Kuwait Times

Published Date: October 01, 2007

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani journalists marked yesterday as a "black day" to condemn police beatings during opposition protests against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's pursuit of another five-year term. Musharraf picked up a key legal victory Saturday when the Election Commission approved his candidacy for the Oct. 6 vote -- as lawyers and opposition activists staged protests in front of the commission building in the capital, Islamabad.

Protesters clashed with police, who wielded batons and fired tear gas to disperse them before turning on journalists covering the melee.

Sixty-four people were injured, including 13 police officials, 31 journalists, two opposition lawmakers and several passers-by, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan news agency reported yesterday, citing an official statement.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's top judge will hold a hearing Monday on the violence. He has summoned police, Interior Ministry and district officials to appear for an explanation, according to a court statement that quoted a senior court official as calling the police response "highly excessive." Police "outnumbered the agitating lawyers ... and missed no opportunity to thrash" them, it said. The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists decried the "shameful tactics" by a government that has claimed to promo
te press freedoms, said Mushtaq Minhas, president of the press club in Islamabad.

What happened yesterday was shameful and the darkest day in Pakistan's history," Minhas said, accusing the government of increasing intolerance of independent media. As part of the "black day," more than 400 people, many of them journalists wearing black armbands, rallied in Multan, in Punjab province.
Chanting "Go Musharraf go" and "Stop oppression of journalists," the protesters, who also included opposition activists, marched near the press club and burned tires. More rallies were expected around the country later Sunday.

Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim and a lawmaker from a pro-Musharraf party were also injured in Saturday's melee, after receiving a few punches from protesters before being rescued by aides and police.

Minhas said police registered cases under anti-terrorism laws implicating several journalists in the attack on Azim. "We condemn this dictatorial tactic," he said. More legal maneuvers are expected from the opposition -- a request for the Supreme Court to review a decision Friday that rejected several challenges to Musharraf's candidacy and a planned mass resignation from Parliament -- but the general appears to have cleared the biggest hurdles to contesting the vote by federal and provincial lawmakers.

Despite dwindling popularity and increasingly bitter opposition, Musharraf, a close US ally, also seems set to win the election. The ruling coalition says it has the numbers it needs, and even the general's main challenger, retired Judge Wajihuddin Ahmed, has admitted he does not have much of a chance.

The opposition alliance has said its lawmakers would quit Parliament tomorrow to protest the general's candidacy, a move also aimed at depriving the election of legitimacy. Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, has pledged to give up his powerful post as army chief if he wins the election, but he has faced growing opposition since his failed attempt to oust Pakistan's top judge in March. He is also struggling to contain growing Islamic militancy and growing public sentiment that his alliance with Wa
shington has fanned extremism. - AP