March 16, 2007	Friday	Safar 26, 1428

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LAHORE, March 15: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has taken a serious view of the ‘ham-handed’ attempts of the establishment to deal with the situation created by its reckless assault on the independence of the judiciary and the basic law of the country.

The resort to violence on a peaceful protest rally of lawyers in Lahore on Monday and the roughing up of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry by the Islamabad police the following day deserved condemnation without any reservation, HRCP chairperson Asma Jahangir said in a press statement issued here on Thursday.

Ms Jahangir said that the lawyers’ community was within the legal and constitutional framework of right to protest against an act which had flouted the norms of the 1973 Constitution and was aimed at further weakening the institution of the judiciary.

She criticised the use of official resources to divide the lawyers and the ‘unleashing’ of chief ministers in the role of hatchet men to hack away at the judicial institutions. Besides, extraordinary efforts were being made to deny the people, especially the media, their right to help resolve the crisis confronting the country, she said.

The HRCP chairperson said that bars were familiar with commenting on sub judice matters but it was doubtful if the restriction could be defended at a time when the judiciary and the basic tenets of the rule of law had been wantonly attacked by the executive.

The rule against criticism of the judiciary could not be used to protect an executive that habitually transgressed its authority, she said.

She said the broader national interest demanded that the government should desist from covering up its original ‘folly’ of making the chief justice ‘non-functional’ with measures that clipped the citizens’ basic rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and to play their due role in protecting the constitutional scheme of the judiciary’s status as an independent organ of the state.