Pakistan

After General Pervez Musharaf declared emergency rule on 3 November, demonstrations and strikes occurred all over Pakistan. Newspaper accounts of them could be found but no private television channel has been allowed to telecast ther broadcasting in Pakistan.

On 4 November the police entered the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and arrested over 80 social and political activists who were discussing their strategy to oppose the military action. Police went in the buildings of Lahore High Court and arrested over 700 advocates from the chambers of the judges, libraries, bar rooms and canteen. This was not done even under the most brutal martial law of General Zia Ul Haque in the 1980s.

On 6 November, 55 of the arrested human rights activists were released; on 10 November, 350 of the detained Lahore lawyers were released. On 20 November, Pakistani authorities released more than 3,400 lawyers and political activists detained since declaration of emergency rule.

By the admission of the Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Igbal Cheema, some 2,000 others remain in custody – some of whom will be freed ‘soon’ while others will face criminal charges.

On the same day (20 November) Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) also released a list containing names of 500 judges and lawyers, which, however, it emphasizes is only a fraction of those who were detained and remain unaccounted for. A number of persons have been arrested whose whereabouts remain unknown.

The list can be accessed at: http://pakistan.ahrchk.net/pdf/AHRC-PL-051-2007.pdf