that the government had no intention of meeting opposition demands on the judiciary, the attorney general said yesterday that 37 judges who refused to approve emergency rule had been formally retired. They included the former chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
US Rights Activists Told to Leave
Pakistani authorities have ordered two US human rights activists out of the country after they held a vigil to protest against the detention of an opposition lawyer, one of the activists said yesterday.
Security officials picked up the two, Medea Benjamin and Tighe Barry, in the eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday and held them for several hours before ordering them to leave the country and releasing them. They were released early yesterday and took part in a rally in Lahore later in the day.
“They are revoking our visas and instructed us to leave the country today,” Benjamin, an activist from the Code Pink anti-war group, told Reuters by telephone from Lahore.
The two had been holding a vigil outside the house of Aitzaz Ahsan, an opposition politician and lawyer who has been held in detention, at first in prison and later at his Lahore home.
Benjamin said authorities had given no reason for deporting them: “They said in an emergency, they did not need to give a reason for their actions.” “If they can do this to a US citizen who has all kind of liberties and rights, imagine what they can do to their own people,” she said.
Federal Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said yesterday Ahsan and four other jurists would be freed within the next 72 hours.
