KARACHI, March 15: The Human Rights Watch has urged the government not to block or use violence against peaceful demonstrators protesting over the action against the Chief Justice of Pakistan.

The HRW said in a press release, received here on Thursday, that the government had deployed thousands of additional security personnel to Islamabad and put the capital under `high alert’ on the eve of the second hearing in Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s case by the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC).

It said lawyers and members of human rights organisations, as well as opposition supporters,

had apprehensions that on Friday, police and intelligence personnel would repeat the violence they had used earlier in the week against protesters.

The press release alleged that scores of opposition supporters had been `arbitrarily detained’ and hundreds of lawyers had been charged under various provisions of the criminal code for protests since March 13.

“(President) Musharraf’s government should end this constitutional crisis by halting the illegal actions that have led to these protests,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The Human Rights Watch said the government had not released any details of the charges against Justice Chaudhry. “Lawyers on Justice Chaudhry’s defence team told Human Rights Watch that they had not been given any access to him or to a copy of the reference filed against him.”