Pakistani police put opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for a week on Tuesday to thwart a protest procession as President Pervez Musharraf came under growing international pressure to end emergency rule.
Military ruler Musharraf set off a storm of criticism when he imposed emergency rule on November 3. He suspended the Constitution, sacked most judges, locked up lawyers, rounded up thousands of opposition and rights activists and curbed the media.
While Bhutto’s party vowed the protest would go ahead, police said nearly 20 000 men were on duty in Lahore to stop her. ”Her residence is an official jail now,” said a senior officer outside the Lahore home where she was staying.
The crisis in nuclear-armed Pakistan has raised fears about its stability and its ability to focus on battling on growing Islamist militancy.
A senior police official said Bhutto had been detained because of a ”confirmed suicide attack threat”. Militants were suspected of being behind blasts that killed 139 people at an October 18 rally welcoming her back from eight years in self-exile.
Two-time prime minister Bhutto planned to lead a motorcade on a 270km route from Lahore to Islamabad to demand that Musharraf quit as army chief, end emergency rule, reinstate the Constitution and free detained activists — including many from her party.
Lahore is Pakistan’s political nerve centre, the capital of Punjab province, which is ruled by Musharraf supporters. An important centre for South Asia’s Mugal and later British rulers, the city is near the border with India and on the old Grand Trunk road from Delhi to the Afghan border.
Bhutto had hoped to take her protest up the road to the capital, but about 4 000 police officers moved in overnight around the house, laying out coils of barbed wire, setting up barricades and blocking streets with trucks laden with sand. A detention order was pasted on the gate.
Police in riot vests and carrying batons manned barricades set up around a 1km perimeter. They detained about two dozen men and women chanting ”Go, Musharraf, go” as they tried to pull down a barbed-wire barricade. A Bhutto aide, Farzana Raja, was held after she tried to push her way past police to get to the house.
”This whole government is messed up … there should be someone new in power,” said Ali Shah Rukh, a young IT worker, as he eyed police lines.
‘Ready to fight’
Bhutto and Musharraf have held power-sharing negotiations, but she has ruled out talks under emergency rule.
Some opposition colleagues suspect that despite her confrontation with police, which burnishes her image as an opponent of military rule, she could make a deal with Musharraf after general elections the president has said will be held by January 9.
Police said they had detained 1 500 activists in the past 24 hours in Lahore and they would use force if need be.
Bhutto’s party vowed defiance. ”We will go on with our march. She will come out,” said senior party official Shah Mehmood Qureshi. ”The government wants confrontation. We are ready to fight this battle for democracy.”
Musharraf has come under growing pressure from Western allies to set Pakistan back on the path to democracy. He has declined to say when the Constitution will be restored and said the emergency will ensure a fair vote.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and United States President George Bush both urged Musharraf on Monday to lift the emergency.
The Commonwealth, a 53-member body consisting mainly of former British colonies, gave Musharraf until November 22 to end emergency rule and take other steps to address his country’s problems, or Pakistan would face largely symbolic suspension.
Pakistan was suspended in 1999 following the military coup that brought Musharraf to power but readmitted in 2004.
Musharraf has justified the emergency by saying a meddling judiciary was hampering the battle against militants.
Diplomats say his main objective was to stop the Supreme Court from ruling invalid his October 6 re-election by legislative assemblies dominated by his supporters.
Musharraf has said he will step down as army chief and be sworn in as a civilian president as soon as the Supreme Court, where new judges seen as friendly to the government have been appointed, rules on challenges to his election. — Reuters