Its been more than four days since Martial Law and we are going through most difficult times of our history. Nobody knows how many more days and weeks and months this situation will continue.
Like most of the concerned Pakistanis, I felt so depressed and hopeless about the future of my beloved country specially during the first two days. Since the declaration of Martial Law (and please STOP calling it emergency!) on that Black Saturday Evening, like many other things we have also been deprived of basic human right of access to information which is most frustrating because we don’t know what is going on.
Not many Pakistanis living abroad understand what exactly it means to have no access to information. A vast majority of Pakistanis have been forced to see the government control PTV news which keeps on showing a bunch of Robots saying things which only they can understand. I must have watched PTV news after many many years and unfortunately, its still the same old PTV. Many people I know had to call their relatives abroad to get some information about the situation in Pakistan. However, a small percentage of Pakistanis now have the access to Geo, ARY and Dawn, thanks to the internet. Although we are now facing some problems in internet services too in some parts of Lahore.
Lack of access to information has caused a great deal of confusion and left people speculating about the situation. Organized rumours were circulating in Pakistan on Monday about the arrest of Musharraf which caused Karachi Stock Market to go down 634 points. Whoever was behind this planned rumour (and fingers are being pointed at some people in very high places), made billions of rupees in just few hours.
So, as Adil Bhai asks in his post too, what is it that we can do and should do? Some segments of our society have already answered this question to a large extent and set an example for the rest of us to follow. Let me explain how. I have been writing about the growing indifference in our society and the initial one or two days were extremely depressing and disappointing as only lawyers and journalists staged notable protests but generally public has remained quiet. But the defiance shown by a large number of SC, High Court judges and the lawyer community has once again given us new hope.
We must salute judiciary and take it as a big positive that never before such large number of judges had refused to take oath under PCO. Lawyers across Pakistan continue to boycott courts and protest despite the brutal beatings by police. Politicians are still nowhere to be seen even after four days since Martial Law. All they have done is passing statements and that we are planning but NO ACTION. I know Benzair Bhutto has just given a very strong statement demanding Musharraf to restore constitution, hold elections, take off uniform and release detained judges and lawyers OR face protests and long march. Personally, I still think there are talks going on behind the scenes and this is just a pressure building tactics to gain more and more. We should not expect much from them as they are likely to end up in a deal again. I pray that I am wrong in my assessment.
Since yesterday, we have now started to see very passionate Students Protests by various universities in Lahore and Islamabad. Yesterday hundreds of Quaid-I-Azam University students, professors staged a largest protest against Gen. Musharraf in the history of university. Today students of LUMS, FAST Lahore, Punjab University and some other colleges have also joined the protest against martial law. The students of FAST Lahore were also protesting against the detention of LUMS students and teachers yesterday. You can find dozens of videos of students protest on youtube.com.
On Wednesday, there was another large protest by students of Quaid-I-Azam university, Hamdard University, Lawyers and civil society in district court Islamabad. Despite all the threats from police officials, the number of students protesting is growing. Clearly disappointed from politicians, civil society and university students are now coming out on streets to protest against the actions of Gen. Musharraf. Imran Khan, who is in hiding, is trying to organize students to come out on streets. He gave this video message for Pakistanis and I think it has a very good plan of action and answers Adil Bhai’s question too:
Meanwhile, according to Dawn, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary has also urged people to act. Inaction at this time would be a great tragedy and we must do everything we can to support the restoration of constitution and reinstate judges.
Deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry urged the nation on Tuesday to rise up for the restoration of the Constitution. He dismissed the proclamation of emergency as illegal. The Constitution has been ripped to shreds, he said while addressing a rally of lawyers by telephone from his besieged residence where he has been detained. The lawyers were protesting against the imposition of emergency and removal of the chief justice and several other judges of the superior judiciary through the Provisional Constitutional Order.
Justice Iftikhar asked the lawyers to spread his message to the people all over the country: The time has come for sacrifice and for rising up for the supremacy of the Constitution. He declared that he was determined to launch another phase of struggle for the independence of judiciary, rule of law and the Constitution. He said he would speak to the legal fraternity once restrictions on his movement were relaxed. I am under arrest now, but soon I will join you in your struggle, he said.
