World | Pakistan
Bhutto joins journalists' Islamabad demonstration
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto vowed yesterday to step up her campaign for constitutional rule, independence of the judiciary, media freedom and rights of people as she joined a rally of demonstrating journalists in the Pakistani capital.
- By Shahid Hussain, Correspondent
- Published: 22:52 November 10, 2007
- A journalist demonstrates during a protest against the curbs on media at Peshawar Press Club in Peshawar.
- Image Credit: EPA
Islamabad: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto vowed yesterday to step up her campaign for constitutional rule, independence of the judiciary, media freedom and rights of people as she joined a rally of demonstrating journalists in the Pakistani capital.
"Our struggle is not only for media freedom but also for the independence of the judiciary, supremacy of the constitution and restoration of rights of the people of Pakistan," she told the rally of some 200 media professionals in front of the office of one of the private TV channels hit by the government curbs.
Bhutto, escorted by police, came to the rally from the central secretariat of her Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) where she met party leaders and representatives of lawyers and civil society to discuss a future strategy to stimulate the movement against emergency rule in the country.
She visited the party secretariat after the government overnight lifted the restrictions on her movement that were imposed on Friday when she was placed under house arrest to thwart her planned address to a public meeting in Rawalpindi.
"We will launch a long march from Lahore on November 13. I appeal to all people to join it to defeat dictatorship and we will together achieve freedom and basic liberties," Bhutto said.
During the rally journalists chanted "Freedom, Freedom." On Friday journalists observed a protest day throughout the country against the emergency and media curbs.
According to the party, hundreds of PPP workers were arrested on Friday as police sealed off the venue of the public meeting and stopped people from reaching it. Police also used teargas and batons at various points to disperse the political workers.
Bhutto, who moved in a bullet-proof car, tried to go to the judicial colony to meet deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who along with other sacked judges had been confined to their houses after President Pervez Musharraf clamped emergency and suspended the constitution on November 3.
Police however intervened and stopped her from proceeding to the house of the former chief justice.
Demand
Speaking to people who gathered around her car, Bhutto demanded reinstatement of Chaudhry and other removed judges. "The flag of justice must again flutter at the house of the chief justice," she said.
The head of PPP in Punjab province, Shah Mahmoud Qureshi, said some 5,000 party workers had been detained in Punjab alone since Musharraf imposed emergency.
Islamabad (AP) Three reporters from Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper have been ordered to leave Pakistan in the next 72 hours for an editorial the paper ran that used an expletive in an allusion about President Pervez Musharraf, an official said yesterday.
The three - Isambard Wilkinson, Collin Freeman and Daniel Macelroy - were the first reporters ordered out of Pakistan since Musharraf imposed emergency rule a week ago.
Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim said they were being thrown out for an editorial in Friday's paper that used the expletive. The editorial also said Musharraf governed with a "combination of incompetence and brutality" and has become "part of the problem" in the battle against militants, who have scored a series of victories over Pakistan's security forces in recent weeks.
Wilkinson said he could not comment and referred phone calls to the newspaper's London headquarters.
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