LAHORE, Nov 26: Scores of lawyers and civil society activists participated in a candlelit march from the Lahore Press Club to the offices of GEO Television on Monday evening. At the stalls put up outside the GEO office, the participants carrying torches, placards and banners, raised slogans against President Pervez Musharraf, imposition of emergency, suspension of the constitution and the curbs he has placed on the freedom of superior judiciary as well as the electronic media. Paying tributes to all lawyers arrested for protesting against the Musharraf regime, the marchers vociferously demanded the immediate release of senior bar leaders, including Aitzaz Ahsan, Munir A Malik, Justice (retired) Tariq Mehmood and Ali Ahmed Kurd. Some protesters carried placards condemning the government for keeping gravely ill Malik in detention.

Earlier at the press club, marchers put their signatures to a goodwill message to be sent to Mr Malik at PIMS in Islamabad.

The participants also recited radically anti-establishment poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib with some of GEO Television’s most popular political shows running in the background on a giant screen. One remarkable feature of the march was how its participants had made to the right place at the right time by following the word of mouth, e-mails and text messages sent through cell phones.

Prominent among those who took part in the march were: Hina Jillani, internationally renowned human rights lawyer, IA Rehman, senior journalist and eminent human rights activist, Khawar Mumtaz, leading women rights activist, Neelum Husain, rights activist, Shahid Kardar, former provincial finance minister and leading economist, Abbas Rashid, educationist and senior columnist, Cecil Chaudhry, war hero and vocal advocate of minority rights, and Shahtaj Qizalbash, one of the most known members of the Joint Action Committee for People’s Rights.

The participating lawyers included Mian Jamil Akhtar, member of the Save Judiciary Committee, Firdaus Butt, vice-president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association, Ruby Awan, finance secretary of the Lahore High Court Bar Association, Anwar Kamal, Khurram Latif Khosa, Rabia Bajwa, Salman Akram Raja, Shahab Qutab and Asad Jamal.