LAHORE, April 27: Bar leaders urged the government on Saturday to release all lawyers arrested on Thursday in connection with the lawyers’ protest against the presidential referendum.

Addressing a press conference at the Supreme Court registry here, SC Bar Association president Hamid Khan said according to his information, 70 lawyers, including Hadi M Shakeel, Ali Ahmad Kurd, Sakhi Sultan and Mohsin Javed, had been arrested at Quetta and charged with sedition and other offences for assembling unlawfully and raising seditious slogans. All cases against the lawyers, he said, should be withdrawn as they were exercising their democratic right.

Hamid Khan said it seemed that Thursday’s successful protest had unnerved the government and it was now bent upon employing coercion and intimidation to silence the voice of dissent.

He parried a question about his opposition to the referendum as SCBA chief and support to it as vice-chairman of Tehrik-i-Insaaf.

Pakistan Bar Council vice-chairman Chaudhry Ashraf Wahla said those who were resorting to oppressive measures to suppress the lawyers’ struggle were not well-wishers of the government. Use of force would only compel them to intensify their struggle.

Punjab Bar Council vice-chairman Ramazan Chaudhry said lawyers would remain peaceful, despite provocation. He denied that he was a candidate for the office of Punjab law minister.

Lahore High Court Bar Association president Chaudhry Muzzammil Khan said the association’s general body was scheduled to meet on Monday to consider two anti-referendum resolutions. It would decide on a course of action to have the arrested lawyers released and cases against them withdrawn.

SCBA secretary Anwar Hameed Sahibzada regretted that lawyers who staged their protest peacefully were being arrested by police. LHCBA secretary Shahid Mahmood Bhatti said the Bar office-bearers who attended the all parties conference on Friday did so in their individual capacity.

SCBA vice-president MA Zafar and executive members Tariq Aziz and Sajjad Husain Bhatti and LHCBA finance secretary Tanvir Mahmood Chaudhry were also present.