Thousands march in Pakistan protesting Sharif ban
Friday, 27 February 2009
LAHORE, Feb 26 (AFP): Thousands of protesters marched across Pakistan Thursday, torching pictures of President Asif Ali Zardari as a nervous government put paramilitaries on alert and detained 30 lawmakers.
Security forces sealed off the Punjab provincial assembly but thousands of people stormed the barricades for a sit-in outside the governor's residence in Lahore, punching their fists in the air, witnesses said.
It follows a Supreme Court ruling Wednesday which barred opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, from running for office.
The protesters torched two large hoardings showing Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and beat pictures of Zardari with sticks and shoes before setting them ablaze.
Many shops across the country have closed and the government, alarmed about the mobs' reaction to the court ruling, has deployed riot police.
"The Punjab government has requested the deployment of the Rangers and we have accepted their request," a spokesman for the interior ministry told newsmen, referring to a paramilitary force.
Lawyers and opposition activists heeded a call from Sharif for nationwide action to condemn the ruling, which also threw his brother Shahbaz out of his post as chief minister of the Punjab province.
Rallies were also reported in Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Muzaffarabad, as well as in 15 districts in Punjab.
Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have long fought over the future of nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key US ally in the fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militancy.
Analysts say Pakistan, reeling from extremist attacks that have killed more than 1,600 people in less than two years, can ill afford a showdown.
In Lahore, police detained about 30 lawmakers outside parliament while riot police armed with truncheons and tear gas stood guard.
"Police bundled the lawmakers into waiting vans and drove them to an unknown place," Rana Mashhud, the regional parliament's deputy speaker, told the reporter.
The government has suspended the provincial assembly in Lahore, Pakistan's second biggest city, bringing Punjab under Islamabad's direct control.
Sharif, 59, has re-emerged as a key player in Pakistani politics since he returned here after seven years in exile in Saudi Arabia.
His conservative Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) -- the country's second biggest party -- is demanding the reinstatement of constitutional court judges sacked when former president Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule in 2007.
Police said hundreds protested in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where mobs late Wednesday attacked banks and torched a memorial to former premier Benazir Bhutto, Zardari's wife, who was assassinated in December 2007.
Some 700 people rallied in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, chanting "Murderer of democracy, Zardari, Zardari!" and torching his picture.
Security forces sealed off the Punjab provincial assembly but thousands of people stormed the barricades for a sit-in outside the governor's residence in Lahore, punching their fists in the air, witnesses said.
It follows a Supreme Court ruling Wednesday which barred opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, from running for office.
The protesters torched two large hoardings showing Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and beat pictures of Zardari with sticks and shoes before setting them ablaze.
Many shops across the country have closed and the government, alarmed about the mobs' reaction to the court ruling, has deployed riot police.
"The Punjab government has requested the deployment of the Rangers and we have accepted their request," a spokesman for the interior ministry told newsmen, referring to a paramilitary force.
Lawyers and opposition activists heeded a call from Sharif for nationwide action to condemn the ruling, which also threw his brother Shahbaz out of his post as chief minister of the Punjab province.
Rallies were also reported in Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Muzaffarabad, as well as in 15 districts in Punjab.
Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have long fought over the future of nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key US ally in the fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militancy.
Analysts say Pakistan, reeling from extremist attacks that have killed more than 1,600 people in less than two years, can ill afford a showdown.
In Lahore, police detained about 30 lawmakers outside parliament while riot police armed with truncheons and tear gas stood guard.
"Police bundled the lawmakers into waiting vans and drove them to an unknown place," Rana Mashhud, the regional parliament's deputy speaker, told the reporter.
The government has suspended the provincial assembly in Lahore, Pakistan's second biggest city, bringing Punjab under Islamabad's direct control.
Sharif, 59, has re-emerged as a key player in Pakistani politics since he returned here after seven years in exile in Saudi Arabia.
His conservative Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) -- the country's second biggest party -- is demanding the reinstatement of constitutional court judges sacked when former president Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule in 2007.
Police said hundreds protested in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where mobs late Wednesday attacked banks and torched a memorial to former premier Benazir Bhutto, Zardari's wife, who was assassinated in December 2007.
Some 700 people rallied in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, chanting "Murderer of democracy, Zardari, Zardari!" and torching his picture.