May 12, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 24, 1428

LAHORE, May 11: Police on Friday arrested and later released at least 26 women from a peaceful protest demonstration that the Women Action Forum (WAF) had called against the ‘deal’ between ruling PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Husain and the clerics of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad.

The police, heavily deployed around the residence of Chaudhry Shujaat on Zahoor Elahi Road in Gulberg blocking all the streets leading to the road, pounced upon the women when they appeared on the scene raising slogans from Hali Road, adjacent to Chaudhrys’ residence. Some of the women were also roughed up before they were bundled into a police van.

The van, carrying women, roamed about in Model Town for some time before they were taken to the Model Town police station from where they were set at liberty after about one-and-a-half-hour.

Protesters and members of other civil society organisations later decided at a meeting that they would continue to protest to keep the issue alive because the deal between the ruling party president and the clerics was unlawful and violated fundamental rights of the people.

The arrested women included Samina Rehman, Nighat Khan, Anees Haroon, Tasnim Kausar, Nasreen Shah, Rubina Saigol, Naila Naz, Bulnar, Lalarukh, Shaista, Seema Nuzhat, Shireen, Riffat Yasmin, Shabnam Qadir, Tarannum, Dr Sooraj, Dr Raheela, Dr Shabnam and Shazia Khan. Another two, who were arrested in front of the Chaudhrys’ residence, were dropped on the Canal Bank Road, asking them to walk away.

Farzana Mumtaz said at the meeting that police beat her and gave a threat that she would be burnt by acid. The police action was quick as they had prevented the demonstration and picked the women up in about 15 minutes or so.

Condemning the incident, the WAF and other civil society organizations said it was a violation of human rights because women were prevented from staging a peaceful demonstration which was their legal right.

They said the arrests also amounted to discrimination against the baton-wielding girls of the Jamia Hafsa, who along with their mentors of the Lal Masjid, were not being proceeded against similarly.

Before the police action, the WAF had also distributed to the press a pamphlet saying that women from all over the country viewed with alarm the incident of violence on women teachers at the Quaid-i-Azam University, bombing of a girls school, threats of acid throwing and kidnapping of women from their homes in Islamabad by clerics of the Lal Masjid.