KARACHI, Oct 1: Two major doctors’ associations have announced joining hands with the lawyers, journalists and other members of civil society in what they described as the movement for democracy and justice in the country.

Speaking at a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Monday, office-bearers of the Pakistan Medical Association and the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association condemned the police crackdown on lawyers, newsmen and civil society members on Saturday in front of the Supreme Court and the Election Commission in Islamabad and demanded stern action against those responsible for the use of force against peaceful protesters.

Senior doctors, including Tipu Sultan, Habib Soomro, Misbahul Aziz, Sohail Akhtar and Samrina Hashmi, in their respective speeches maintained that every citizen had the right to express himself/herself and to hold a demonstration, but how the law-enforcement agencies had been treating the citizens, lawyers and media men since March 9 was tantamount to depriving the people of their fundamental rights and suppressing the norms of democracy.

The entire country had been held hostage by the power coterie, which wanted nothing but extension of the dictatorship through state terrorism, they added.

They said: “We as professionals and members of civil society assure the lawyers and media men of our full support in their struggle for the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law and the end of dictatorship.”

They said the doctors had decided to participate in protest rallies and processions held by lawyers and journalists in the future to express their solidarity with them.

A couple of speakers recalled the repeated killings of doctors some years back in the city and said that they appreciated what the media and civil society groups had done for them at that particular time and now it was time to pay them back.

“We fully stand beside the journalists and lawyers and feel that brutality and violence should be fervently condemned at all levels as they were aimed at undermining the promotion of democracy and dispensation of justice and turning the country into a police state,” they further said.