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| July 23, 2005 | Saturday | Jumadi-us-Sani 15, 1426 |
Raids on madressahs, arrest of ulema assailed
ISLAMABAD, July 22: Hundreds of people took to the streets in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad after Juma prayers to protest against the government’s countrywide crackdown on the religious institutions and detention of ulema and prayer leaders in the wake of the London bombings. In Islamabad, the MMA leaders made fiery speeches condemning the government for the countrywide crackdown on madressahs and detention of ulema. However, they remained peaceful as per the agreement reached with the district administration.
While the MMA leaders were delivering speeches, some people set a motorcycle of traffic police on fire in a street in Aabpara Market. When some of the demonstrators tried to rush to the site to watch the scene, the leaders warned them against going there and announced that it was “an attempt of the agencies to malign the MMA and create a law and order situation.”
The police did not show any reaction to the incident and stayed far away from the venue of the demonstration.
Some of the eye-witnesses told Dawn that the motorcycle was burnt by some police personnel but it could not be confirmed.
Except for the City Magistrate, Farasat Ali Khan, no other official of the district administration was present on the occasion.
A source told this reporter that the top officials of the district administration stayed in their residences during a crackdown on the seminaries on Tuesday night due to which the police mishandled the operation leading to a clash with the students of Madressah-i-Hafsa.
Earlier, hundreds of madressah students and clerics led by MMA MNAs Shah Abdul Aziz and Mian Muhammad Aslam gathered outside the Lal Masjid after offering Juma prayers and chanted slogans against the government for victimising the students of the seminaries as well as the ulema.
They said during raid, the police snatched veils from the faces of the girl students and beat them black and blue. They said more than a dozen pregnant students had received serious injuries as a result of police torture.
The MMA leaders said they would observe countrywide protests if the government did not stop crackdowns on the seminaries. They said the UK government had wrongly implicated some Pakistanis in the recent London bombings.
In Rawalpindi, a protest demonstration was taken out from Madressah Taleemul Quran in Raja Bazaar which after marching on Iqbal Road reached Fawara Chowk where ulema made fiery speeches against the government and condemned police raids on madressahs and mosques and arrest of ulema and prayer leaders.
The speakers raised slogans against Gen Musharraf, the US, the UK and said the religious institutions never indulged in any kind of terrorism.
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