WaPo : Riot Police Clash With Pakistani Protesters

Riot Police Clash With Pakistani Protesters

Melee Ensues While Hundreds Protest Musharraf's Re-election Bid

By Griff Witte | Washington Post Foreign Service | September 29, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 29 -- Police clad in riot gear attacked lawyers and journalists on Saturday with batons, tear gas and rocks in a running battle at the gates of the Supreme Court, a day after judges ruled President Pervez Musharraf can stand for another term.

The clash, which lasted nearly four hours, began when about 200 lawyers tried to march from the Supreme Court to the Election Commission to protest Musharraf's candidacy. They were vastly outnumbered by security forces, who charged into the crowd swinging metal-tipped sticks. The lawyers fought back, and a melee ensued in which more than a dozen people were injured.

Police chased the black-suited lawyers onto the grounds of the Supreme Court and fired tear gas canisters at them. One protester was beaten as he tried to retreat into the court building. After he collapsed to the ground, uniformed officers continued to thrash him with sticks, while plain-clothes security officials pelted him with rocks.

"This is a naked dictatorship," said lawyer and human rights activist Asma Jahangir, her shawl soaked in blood after she used it to stanch the bleeding from a fellow lawyer's head wound. "Musharraf wants to show he is lord and master. He wants to show he has the gun. When you have no moral authority, you use what you have."

Private television stations that had been broadcasting live coverage of the protests were swiftly taken off the air as the violence began. When Pakistani journalists tried to enter the Election Commission, they too were attacked by the police. Several were injured.

Soon afterward, the government's information minister, Tariq Azim Khan, showed up at the scene in the back of an ambulance. Irate journalists yanked him from the vehicle and started to pummel him with their fists before police grabbed him back and whisked him away.

Government officials said the security crackdown was necessary to maintain law and order after Musharraf's political opponents had vowed to take to the streets to disrupt the general's plans for winning a new term. The violence came as the Election Commission met to review the eligibility of the 43 candidates who filed papers this week to run for president. Only five were approved, including Musharraf, who is believed to be the only candidate with the support to win the Oct. 6 vote in the national and provincial assemblies.

"The lawyers and, to some extent the journalists, they started it," said Khan, who was not seriously injured. Khan said that the lawyers intended to lay siege to the Election Commission building and that police had to take appropriate measures to stop them.

Lawyers say the election is invalid because Musharraf is trying to secure another five years in office from assemblies that are about to expire. Musharraf has also said he plans to run while in uniform and will only step down as army chief if he wins.

"Except for the blind Americans and British, everyone sees this as a farce," Aitzaz Ahsan, a top opposition lawyer, said Saturday. "The people of Pakistan are being deprived of their right to choose the president of Pakistan."
ad_icon

Ahsan, who led the legal fight to restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry after Musharraf tried to fire him earlier this year, was himself beaten by police on Saturday. "I didn't do anything to provoke them. But they targeted me," Ahsan said.

Another lawyer, Ali Ahmed Kurd, said that after Saturday's violence, the battle lines have been drawn. "We are actually at war," he said. "On one side are the 160 million people of Pakistan, the civil society, the journalists and the legal fraternity. On the other side is only one general, who is a military dictator."

The Supreme Court Friday ruled 6 to 3 to dismiss a series of petitions seeking to knock Musharraf off the ballot. The court had been seen as the best hope for Musharraf's opponents to end his eight-year rule. Anti-government lawyers argued that his other job as army chief should disqualify him.

Although the lawyers cannot appeal Friday's court decision, they are expected to file a new case as early as Monday using slightly different legal arguments. Chaudhry, who recused himself from hearing the case and was not on the bench Friday, could be involved in future cases.

Musharraf's opponents say the general, who seized power in a 1999 military-led coup, should be ineligible to run for reelection whether or not he is in uniform. Pakistan's president is banned from simultaneously holding another government job. Even after government servants step down from their jobs, they normally have to wait two years before they can run for office.

Musharraf, however, was given a special exemption after he broke a promise to retire from the military by the end of 2004. The exemption expires Dec. 31.

Lawyers seeking to disqualify him say he should not be able to win a new term that would last until 2012 using the current exemption. The government counters that the exemption still applies.

On Friday, the court avoided the substantive issues and instead appeared to throw out the petitions on a technicality. Political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said that means there is still room for additional challenges, although he conceded that "the odds are not in favor of the opposition."

Rizvi said the court may have been intimidated by talk among Musharraf's aides that the government would declare emergency rule, or even martial law, if the decision did not go their way.

Musharraf's popularity has been in free fall this year, and just weeks ago he seemed to be legally and politically trapped. But his government cracked down hard on some opponents while negotiating with others, and that strategy of division seems to be paying off.

Several opposing political parties have said they will resign from the assemblies on Tuesday to protest Musharraf's plans. That could lead to the dissolution of the assembly in the North-West Frontier Province, which could erode the credibility of the vote because all four provincial assemblies are supposed to participate. But it is not expected to affect the final outcome.

The assemblies, which came to office in 2002 elections that were marred by irregularities, are packed with Musharraf's supporters. Their term expires in November.

The government, meanwhile, Friday cheered the court's decision as the right constitutional choice.

"Justice has triumphed," said presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi, a retired general. "This is good for the future of Pakistan."

Qureshi said accusations that the government had pressured the Supreme Court were "ridiculous."

"It just goes to show what poor losers these people are," he said. "If something goes against them, they start crying like babies."

Special correspondent Shahzad Khurram in Islamabad contributed to this report.