April 04, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 15, 1428

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LAHORE, April 3: Around 2,000 lawyers and a few dozen political and rights activists rallied on The Mall on Tuesday to protest against the suspension of the chief justice of Pakistan.

Lawyers’ bodies had planned the rally as part of the countrywide protest on the day of hearing of the reference against Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry by the Supreme Judicial Council at the Supreme Court in Islamabad.

The lawyers in the city and elsewhere in Punjab also boycotted court proceedings and set up hunger strike camps. Banners hung on courts’ premises in the city were inscribed with slogans in favour of Justice Chaudhry.

“Go Musharraf Go,” “We want an independent judiciary,” “Down with Musharraf,” chanted the lawyers while marching from the Lahore High Court to the Punjab Assembly building on The Mall. They also burnt an effigy of the president.

Led by MNA Liaquat Baloch, a few dozen activists of the Jamaat-i-Islami gathered at the Nasser Bagh and marched up to Awan-i-Adl near the Civil Secretariat. Outside the Awan-i-Adl, the protestors lined up and chanted anti-government slogans.

A lawyers rally organised by the Lahore Bar Association was taken out from the Awan-i-Adl. When some political activists tried to join the lawyers, the bar office-bearers asked them to hold a separate rally.

The Lahore bar rally joined another procession of lawyers, taken out from the Lahore High Court, at the GPO Chowk. From there, the lawyers, with political and rights activists on their tail, marched up to the Faisal Chowk in front of the Punjab Assembly building, where they staged a sit-in and chanted slogans in favour of Justice Chaudhry. The protesting lawyers removed all barricades police had erected on the road.

Hundreds of riot police deployed outside the Lahore High Court and along the rally’s route just acted as onlookers and did not restrain the protesters from marching on the road.

Addressing the lawyers, high court bar association President Ahsan Bhoon said the struggle would continue till the `independence of judiciary’. “We will continue our protest till the suspended chief justice is restored to his office,” he said. He urged the lawyers to remain united and foil all attempts by government to create any rift among the legal fraternity.

Before getting onto The Mall, the lawyers’ bodies at the high court and Awan-i-Adal also held meetings, and their leaders denounced the government as well as President Gen Pervez Musharraf for what they termed attempts to hijack judicial organs of the state.

TRAFFIC: Around one-and-a-half hour presence of the lawyers on The Mall badly affected the traffic flow on the road, and its adjoining arteries. Roads leading to The Mall from Queens Road, Shadman, Egerton Road and McLeoad Road had been barricaded by police, who kept on diverting the traffic to alternative routes. It resulted in long queues of vehicles with commuters waiting helplessly to get out of the mess.