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| March 5, 2006 | Sunday | Safar 4, 1427 |
Scores held: police bust anti-Bush demos
RAWALPINDI, March 4: Police beat up and arrested 80 political workers, human rights activists and writers to prevent them from staging anti-Bush demonstrations here on Saturday.
Baton-swinging policemen went after the activists, many of them women, as they assembled at the Rawalpindi Press Club, located in a corner of Liaquat Bagh, for a protest march to the parliament building in Islamabad.
Imran Khan, chief of the Tehrik-i-Insaf (TI), who had given the call for the demonstration, could not reach the venue as he had been picked by police from a friend’s house in the early hours of Saturday and confined to his own house at Bani Gala.
Around 100 activists of Tehreek-i-Insaf, led by Zahid Hussain Kazmi and Amir Mehmood appeared at Committee Chowk and chanted anti-US slogans.
Police posted at Liaquat Bagh brutally beat up PTI workers and members of the Aurat Foundation, who had gathered there to protest the visit of US President George Bush.
The police rounded up more than 80 protesters including PTI vice-president Zahid Kazmi, Amir Mehmood Kiani, Rawalpindi District vice-president Faisal Hussain Pirzada, president Chaudhry Basharat, press secretary Kashif and activists Wahid Nasir, Ghulam Hussain, Amjad and Jan Muhammad and Haji Shafat, and kept them at the Waris Khan police station.
Aurat Foundation members taken into custody included Farzana Bari, Iram Fatima, Aliya Mirza, Saeeda, Tahira Abdullah, driver Saeed and Ahmad. They were detained at the Ganj Mandi Police Station.
Eyewitnesses said Aurat Foundation’s Naeem Mirza and his three male colleagues were thrashed, arrested and put in a police van.
Mrs Alia Mirza and rights activist Dr Tahira Abdullah flung themselves in front of the van but were brashly pulled away by Inspector Fiaz.
“Is their no lady police in Pakistan? We will move the court (on the issue),” Mrs Mirza told journalists before she herself was arrested, along with six more women activists.
When the journalists questioned him about the incident, District Police Officer Saud Aziz said: “We have the power to arrest and beat women.
“Any state that imposes ban on public demonstration cannot be called democratic,” said Tahira Abdullah.
Farzana Bari and other women activists said they were there to protest the Bush administration’s involvement in human rights abuses in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.
“Why should our government stop peaceful demonstrations when in the West even publishing of cartoons disrespectful to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was considered freedom of expression,” they asked.
Meanwhile the Joint Action Committee of NGOs and Citizen Action Committee in a statement demanded the release of peaceful protesters.
They condemned thrashing of peaceful protesters. Seven persons were arrested, three woman and four men, and taken to different police thanas, they said. Three women had been released but the four men were still in police lock-up without any FIR or charges.
Police also forced the organisers to cancel a seminar to be held on Namoos-i-Risalat at the Rawalpindi Press Club and detained Munir Akram, divisional president of the Anjuman Tulba-i-Islam along with several workers of the student group.
Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal leader and MNA Hanif Abbasi was also confined to his house in Rawalpindi.
Police also broke another group of protesters of the Writer’s Forum.
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