HYDERABAD, Nov 1: Leaders of the Lawyers Movement Action Committee and APDM announced on Saturday that the lawyers, component parties of APDM and members of civil society would observe ‘black day’ across the country on Nov 3 to press for their demand for the independence of judiciary and supremacy of the Constitution.

Speaking at a news conference at the press club, the convenor of the committee Zafar Ali Rajput and APDM leaders Saleem Tareen and Abdul Waheed Qureshi said that lawyers would stage a two-hour sit-in after boycotting the courts and hold rallies in all the big and small towns of the country including the capital.

They appealed to the local chapters of all the political parties including PPP, civil society members, students, business community and people from all walks of life to participate in the black day protest to strengthen the movement for the independence of judiciary and supremacy of law and the Constitution.

Mr Rajput said that Nov 3 was the darkest day in the history of Pakistan when the then Chief of Army Staff Gen Pervez Musharraf, a grade-22 government officer, made a frontal attack on the independence of judiciary and supremacy of Constitution by removing 60 judges of the superior judiciary, including Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

He did not stop at this and kept judges in wrongful confinement in utter violation of the Constitution and human rights and civil liberties because he was afraid of the conscientious judges who had taken suo moto notice on very important issue, he said.

He cited examples of the bid to privatise the Pakistan Steel Mills, sale of costly plots in Gwadar at throwaway prices, the so-called Panchayat Courts, atrocities against women, smuggling of human limbs, thousands of missing persons and summoning the corrupt officials of agencies to court who had become more powerful than the state itself and the parliament.

The dictator’s action was aimed at preventing the judges from taking suo moto notice of the inhuman atrocities, he said and called upon the followers of Benazir Bhutto to complete her mission who had unequivocally declared that she supported the lawyers’ cause.

APDM and Jamaat-i-Islami leader Moulana Abdul Waheed Qureshi said that it was a foregone conclusion that without independence of judiciary, justice could not be dispensed with and without dispensation of justice, the country could not prosper.

He said that under the existing economic crisis, no one would be willing to invest in Pakistan and called upon those 80 capitalists who had stashed away their money in foreign banks to bring back their capital in the larger interest of the country and the nation.

The president of APDM’s Hyderabad chapter, Saleem Tareen, said that the lawyers had become people’s voice and it was the duty of every citizen to support their struggle in their own interest.

He said that the law of Farooq Naik had been slapped on the country and 160 million people of Pakistan wanted restoration of the sacked judiciary.

Had there been rule of law in the country and supremacy of the Constitution, there would have been scores of FIRs lodged against Pervez Musharraf who was widely considered to be responsible for the murders of thousands of innocent people, Mr Tareen said.