Pakistan's prime minister has warned that “dictatorship” is threatening the country’s newly restored democracy, as mounting unrest appears to be revitalizing the allies of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
An outburst of violence on Wednesday in Karachi that left 10 people dead has made it clear that the new government’s honeymoon is already over. Opponents of the president swept to power in February parliamentary elections.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said his government would not allow the sacrifice of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto Bhutto for the cause of democracy to be “compromised at the behest of dictatorship, conspiracy and violence.”
Thousands of police and paramilitary troops patrolled Karachi yesterday.
City police chief Niaz Siddiqi said 20,000 security forces were deployed to patrol the streets, check vehicles and guard courthouses, schools and markets in Karachi, which was peaceful early yesterday.
Police arrested three armed men in connection with the unrest late on Wednesday, he said.
Rashid Rizvi, a senior attorney, said lawyers planned to boycott court proceedings in Sindh Province to protest the violence. Karachi is the capital of Sindh.
The unrest was the most serious to buffet Pakistan’s new government as it prepared to assail the powers of Musharraf.
The violence began when lawyers affiliated with the Mutahida Qaumi Movement, an ethnic-based political party that was part of the previous government, held a demonstration on Wednesday afternoon outside Karachi’s main courts complex. They were protesting an assault on a former Cabinet minister the previous day.
Police and witnesses said other lawyers leaving a bar association meeting got involved in a scuffle with the protesters.
Minutes later, men in civilian clothes began shooting, looting and torching cars, witnesses said.
An office block near the courts was set ablaze and six charred bodies, including at least one attorney, were found on the sixth floor.
Police and hospital officials said a paramedic and a pedestrian were killed by gunfire, and that the injured included a seven-year-old child with a bullet wound to the head.
A bus driver who was shot and a lawyer injured in the clashes died later in hospital.
Rizvi, secretary-general of the Sindh High Court Bar Association, denied the unrest was triggered by a clash between lawyers’ groups.
“A group of goons attacked the lawyers. Everybody knows who these people are,” he said. “Nobody can suppress our struggle for the restoration of the judges and the judiciary.”
Gilani called on “all political forces to ensure peace and harmony in the metropolitan city in order to support political stability,” according to a statement from his office.
But the incident could set back his coalition’s effort to woo political rivals and cement Pakistan’s return to democracy after years of military rule.
Karachi has a history of violent political turf wars as well as a rich cast of armed criminal and Islamist groups. Bhutto survived a suicide attack there in October only to be assassinated two months later in Rawalpindi.
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