This photo is from today’s Dawn. It shows protesting lawyers damaging public property in Multan.
The ability to protest against that which they consider unjust is everybody’s right. But there is a fine line between peaceful protest and anarchy. Damaging property is definitely wrong and serves no one’s interest. It certainly does not serve the interest of the lawyers movement for democracy.
Violence is clearly wrong. It becomes no less or no more wrong when it is committed by protesting lawyers than when it is done by government against the same protesting lawyers. Just as we have called out against violence committed against protesters by government agencies, we must also call out aginst violence committed by them.
Anger is neither a strategy nor an excuse. The principle is a clear one: Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it and no matter why.
Another impertinence on my part. But another gem I found. This time by Pervez Hoodbhoy from 1985. This is a blogspace–and not a ‘discussion board’.
http://www.sacw.net/HateEducation/1985HoodbhoyNayy ar06022005.html
“Introduction
Education in Pakistan, from schools to universities, is being fundamentally redefined. This development is expected to have profound implications for the future of the country’s society and politics. Most changes are traceable to factors related to the stability of the present government, but there are also others which cannot be analysed as a mere response to immediate threats. A new concept of education now prevails, the full impact of which will probably be felt by the turn of the century, when the present generation of school children attains maturity.”
Ahh, the last sentence!
I have only one word to describe all these ppl who supprts lawyers shameful ack
HOPELESS HOPELESS HOPELESS
they are all dictators themselves, THIS website has been covering events in a balanced way, everything has been in those SICK people but now this article just ticked them off
reason??
cuz THEY JUST CANT FACE THE TRUTH, their minds are still in the evolutionary process and will take them a million year more to develop an ability to perceive things LIKE HUMANS.
So essentially what Saad and Abid are saying is that violent behavior is justified if one is being opressed and has no other means of expressing it. Hmm… I would think that by that logic it is also justified to blow oneself up in a crowded place if one’s circumstances are dire enough. Interesting…
Such behavior by the lawyers is not a one time occurence as some readers have suggested. Manhandling Senator Tariq Azeem, spray panting a government lawyer’s face, crossing police lines while conducting so called “peaceful protests” and threats to burn down the supreme court depicts a pretty ghastly track record.
Use of force is the real issue regardless of who uses it.
I am from Karachi. I support Musharraf . I support Altaf Hussain . My support for one does not depend on the other.
There are a lot of people who malign Pervez Musharraf for what he has done. They do not see that Pervez Musharraf is not a corrupt man unlike the two thuggish ex-Prime Ministers and that he has recovered trillions of rupes from corrupt bureaucrats and even military officials like Mansurul Haq who helped themselves to tax-payers’ money with the help of Nawaz Sharif, Zardari and Benazir Bhutto.
In a Pakistan which still is in the feudal Dark Ages, Karachiites are the only educated tax-paying and law-abiding class of citizens. All these protests after the November emergency, I have not seen a single one in which bullets were fired .
Contrast that with Benazir Bhutto’s time when one could get killed in a fake encounter or Nawaz Sharif’s time when one could get tried by a military court for raising one’s voice aginst the excesses of the government ( as happened in the Hakim Saeed murder case).
I feel that the majority of people who oppose Musharraf are themselves prejudiced and support corrupt feudal politicians who have harmed Pakistan before and will harm Pakistan again. In feudal Pakistan there are no points for honesty and efficiency. There are only points for a third-rate tribal mentality.
I could be wrong. But then I am a Karachiite and I have seen the days when the Army mass-murdered educated, tax-paying middle-class citizens in Karachi from 1992-99 and nor a single federal (read feudal) politician raised his voice. Yet today, these “democratic” goons abuse the freedom that Musharraf has given them and sabotage and attack government property to protest against rule by the same Army.
Please tell me my fellow Pakistanis if I am wrong.
haha funny what kind of article is this? If u take a dog and u keep torturing it, its gonna bite u in the ass the first chance it gets. The same logic applies here.. when you are going to use illegal and brutal force to uphold an illegal martial law then you can expect a much worse reaction then this. And logically speaking these police are criminals since they are upholding a government which is unconstitutionally in power.