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| March 17, 2007 | Saturday | Safar 27, 1428 |
Police block protest with batons, teargas
LAHORE, March 16: Police on Friday teargassed and batoncharged political activists protesting against the suspension of the Chief Justice of Pakistan at Neela Gumbad and arrested around 100 of them, including women and lawmakers.
The arrested, including Punjab PML-N president Sardar Zulfikar Khosa, were bundled into prison vans, in some instances after having been roughed up by the law enforcers who were present there in large numbers in uniform and in civvies.
Police sources said on Friday night that cases against 55 of the arrested, including Khosa, MNA Saad Rafiq and Mian Marghoob, were registered by Old Anarkali police under 16-MPO and 7-ATA. They were detained at different police stations in the city.
Earlier, the police arrested around 200 activists and leaders belonging to the opposition parties, including MNA Liaqat Baloch of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, from their homes or offices in various parts of the city since Thursday evening.
City police chief, Malik Muhammad Iqbal, did not confirm the number of those taken into custody on Thursday and Friday. All he told Dawn by telephone was: “You know very well that the government has banned rallies. We are just acting to maintain peace and tranquility.”
The police action was aimed at thwarting a planned rally of the opposition parties, including the MMA, PML-Nawaz and Pakistan Tehirk-i-Insaf (PTI). No PPP activist or leader made it to the venue. Opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly Qasim Zia of the PPP did, however, say that the police had detained him at his house.
Riot police had been deployed at various points in Neela Gumbad and on the adjacent roads including The Mall. Roads leading to the venue had been barricaded.
Shortly after Friday prayers at the Jamia Arbia Rahimia Mosque at Neela Gumbad, the protesters began chanting anti-government slogans. Khwaja Saad Rafiq of the PML-N started addressing the people who came out of the mosque. He had just spoken for a minute or so when a group of around 150 people emerged from two link roads and began pelting the riot police with stones and bricks. The police first retreated and then resorted to batoncharge and teargas to disperse the protesters.
“Shame on you,” shouted out Sardar Zulfikar Khosa as he was pushed into the van. “Is this what you do to a man your father’s age?”
Ex-president and a former judge of the Supreme Court, Muhammad Rafiq Tarar, also took part in the protest. “This is state terrorism,” he said while talking to reporters. “This is hooliganism.”
The police came hard on the activists and the leaders, but treated Mr Tarar with restraint. He was asked to board a police van for a ‘drop’ to his house. “He (Mr Tarar) is a (former) president. We cannot touch him,” said a police officer on the scene.
The policemen surely didn’t mind ‘locking’ the ex-president in a nearby shop some time later. The action came after the former president refused to board the van, and insisted he would walk up to his car parked some distance from the meeting venue. Finally, he was released from detention, forced into his car and driven towards home in the company of two policemen.
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