The News Line: News
Saturday, 10 November 2007
RISE UP! Imran Khan urges students
‘My whole thing is that the students must rise up today,’ said Pakistan opposition leader Imran Khan yesterday.
Khan emerged to give a brief news conference after being in hiding since he escaped from house arrest.
He added: ‘I am planning that there will be a big students’ demonstration unprecedented since 1968.
‘And once that happens, I don’t mind going into jail.’
Khan had said earlier that: ‘The police have ransacked my house and ill-treated my family members.
‘Our aim is to continue the struggle and mobilise the youth of the country from underground.’
Commenting on the state of emergency, he warned: ‘This move of Musharraf’s will ignite militancy and extremism.’
Khan’s former wife Jemima Khan said she will be joining today’s picket outside Downing Street in London.
She said she wants the British government to ‘apply pressure to the Pakistan government to restore the judiciary, to restore democracy, to call for the end of martial law, and to put pressure on Musharraf to release political prisoners and allow the media to be free again’.
She said: ‘It’s our duty to protest because people in Pakistan aren’t free to protest or to demonstrate.’
Jemima Khan added: ‘The situation is extremely worrying there. I’ve hundreds of friends who’ve now been jailed – the most normal people, housewives, my children’s teachers not to mention the thousands of lawyers.’
Meanwhile, former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto was served with a three-day temporary detention notice as she tried to cross the heavy police cordon set up outside her Islamabad home, but was later released from house arrest.
Her residence was blocked off by thousands of riot police to stop her joining a planned rally in the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi, the site of General Musharraf’s HQ.
Police allowed her car through one cordon but it was then blocked by armoured personnel carriers.
She said to the police: ‘Get out of the way. We are your sisters. My father laid down his life for you and this nation.’
Addressing supporters through a megaphone in front of the police barricades, she said: ‘We are calling for the revival of our constitution and respect for our judiciary.
‘We are calling for General Musharraf to keep his commitment and retire as chief of army staff on 15 November.’
She told supporters and police: ‘I don’t want Pakistan to become Iraq. I have to save you, I am not afraid of death because it is in the hands of God.’ She then returned to her house.
Her party says thousands of its supporters have been detained in the past two days.
Yesterday there were clashes with police in Rawalpindi and other cities throughout Pakistan.
Defying a ban on rallies imposed under emergency rule, crowds tried to reach the venue of the planned rally in Rawalpindi through alleyways, throwing stones and clashing with police.
In the city of Peshawar, police said a suicide bomber targeted the residence of the minister for political affairs, Amir Muquam.
They added that two security personnel were killed, along with the attacker, but the minister is safe.
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