June 07, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 21, 1428

LAHORE, June 6: Police continued to arrest political activists and students belonging to all the opposition parties on Wednesday, though they did not seem to be as active as they had been since their crackdown began on Monday night.

The police on Wednesday remained busy sending the arrested activists to different prisons in Punjab where they had been detained for one to three months under section 3 of the MPO. They set at liberty many of those arrested across Punjab in the last two days. A majority of those released belong to Lahore.

No party gave details of how many more of their workers were arrested, except for the PML-N which claimed that 20 more workers were taken into custody on the third day of the crackdown. The parties were also preparing themselves for the legal course of action against the arrests and the MMA, the PPP and the PML-N had set up free legal aid committees to move courts of law for relief to the detained workers.

The Punjab police started a crackdown on Monday night that was at its climax in the early hours on Tuesday. But the police denied receiving any instructions from the government for any such action. The police officers, they said, were directed about a week ago to prepare lists of the political activists who could create trouble in rallies.

But they confirmed that “a few people having the reputation of triggering trouble were arrested and sent to jails”. PPP leader Naveed Chaudhry told Dawn that the police continued raiding his home at Faisal Town and office near Mozang Chungi.

The political parties, on the other hand, issued exaggerated figures of the arrested workers. For example, the PPP claimed that around 500 of its activists were arrested across the province during the swoop. But a list issued by PPP Punjab president Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi at a news conference on Wednesday put the number at a little over 150.

Similarly, the MMA had initially claimed the arrest of 400 but now it is saying the number is about 100. The PML-N put the number of the arrested activist around 100 but this later came out to about 60. The PTI claimed that 50 of its workers were arrested, but the Punjab office could not give details of more than 20.

As for the activists, who were released by the police after arrests in Lahore alone, eighteen of them belong to the PTI, 20 to the PPP and five to the PML-N. The PTI said more of them were released in other districts and those sent to prisons were about 20. Other opposition parties also said their workers were also released late on Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, Punjab PML-N president Sirdar Zulfiqar Ali Khosa and secretary-general Raja Ashfaq Sarwar said they had moved the Lahore High Court against the illegal arrests. Condemning the crackdown, they said the arrested workers were sent to jails in other districts. They demanded the release of the detained activists.

They directed their workers throughout the province to participate in rallies in every district on Thursday to show solidarity with the lawyers’ democratic movement.

The provincial Jamaat-i-Islami says it has set up legal aid committees in districts with the direction that they would move the sessions courts in case the police broke into residential buildings in violation of fundamental rights.

PPP Punjab president Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a news conference on Wednesday that the party workers were not deterred by arrests and other intimidatory tactics and would join the lawyers’ rallies all over the province.

He also released a list of the party’s arrested workers and said their custody meant that the rulers had gone so unnerved as to show intolerance.

He said provincial secretary-general Ghulam Abbas would represent the party at the rally in Lahore as other leaders would be engaged at a meeting of the Central Executive Committee in Karachi.