As I write, police here in Islamabad are just finishing breaking up a demonstration by Pakistan’s lawyers. The lawyers had been holding a convention and were attempting to march on the enclave where the city’s judges live – in support of the deposed Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
The authorities were having none of it. An hour or so ago, three or four hundred lawyers marched past the hotel where I am staying. They didn’t get far, however. Just a few yards up the road, the police blocked their progress and started to drive them back down the street.
Volley after volley of tear gas was fired – much of it thrown back by the demonstrators, who jeered derisively as the police scattered to avoid the acrid fumes. A water cannon seemed to have little impact and a stand-off ensued. Eventually, though, the police had had enough and the final charge was a concerted one, with the crowd scattering in a panic, and the slowest to react suffering a beating.
Today is the first real day of campaigning for a general election that is just over a week away. It’s a late start – with the official period of mourning for Benazir only ending yesterday. Already, reports are coming through of a bombing in Charsadda in North-West Frontier Province, where the provincial leader of the ANP was holding a rally.
He survived, but unconfirmed reports suggest others in the crowd may not have been so lucky.
Update: According to the Dawn News TV channel, there have been large numbers of arrests and injuries at the lawyer’s demonstration, with a number of leaders of the lawyers’ movement taken into custody. To add to the mayhem, six secuity agents have been seriously, and possibly critically, injured in a bomb blast in Noshki in Balochistan. The anchor is unperturbed, telling viewers that it’s been a ‘busy day’.
