Emergency Targets Pakistani Activists

Emergency Targets Pakistani Activists

By ALISA TANG and MATTHEW PENNINGTON
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; 4:35 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- While pro-Taliban gunmen seized a border town Tuesday, President Pervez Musharraf pursued his crackdown on lawyers and liberal activists _ underscoring the irony that it isn't extremists going to jail but secularists who are potential allies in the war on militancy.

The general's suspension of the constitution has given Pakistani authorities sweeping powers to detain without charge. Opposition groups reported at least 3,500 arrests over the preceding three days, many of them attorneys.

Pakistan's top human rights defender, Asma Jehangir, was watching Musharraf on television Saturday night explain his declaration of emergency rule as a necessary step in combatting extremism. As he spoke, police knocked at her door and announced she was under house arrest.

The next morning _ just hours after hundreds of judges, lawyers and other activists were detained _ Jehangir laughed bitterly when she read newspaper headlines: The government had granted amnesty to dozens of Taliban sympathizers in Pakistan's violence-plagued northwest.

"Here he is, going blue in the face trying to convince the world that this was an important and necessary measure for him to fight the militants ... But the people that he has arrested so far _ and the police have baton-charged _ are progressive civil society members," Jehangir, chairwoman of the nongovernment Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told The Associated Press.

Jehangir, who has served as a United Nations investigator, spoke by telephone from her home in Lahore, where she was confined with two other prominent human rights lawyers.

Police using tear gas and clubs raided her group's office Sunday, taking away about 70 of its members, including teachers, artists and engineers. About 45 had been freed by late Tuesday.

While those detentions made news, most attention has been on the police's rough handling of attorneys trying to stage street rallies. A photo in one Pakistani newspaper Tuesday showed helmeted officers beating cowering lawyers under the headline: "Objection Overruled."

Police also clashed with lawyers in several cities trying to stage demonstrations Tuesday.

Opposition party members also have been detained, and Pakistan's independent TV news channels have been blacked out.

Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the crackdown is a targeted assault on liberal and secular elements who have been demanding accountability for Pakistan's rulers and an end to military rule.

"This is not a free-for-all. It has been very systematic and brutal and has targeted specific groups of people," Hasan said. "It is a coup against civil society."

Much of Musharraf's justification for declaring emergency rule rests on his claim that activism by the Supreme Court was undermining stability.

Its top judge, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, was the rallying point for anti-Musharraf protests led by lawyers last spring, when the general tried and failed to fire Chaudhry. The judge's reinstatement by a defiant Supreme Court in July galvanized those hoping for democratic reform.

Chaudhry had challenged the government on its plans to sell state steel mills to private owners. He also pushed for information on suspects secretly detained by intelligence agencies, leading to the release of dozens of alleged militants and anti-government activists.

But few Pakistanis seem to buy Musharraf's claim the court had hurt the war with Islamic extremists.

Musharraf's campaign against militancy has suffered increasing setbacks, including the recent attempt by thousands of militiamen to win back control in the Swat Valley of northwestern Pakistan where a pro-Taliban cleric has been expanding his power.

The situation in Swat worsened Tuesday when hundreds of armed militants forced dozens of police and militiamen manning four security posts around the town of Matta to surrender, expanding extremist control in that part of the restive frontier with Afghanistan.

"The campaign against religious extremism has been a dismal failure, and that has nothing to do with civil society and the media. It is because the Pakistan military has not been able to cleanse itself of militant sympathizers," said Hasan, the Human Rights Watch official.

He referred to the support Pakistan gave to Islamic militants in Afghanistan and India's portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir _ before Musharraf allied with Washington six years ago following the Sept. 11 terror attack on America.

Many see Musharraf's emergency decree and swift move to replace independent-minded judges as a tactic to prevent a Supreme Court ruling on his re-election as president last month. Critics say the vote by legislators wasn't constitutional because Musharraf has also held the powerful post of army chief since seizing power in a coup in 1999.

Adding to public skepticism of the general's motives is the controversial exchange on Saturday _ the day emergency rule was declared _ of at least 28 pro-Taliban prisoners for 211 soldiers who had surrendered to militants in August.

"I was a bit amused to see the next day the front page of (the newspaper) Dawn, which said the government had released the militants," Jehangir said in recounting her first morning after being put under house arrest.

At a protest rally in the capital Tuesday, Zahid Mehmood Raja, former general-secretary of the Islamabad Bar Council, said he had not slept in his own bed since the emergency was declared. Police with an arrest warrant had been camped outside his home for three days.

The government "has tried to disintegrate the lawyer community but they cannot. We will fight until our last," Raja said.

Musharraf's critics said cracking down on liberal and secular elements can only hurt his effort to unite moderates who share his opposition to religious militants sympathetic to the goals of the Taliban and al-Qaida.

For instance, Jehangir, who faces 90 days of detention to prevent her from making supposedly inflammatory speeches that could undermine law and order, successfully fought Islamic-based laws that discriminate against victims of rape _ laws eventually reformed by Musharraf's government.

"To be able to fight rising intolerance in society _ this is what people like ourselves have been continuously doing for so many years, but the government has been no help," Jehangir said.

"He (Musharraf) may be a soldier, but he is a coward. He cannot take challenges that civil society puts to him in a peaceful way. That is what scares him most."