Justice Iftikhar said he was confident the day would come when the country would see the supremacy of the Constitution and that there would be no dictatorship. He described as unfounded President General Pervez Musharraf’s allegation that the judiciary was going soft on terrorists. He pointed out that the court had provided relief to the people and restored their faith in the judicial system. Before Justice Iftikhar could complete his address, the line that he was speaking over was cut and mobile phones in some parts of Islamabad went dead.
Hundreds of lawyers protested inside the city court complex after listening to Justice Iftikhar. They made no attempt to break through the police cordon deployed to prevent them from holding street protests. The lawyers condemned the imposition of emergency which they said was an attempt by General Musharraf to prolong his rule. After chanting anti-Musharraf slogans for about half an hour, the demonstrators dispersed peacefully.
ATP readers can check out the videos of student protests at FAST-NU and LUMS here and here respectively.
May Allah have mercy on Pakistan and give its leaders wisdom to make right decisions. Ameen.
Campus Updates* Friday’s Protest by Students @ FAST - NU, Pakistan - 9th November
posted by Opee - Omer Pervaiz at 3:59 PM on November 09, 2007
15:39hrs: Peaceful Protest by 500 - 600 students held after Juma Prayers.
15:44hrs: Some early photos aired showing students wearing Black Arm Bands gathered peacefully for an effective protest.
15:52hrs: Media came for coverage but was not allowed by the organizers to shoot the videos and photos.
Details:
[09/09/07 - 15:39hrs]
A peaceful protest was held today at FAST-NU (National University of Emerging Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan aka FAST - NUCES or formerly, SAHICS). Around 500-600 students gathered backstage after Jumma Prayers for a Peaceful protest. All the students were Wearing Black Arm Bands as a sign of protest. Few faculty members also addressed the student gathering.
More details and updates about the protest.. coming up!
[09/09/07 - 15:44hrs]
Some early photos aired showing students wearing Black Arm Bands gathered peacefully for an effective protest. Students and some faculty members gathered at the backstage of the campus after Jumma prayer.
[09/09/07 - 15:52hrs]
Media did come for coverage but they were not allowed to take any pictures or videos. Videos and pictures were taken by FAST-NU students themselves and will be published later.
This is a wonderful blog and post- I am posting about it on my Blog Watergate Summer, to spread the news about what is going on in Pakistan…many of us are very worried about the situation and what it means for so many ….prayers and blessings that Justice prevails and that Musharrefs’ reign ends soon…namaste.
I don’t really see what all the struggling is for? Mush is way better for Pakistan than Bhutto any day! The economic numbers prove it. You’re all well-educated and well-off. Parteee people! Stop worrying about these events which aren’t relevant to you or affect your life in any way.
From today’s Dawn:
Getting away with farce?
By Ayaz Amir
THIS is unsustainable and cannot last. You can’t mock the heavens and think there will be nothing to pay for it.
These are the acts of desperate men who know that their moment in the sun is up, from whose fingers power is slipping but who want to stave off the inevitable.
Irony is that by their desperate actions they may have brought the inevitable nearer. Sometimes a crisis has to intensify and contradictions have to sharpen before a solution opens up. Our man on horseback by one desperate lunge has brought everything into the open, so brilliant the masterstroke of Nov 3 that he and his increasingly glum supporters are on one side and the entire nation on the other. Folly can’t get any better than this.
The Constitution has been packed up and judges whose integrity rankled with Army House have been sent home (or rather confined to quarters) because their lordships were lenient with terrorists. Or so we are told. As the entire world knows by now, the two judges who released Lal Masjid students (or ‘terrorists’) on bail, Abbasi and Khokar, continue to be judges in the revamped Supreme Court. Abbasi was most zealous in taking up the cases of the Lal Masjid brigade. Wonder why.
Something more odd happened just a day after the trashing of the Constitution: the hush-hush release of over 20 men on Nov 4 accused of planning suicide bombings, and their handing over to the militant commander, Baitullah Mehsud, in return for the release of over 200 captured army personnel. Included in this number was Sohail Zeb, Mehsud’s cousin, caught allegedly with a suicide jacket on. How would this help the fight against terrorism?
