June 12, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 26, 1428

LAHORE, June 11: The opposition walked out of the house after one hour of heated debate over political arrests as Law Minister Basharat Raja refused to ensure their immediate release.

Opposition Leader Qasim Zia took the floor on a point of order as soon as the house met 75 minutes later than its scheduled time of 3pm and grilled the government for “conspiring to repeat the May 12 bloodbath” on June 16 when Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry will arrive in Faisalabad.

Repeated assertions by Mr Raja failed to assuage the opposition’s fears that the provincial government was only acting to pre-empt any possibility of violence by taking certain “trouble makers” into custody.

Mr Zia claimed when the assembly came into being, the government had promised politics of tolerance, principles and decency. But all the claims have been shelved and persecution is being carried out, he said.

After attacking the judiciary and the media, the government has taken on political workers and not spared as old as 60 or 70 years. No one knows what the government wants to achieve by arresting political workers, he said.

Rana Sanaullah, who took the floor after Mr Zia, said station house officers in Faisalabad had been acting as Muttahida Qaumi Movement sector commanders in Karachi.

“Police officials are harassing the common man and political workers to stop them from receiving the chief justice on June 16. The policy of scaring people away from their constitutional right will not work,” he said.

Receiving someone or joining a procession is the basic human right enshrined in the constitution, he said, adding that the government was trying to rob the people of their constitutional right through mass arrests.

He said the reception of the chief justice would be peaceful if the police did not hamper the process.

He said, “I warn all on the floor of the house that the government is bent upon fomenting trouble in Faisalabad on June 16 and all the responsibility will be on the government if something goes wrong.

“It (the government) has started assigning police to fail the reception by arresting political workers.”

Arshad Bagu of the MMA said the law minister should come up with the list of detained workers rather than disputing opposition figures.

Arrested workers might be two or 200 or 2,000 but the law minister should present the list of the detained people in the house, he said.

What does justification we have to sit in the assembly when police arrest our workers regularly, he said.

Mr Raja said the government had not hampered the chief justice’s visit to Lahore on May 5 and it would not create any hurdle to his visits to other cities as well.

Justice Chaudhry is free to visit any city and everyone is free to receive him. He said the government has to take some pre-emptive measures for peaceful atmosphere. He said he was ready to sit with opposition leaders and sort the matter out.

But the opposition insisted the government immediately issue release orders for its workers. When the minister refused to oblige, it raised anti-government slogans for five minutes before walking out of the house. —Ahmad Fraz Khan