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Pakistan Nervous On National Day
ISLAMABAD, March 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Pakistani police were on high alert Friday to prevent a planned democracy demonstration from hijacking the military regime's official Pakistan Day parades.
Another 67 politicians and their supporters were arrested in the eastern city of Lahore, where hundreds of people have been rounded up this week in the biggest crackdown on the opposition since the 1999 coup.
Political leaders claim more than 2,000 people have been taken from their homes and detained, although police put the number at less than 200.
"This is a fascist act by a fascist government," said protest organizer and Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy president Nawabzada Nasrullah, who was put under virtual house arrest Friday morning.
It was on March 23, 1940, that the Muslim League adopted the Pakistan Resolution and Muslims throughout the sub-continent began their campaign to cleave a separate homeland out of British India.
Now, 61 years on, Pakistan's economy is buried under a mountain of foreign debt, religious violence between the majority Sunni and minority Shiite sects is rampant, and democratic institutions are in ruins.
General Pervez Musharraf, who led a bloodless coup against the Nawaz Sharif government in October 1999 to become Pakistan's fourth military ruler, says he wants to build a "genuine democracy" and hold elections by October 12th next year.
But he has come under mounting criticism at home and from abroad for his refusal to spell out a clear timetable for the elections.
Musharraf and President Muhammad Rafiq Tarar called for unity on the 61st anniversary of the Pakistan Resolution, which led to the creation of a separate Muslim homeland on the sub-continent.
In his Pakistan Day message, the general called on all Pakistanis to "do some soul searching" and "renew their resolve to inculcate in themselves unity, solidarity and harmony in every facet of national affairs."
"I would like to assure our countrymen both at home and abroad that the government is committed to achieve the objectives for which our beloved country came into being," he said in the message carried on state media.
"However, a social order free from exploitation, discrimination and injustice cannot be established without the active support of the people."
Newspaper editorials compared founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah's vision of Pakistan as a "tolerant and modern society practicing a genuine democratic system" with the current reality.
"Pakistan came into being not through a revolution or an armed struggle but as a result of a process that was entirely constitutional," wrote the Dawn daily in a veiled reference to Musharraf's suspension of the 1973 constitution.
Turning its sights to the rise of religious activism in Pakistan, it wrote: "The fact remains that religious parties had nothing to do with the creation of Pakistan. In fact, if the record is perused, they were bitter foes of it."
In Lahore, an extra 6,000 police threw a security blanket over this eastern Pakistani city Friday as political groups vowed to go ahead with a democracy rally on the country's national day, police said.
Police were posted at all major intersections and ringed with barbed wire the historic Mochi Gate park in the heart of the city to prevent demonstrators from gathering there.
Those arrested, including seven senior members of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), brought to 27 the number of ARD leaders detained since Wednesday, police said.
The 18-party ARD was formed late last year with the participation of Pakistan's major political groups to oppose the Musharraf regime and press for the early restoration of democracy.
And in the southern port city of Karachi, a bomb blast in a mini-bus in the main business district killed at least one person and injured nine others. Police said it was unclear whether the "terrorist act" was linked to the Pakistan Day festivities.
More than 4,000 people have died in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province and Pakistan's main financial center, in ethnic, political and sectarian violence in the past four years.
Pakistan People's Party leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto issued her own Pakistan Day address from exile overseas, where she has lived since shortly before her corruption conviction in early 1999.
"Let us on this day resolve to fight the urge of the military rulers to change the laws for themselves," she said.
"For unless there is rule of law and everyone is equal before the law, the future of our great country will be exposed to internal and external threats."
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