No one is fooled by this spin. The knives out on Nov 3 were meant for the Supreme Court because an adverse verdict was expected regarding our man on horseback’s presidential ambitions. But what have the knives actually done? The judiciary may have been purged but the ousted judges have been taken into the hearts of the Pakistani nation.
All of them — Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Bhagwandas, Ramday, Javed Iqbal (his stock sky-high), all those in the Supreme Court and the various high courts who have refused to take oath under the Provisional Constitution Order — are today the undisputed heroes of the Pakistani nation.
Time was when Pakistan had few people to be proud of. Now so many, a whole string of men of integrity and principle who we can look up to, that counting has become difficult. Never was it truer that to the darkest clouds there can be a silver lining. This may be a bleak moment in our history — indeed, perhaps the bleakest — but it has brought out some of the best in the Pakistani nation.
This is not the first PCO in Pakistan’s history but the first to be so openly and widely resisted, the first to draw such widespread condemnation and ridicule. In times past judges used to be so many circus performers eagerly leaping through the loop of a PCO. This time the great majority of them have treated it with the contempt such an unholy instrument deserves.
The call sounded earlier this year that this was a ‘defining moment’ in our collective lives may therefore not be all that forlorn or irrelevant. The nation faces a test and a challenge, an opportunity that could yet define our future.
So the last thing we should be guilty of is to lose heart or give way to despair, or say that Pakistan is a doomed enterprise from which nothing good can come. These are the counsels of defeat. This is the only homeland we have and seeing it fail or collapse is not a luxury we can afford.
When Afghanistan was ravaged by strife and civil war, millions of Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan. If, God forbid, because of the folly and greed of ambitious and shortsighted souls clinging to power something happens to Pakistan, where will we go? We can’t trek beyond the Himalayas and we can’t set up tented villages across the Indian border. We have no choice but to see that the experiment called Pakistan — even if ridden for most of its history by incompetent, second-rate horsemen — succeeds.
Therefore, as my Lord the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, said in his telephonic address to the lawyers of the Islamabad bar (while he was under detention), the tocsin of defiance must sound, the masses must make their voices heard, the Constitution must be restored and horses running wild across the Pakistani landscape must be returned to their stables. (He didn’t actually say the last but you get my meaning.)
The people of Pakistan are agitated, no doubt about this. But this is the kind of emotion from which great things can arise. Provided the leadership that this burning moment requires steps up to the breach and assumes the responsibility of leading the masses. The political parties have not given a good account of themselves during the last eight years. They have either connived with the riders on horseback, to pick up what crumbs they could get from the table of power, or withdrawn into the sweet comfort of inaction. Victims for the most part of the politics of compromise they should know that the time for such attitudes is past. Tumultuous events await a decision. There is disorder under the heavens and, as Mao might have said, the situation is excellent. But if history calls, who will answer the summons?
Wise rulers don’t allow critical situations to develop. It requires rulers of another kind to trigger mass upheavals. So let us be grateful for the possibilities opened up by the latest events in our country. Before Nov 3 most of us were resigned to the fact of another five years for the present rider-in-chief, another step towards the Hosni Mubarakisation of Pakistan. Now that desired outcome is not so sure. So much outrage has been sparked that a different outcome is a distinct possibility.
Even our paymasters, who have poured billions into its coffers to help prop up the present setup, are dismayed. Or so the signs suggest. They were working for a ‘military-liberal’ coalition, Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto atop the same wagon. What they have got instead, thanks to the ineptitude on display in Islamabad, is this mess threatening to become a disaster. For the Yanks a destabilised Pakistan is bad enough but a nuclear-armed Pakistan teetering at the edge of chaos comes close to their ultimate nightmare.
That is why hard questions will be asked in Washington. No one likes backing a liability. So hardly reassuring to see in Islamabad a regime losing its way and falling back on the last resort of exhausted dictatorships: the thumbscrews of repression. How long can the police keep beating protesters? How many people will the police arrest? We will have to build new jails to accommodate all dissidents.
This won’t work and for once the people of Pakistan seem in no mood to accept what has been imposed on them. Something will have to give.
Tailpiece: Lt Gen Hamid Gul has been arrested and is in solitary confinement in Adiala Jail. Why only one Hamid Gul? Islamabad/Rawalpindi has the densest concentration of retired bozos anywhere in the world. How they manage to remain invisible in times of unrest is a mystery waiting to be resolved.
