Violent clashes,
arrests, and road blockades virtually crippled life in Pakistan’s capital
Islamabad and the adjoining garrison city Friday days before a planned “siege”
of the capital by the country’s second-largest opposition party.
Riot
police fired volleys of teargas, and baton charged the rock-throwing activists
of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI), led by cricket hero Imran Khan, and its
allied parties in several parts of Islamabad and adjoining Rawalpindi in a
successful bid to stop them from holding a pre-siege gathering.
Amid
the unrest, a newborn died of suffocation due to teargas shelling in
Rawalpindi, local ARY TV reported, and several journalists were also injured.
Giant
plumes of thick smoke wafted upwards as the opposition activists burned tires
and wooden material outside Khan’s residence, which was besieged by contingents
of police and paramilitary troops, and several other parts of the twin cities,
which sparked countrywide protests.
Khan
told reporters that he had practically been put under house arrest along with
several other party leaders in an attempt to foil his planned siege, but added
that he and his supporters would go ahead with his plan “despite the
government’s coercive actions”.
Infuriated
opposition activists pelted the police with stones in a hide-and-seek exercise
throughout the day, while the administration, for its part, placed containers
at several entry and exit points, cutting off the twin cities from the rest of
the country.
According
to the local media, law enforcement agencies have detained around 500
opposition activists, over 250 on Friday alone, in various parts of the
country, mainly from Islamabad and Rawalpindi, as the government vowed to stop
the PTI and its allies from locking down the capital.
Police
briefly took the country’s famous pop star Salman Ahmad into custody when he
was trying to reach Khan’s sprawling residence located on the outskirts of
Islamabad. He was later released at the intervention of higher government
officials, a statement from Islamabad police said.
The
Islamabad High Court on Thursday issued orders forbidding both the government
and the PTI from blocking the capital in the name of security or protest on
Nov. 2, and summoned Khan to appear before the court on Monday, Oct. 31 in his
personal capacity.
The
PTI, however, said it would challenge the high court judgment in the Supreme
Court.
Angry
PTI workers, meanwhile, took to the streets in scores of cities, including
Karachi, Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, and others against the police action,
blocking the roads and burning tires. Scores of party workers staged a sit-in
at the Governor House in the commercial capital Karachi for several hours,
causing massive traffic jams.
The
PTI and its allies planned the siege if Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif failed to
agree to an independent inquiry into corruption allegations emerging from the
Panama Papers leaks earlier this year.
Sharif
has been under pressure from opposition parties and the media after the leak
revealed that his two sons Hassan Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz and his daughter
Mariyam Nawaz owned offshore companies.
The
country's Supreme Court last week issued notices to Sharif, his two sons, his
daughter and a son-in-law on five separate petitions seeking investigations
into the allegations.
Khan
has said, however, that he will go ahead with the protest despite the legal
proceedings.
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