JAMES MORGAN and ALISON CAMPSIE Police in Pakistan have arrested opposition leaders and broken up street protests following the declaration of a state of emergency by President Pervez Musharraf.
JAMES MORGAN and ALISON CAMPSIE
Police in Pakistan have arrested opposition leaders and broken up street protests following the declaration of a state of emergency by President Pervez Musharraf.
The government said parliamentary elections could be delayed by up to a year, as it tries to stamp out a growing Islamic militant threat.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said up to 500 people had detained, including cricket star turned politician, Imran Khan.
Around 200 police with assault rifles and sticks stormed the office of the independent Human Rights Commission in Lahore, breaking up a meeting and arresting about 50 members, said Mehbood Ahmed Khan, legal officer for the activists.
"They dragged us out, including the women," he said from the police station. "It's inhuman, undemocratic and a violation of human rights to enter a room and arrest people gathering peacefully there."
General Musharraf, who took power after a coup in 1999, had promised to become a civilian president this year. Now he says he had to impose emergency rule to prevent the country from slipping into anarchy. His leadership is threatened by an Islamic militant movement that has spread to the capital.
In July, he ordered troops to storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad to crush a Taliban-style movement there. At least 105 people were killed and more than 800 died in a wave of militant attacks and suicide bombings that followed.
They include an assassination attempt on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last month that killed 139 people.
President Musharraf says he still plans to move to democracy, but critics say the emergency decree is an attempt to cling to power. The Supreme Court had been expected to rule soon on the validity of his recent presidential election win.
Benazir Bhutto flew back to Pakistan on Saturday from a brief visit to Dubai and accused the president of imposing "mini-martial law" in a move to delay elections.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif accused Musharraf of "holding the entire nation hostage for his personal motives".
"General Musharraf's second coup," was the headline in one Pakistani newspaper.
Foreign governments have expressed concern about Pakistan's decision to suspend its constitution.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was reviewing billions of dollars in aid to its close terrorism-fighting ally. Britain was also examining its aid package, a planned £480m over three years.
Muslim leaders in Scotland reacted anxiously to the crisis.
Bashir Maan, convener of the Muslim Council for Scotland, said that while he did not support General Musharraf placing the country under martial law, he could see that "something had to be done" to halt the extremists who had carried out suicide bombings.
Mr Maan, who is also president of Glasgow Central Mosque, said: "The country, I think, was in a very dangerous situation. As a result of the activities of terrorists there have been bomb blasts for the last two to three weeks and the targets I think have been the politicians or the armed forces.
"You have got to do something, but I do think that the time he picked was a little bit wrong."
However, Mohammad Sarwar, MP for Glasgow Central, said calling a state of emergency was a mistake. He said elections should be held as soon as possible and a democratically elected government was the way to tackle terrorism.
