First-hand Account of Pakistani Demonstrations

Via Boingboing, we are informed of this blog post from a Pakistani journalist who was involved in a protest over Musharraf's takeover, and their subsequent police beatdown and arrest.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ) had called for a peaceful demonstration at 03:00 Tuesday (yesterday) outside the Karachi Press Club. The purpose was to demand the freedom of the Press, etc. Please note, all of us were totally unarmed, while the police surrounding the area were in complete riot gear with shields and motey dandey and bulletproof vests, helmets, knee pads, and whatnot. The entire area around the press club had been cordoned off.

The moment the rally got out of the Press Club, we were attacked (yes, "attacked") by the policemen. There was a LOAD of brutal baton-charging, and one policeman hit ARY's Aajiz Jamali so hard on his back with the shield, that the shield broke in two. :-S Women and men were hit indiscriminately and very VERY brutally -- yes I can emphasize that enough. I'm skinny -- I crawled around and got out unhurt, but a lot of other people were seriously injured. Everyone ran back towards the press club. Some of our office bearers and senior people had been picked up.

Coincidentally, the preznit just made some comments on his buddy in an interview just last night:

Bush said that Musharraf hasn’t yet “crossed the line” and insisted Musharraf has “advanced democracy in Pakistan.”

Ah, yes...Freedom is on the march. Sigh...

Technorati Tag: pakistan

Pakistan becomes a dictatorship

So on Fri/Sat, Pakistan's President declared a state of National Emergency, and suspeded the constitution, based largely on the threats of:

an Islamic militant movement that has spread from border regions to the capital and an increasingly defiant Supreme Court, which was expected to rule soon on the validity of his recent presidential election win. Hearings scheduled for next week were postponed, with no new date set.

A general consensus suggested that this was a move towards dictatorship, and less concerned with national threats.


Not surprisingly, today, the military and police rounded up political activists. The Pakistani-friendly U.S. Government was understandably rendered egg-faced on the subject.