ISLAMABAD, June 8: Progressive political groups and civil society organisations held a torch-bearing protest rally at Aabpara Chowk against government’s repression of the media and arrest of political workers and to express solidarity with the lawyers movement.

Dozens of students, intellectuals, teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, workers and ordinary citizens participated in the rally carrying banners, placards and flags.

They were chanting anti-government slogans and demanding withdrawal of the Pemra ordinance.

Speaking to the participants, various leaders described the ongoing lawyers-led movement a defining moment in Pakistan’s chequered history.

“The battle lines are now drawn between those supporting the military rule and those committed to the rule of the people”, said Asim Sajjad Akhtar of the Peoples Rights Movement.

Sajid Tanoli of the Rawalpindi Bar Association said that the lawyers movement had now evolved into a broad-based people’s movement and that this was what the legal fraternity had been pushing for all along.

Other speakers criticised the hollowness of the ongoing budget exercise and said it would only become pro-people and the burden of the working people would be lessened only when the defence, debt-servicing and government expenditures were slashed substantially, the landlords, capitalists and military’s financial companies are taxed.

The organisations that participated in the rally were People’s Rights Movement (PRM), Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party, Inquilabi Jamhoori Workers Committee and other social and political organisations.

Meanwhile representatives of civil society organisations at a separate meeting held at Strengthening Participatory Organization’s (SPO) office here Friday discussed the Pakistan Electronic Media Authority (Amendment) Ordinance that has created unrest and uproar among the civil society.