Another “promise” by the dictator; he already said “Unifrom is my skin.”
This poem is dedicated to those who are behind the bars for defending our basic human rights.
nisaar mai.n terii galiyo.n ke ae watan, ki jahaa.N
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
nisaar mai.n terii galiyo.n ke ae watan, ki jahaa.N
chalii hai rasm ki koii na sar uThaa ke chale
jo koii chaahanewaalaa tawaaf ko nikale
nazar churaa ke chale, jism-o-jaa.N bachaa ke chale
hai ahl-e-dil ke liye ab ye nazm-e-bast-o-kushaad
ki sang-o-Khisht muqayyad hai.n aur sag aazaad
bahot hai.n zulm ke dast-e-bahaanaa-juu ke liye
jo cha.nd ahl-e-junuu.N tere naam levaa hai.n
bane hai.n ahl-e-hawas muddaii bhii, mu.nsif bhii
kise wakiil kare.n, kis se mu.nsifii chaahe.n
magar guzaranewaalo.n ke din guzarate hai.n
tere firaaq me.n yuu.N subh-o-shaam karate hai.n
bujhaa jo rauzan-e-zi.ndaa.N to dil ye samajhaa hai
ki terii maa.ng sitaaro.n se bhar gaii hogii
chamak uThe hai.n salaasil to hamane jaanaa hai
ki ab sahar tere ruKh par bikhar gaii hogii
Garaz tasavvur-e-shaam-o-sahar me.n jiite hai.n
giraft-e-saayaa-e-diwaar-o-dar me.n jiite hai.n
yuu.N hii hameshaa ulajhatii rahii hai zulm se Khalq
na unakii rasm naii hai, na apanii riit naii
yuu.N hii hameshaa khilaaye hai.n hamane aag me.n phuul
na unakii haar naii hai na apanii jiit naii
isii sabab se falak kaa gilaa nahii.n karate
tere firaaq men ham dil buraa nahii.n karate
Gar aaj tujhase judaa hai.n to kal baham ho.nge
ye raat bhar kii judaaii to koii baat nahii.n
Gar aaj auj pe hai taala-e-raqiib to kyaa
ye chaar din kii Khudaaii to koii baat nahii.n
jo tujhase ahd-e-wafaa ustavaar rakhate hai.n
ilaaj-e-gardish-e-lail-o-nihaar rakhate hai.n
BB placed under house arrest.
Here is the news on the New York Times: “President Gen. Pervez Musharraf yielded to pressure from the United States on Thursday and said Pakistan will hold parliamentary elections by mid-February, just a month later than originally planned.”
Well ladies and gentlemen, you can all rest easy. All your struggles and demonstrations were clearly unnecessary. Our good friends, the US government, have come through for us once again.
Of course, this is the worst attack of dictatorship on judiciary as an institution but the most disturbing thing is the silence or lukewarm response of key political particies which are active in Pakistan such as PPP lead by Benazir Bhutto and others. They are demanding for election date and withdrawal of uniform and you cannot see restoration of judiciary as a key demand in their charters. In fact Benazir is potentially the next beneficiary of this emergency plus as supreme court was going to throw the so called reconciliation ordinance away. I believe that her objectives are quite similar to those of Musharraf under US custodianship! Yet, another implicit ally of Mushrraf, Maulana Desil Fazlu Rehman is also supporting this move as a case against most of his MNAs and MPAs was waiting for the pronouncement of judgement afetr the completition of hearing and it was strongly expexcted that SC would decide against contesting election merely on madarsa degrees without a proof of additional subjects exam such as Englsih, Pak studies etc. This was big threat to Maulana as 90% of his candidates in that case would have been disqualified for next elections. So he is also supporting Mushrraf. US support is obvious now after the lapse of this much of time. Yesterday we have seen one statement of Nawaz Sharif talking about judiciary and asking Benazir to make it a sole point agitation but I think she cannot afford it.
So here is the context and in this context we can only expect students who are largely not under the vested influnces to come out and protest. But who will organzie them, for what and for how long? How can we escape from the most popular phenomenon of “hijacking” in this struggle as it is the easiest thing which those “organizations” can do who were held accountable by the Supreme Court just a little bit and they have toppled the full regime!