Beatings, arrests at start of big march

ISLAMABAD - Authorities arrested at least 60 more political activists last night as they extended a nationwide crackdown aimed at thwarting plans to march to Pakistan's capital from several cities and surround the country's Parliament.

The arrests took place in the southern city of Karachi and outside the high court building, where scuffles briefly broke out between police and protesters, witnesses and city police chief Waseem Ahmad said.

The BBC said police used sticks to beat up protesters. All major roads into the capital were blocked while numerous activists and politicians - the former cricketer Imran Khan among them - have gone into hiding.

In a move compared with the authoritarian tactics used by the former President Pervez Musharraf, police carried out pre-dawn raids across Punjab province and used British colonial-era legislation to impose a ban on any gatherings of more than four people.
The move creates more turmoil for Pakistan, which is struggling with extremists and a floundering economy.

Pakistan's largest opposition party and two other smaller groupings have joined forces with lawyers demanding an independent judiciary in a protest movement that threatens to weaken the year-old elected Government, which the United States is counting on to battle the Taleban and al Qaeda.

Police rounded up around 300 political activists earlier yesterday from cities around the country and banned rallies in two provinces, including Sindh where Karachi is located. Media reports said the Government planned to blockade the capital from the weekend to stop protesters entering.

"Our long march will go ahead according to the schedule," said Naeem Qureshi, a prominent lawyer in Karachi, referring to the protest. He and others lawyers were scheduled to leave for the capital Islamabad overnight in a motor convoy, where they hope to join thousands of other protesters for a rally at the Parliament on Monday.

The growing political unrest is raising the spectre of a possible military intervention in a nuclear-armed nation prone to army coups. It could put Washington in a prickly position if the civilian Government - which itself rose to power on the back of rallies and marches against Musharraf - keeps clamping down on dissidents.

"It's a disgrace for elected officials to mimic the discredited military government by using old and repressive laws to stifle political expression," said Ali Dayan Hasan, a researcher for the Human Rights Watch.

Pakistan's lawyers are demanding that President Asif Ali Zardari fulfil a pledge to restore judges removed by Musharraf.

Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, a former Prime Minister who allied with Zardari during the campaign to force out Musharraf, supports the judges' restoration but also is furious over a Supreme Court decision barring him and his brother from elected office. After the ruling, the Federal Government dismissed the Punjab provincial administration led by Sharif's brother.

Sharif claims the ruling was politically motivated and has urged Pakistanis to join the protest march.

Zardari, the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has cultivated ties with the US and sought to rally Pakistanis behind the fight with Islamic extremists. Sharif is considered closer to Islamic parties.

Protesters have pledged a peaceful march, but Sharif has used words like "revolution" and other harsh terms in recent speeches, prompting the Government to warn him against committing sedition.

The ruling party has restored most of the judges fired by Musharraf, but a few, including former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, have not regained their seats.

Zardari is believed to fear that those judges could move to limit his power or reopen corruption cases against him that were dropped by Musharraf when he was seeking to forge a political alliance before last year's elections.

It is almost two years since Musharraf fired Chaudhry, a move that ultimately led to the Pakistan People's Party securing power in parliamentary elections last February and Musharraf resigning in August.

- INDEPENDENT, AP