[A-List] Pakistan Arrests 300 Workers from Opposition

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/world/asia/07pakistan.html>
June 7, 2007
Pakistan Arrests 300 Workers From Opposition
By CARLOTTA GALL

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 6 — The police have arrested more than 300
political party workers over the past few days in a crackdown before a
protest planned this week against new government curbs on the news
media, a government official acknowledged Wednesday.

Opposition parties have said hundreds of their workers have been
rounded up in house raids in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous
province.

The home secretary of Punjab, Khusro Fazal Khan, told the independent
channel GEO Television that the police had arrested 312 local
political leaders and workers throughout the province.

Opposition legislators protested the arrests at the opening of a new
session of the national Parliament, which had been on a three-week
recess, but they were refused time by the speaker. Journalists
covering Parliament staged a rowdy protest in the press gallery on
Wednesday evening, interrupting the debate on the floor.

The president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, signed a decree on Monday giving
a government regulating agency stronger powers over the news media and
the ability to rewrite regulations without recourse to Parliament.

The decree added to the pressure on the three main private television
channels, which have been told to stop live coverage and live
political talk shows. Their transmissions were blocked for several
days across much of the country.

Journalists and editors said the government was cracking down to
prevent critical coverage of General Musharraf's suspension of the
chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and of the violence in
Karachi related to his ouster. Forty-eight people were killed there on
May 12 as police officers and rangers stood by.

Opposition parties allege that much of the shooting was conducted by
the Muttahida Quami Movement, a partner in the governing coalition,
and television images backed up their claims. Thousands flocked to
rallies on Saturday in the north of Punjab to greet the chief justice.

"There was a crackdown in the whole of Punjab," said Pervez Ashraf, a
member of Parliament for the People's Party of Pakistan, the main
opposition group, in discussing the detentions. "They entered houses
by breaking doors, and hundreds of people were arrested."

Another legislator, Liaqat Baloch, from the alliance of religious
parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, said, "Our people have been
arrested in 36 districts of Punjab."

Mr. Fazal Khan, the home secretary, said those seized were detained
under a new measure, in force since Friday, that bans gatherings of
more than five people. He said the government had to act after
journalists had protested Monday and burned copies of the presidential
decree.

"The government cannot sit idle after burning of the copies of the
reference and other official documents, and holding rallies and public
meetings by the opposition parties," he told the television station.

Officials said some 200 people were held on Monday and Tuesday, with
another 150 detained overnight and early Wednesday. Most of the
arrests were made in the provincial capital, Lahore, and in
Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Multan, Agence France-Presse reported.

The police have also registered cases against 200 journalists,
including seven prominent correspondents and editors, accusing them of
interfering with the government and occupying the prime minister's
secretariat.

The deputy editor of Daily Ausaf, Chaudhry R. Shamsi, one of the seven
journalists named in the case, said he was more concerned about the
death threats that individual journalists were receiving than the
suspension of commercial television stations.

"We want security for journalists, and we want life insurance," he said.

The minister of state for information and broadcasting, Tariq Azeem
Khan, said most of the amendments introduced in the media decree were
cosmetic.

The two main additions were intended to give the media-regulating
agency "more teeth" to carry out its rules, he said. "There is no
drastic effort to gag the press; otherwise we would not issue 45
licenses" to media companies, he said. Three more were about to be
approved, he added.

The three commercial television stations were back on the air on
Wednesday after several days of disruption, apparently after the
owners held talks with the government.

Hamid Mir, an announcer at GEO Television, said that it would prove to
be only a temporary reprieve and that he expected more disruptions. He
said he was sending his family abroad on Thursday because of threats
and because his children were being followed to school.

"They just want control," Kashif Abbasi, anchor of a popular daily
talk show on ARY Television, said of the government. "You cannot talk
against the army, the judiciary, and we are told, 'Be polite about the
president,' " he said. "If you take out the judiciary, then this is
the whole crisis," he said.

He said he expected the pressure to continue until presidential
elections, which are due by Oct. 15. "That's the big task ahead," Mr.
Abbasi said.
--
Yoshie