PESHAWAR, May 14: Political parties and lawyers took out processions here on Monday in protest against the killing of political workers, firing on opposition rallies and the alleged detention of the Chief Justice of Pakistan and his fellow lawyers at the Karachi airport on May 12.

Lawyers took out a procession from the Peshawar High Court which turned into a public meeting at the Soekarno Chowk. The processionists had reached there after passing through the Qissakhwani and Khyber bazaars.

They carried banners and placards inscribed with slogans against the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Gen Pervez Musharraf.

They held the MQM and the top military brass responsible for the killing of people and ransacking of public and private property in Karachi.

However, shopkeepers and transporters observed only a partial strike in Peshawar.

Peshawar High Court Bar Association president Abdul Latif Afridi said that the lawyers with the support of civil society organisations would continue their struggle for the restoration of the 1973 Constitution, rule of law and a democratic dispensation in the country.

He said their movement in support of the Chief Justice of Pakistan would decide it once and for all that who was sovereign – people or generals.

He regretted that the MQM had chosen to side with killers and severed its links with political forces.

He said the MQM had opted for a wrong path as being a political party it should have supported democratic forces, instead of renting its muscles to a dictator.

He said the May 12 violence had exposed the racist face of the MQM.

The People’s Party Parliamentarians took out a procession from the Kohati Chowk which after passing through the Chowk Yadgar, Bazaar-i-Kalan and Gorgathri turned into a public meeting against the cold-blooded murder of political activists in Karachi.

PPP leaders lauded the valour of the people of Karachi, who, according to them, had been braving the `hooliganism’ of the MQM “which was acting like a brigade of Gen Pervez Musharraf.”

They alleged that the MQM activists were involved in firing on Aaj TV offices in Karachi.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and the Awami National Party held protest rallies and accused the MQM of killing people belonging to various communities on racial grounds.

Both the PPP and the MMA staged rallies which culminated in front of the Peshawar High Court after marching through the Khyber Bazaar, Qissakhwani, Chowk Yadgar and G. T. Road.

The ANP leaders demanded that the government should place a ban on the MQM for killing `sons of the soil’ in Karachi.

ANP provincial president Afrasiab Khattak said that if the MQM followers considered themselves Mohajirs even after 60 years of the partition then they should be registered as refugees and sent back to India.

He alleged that the MQM leaders had promoted fascism and identified themselves with military dictators and betrayed the democratic forces.

He said the ANP would not tolerate cleansing of Pakhtuns from Karachi.

Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) provincial general-secretary and MNA Shujaul Mulk accused the MQM of running its politics on the racial basis which, he said, was a threat to the federation.

He advised the MQM leadership to put down Kalashnikov otherwise they would be given a tough time in Karachi.

“Our elders had welcomed the forefathers of the MQM in 1947 as Muslim brethren and shared livelihood with them, but the present generation has yet not showed any sort of allegiance to the country,” he said.