World

Pakistan Rounds Up Dissidents

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 21, 2001 / 1:24 PM EST / CBS

Pakistani police detained a number of senior politicians Wednesday in what appeared to be the biggest crackdown on the country's political parties since the army seized power in 1999.

Witnesses said police picked up 28 politicians of the 18-party Restoration of Democracy (ARD) alliance after they emerged from a meeting to plan the launch of a campaign against the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Earlier, police surrounded the house where the meeting was taking place in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's populous Punjab province.
The military government, which has banned public rallies and demonstrations since March 2000, did not comment on the ARD report of its members' arrests.

The move came a day after the alliance said the military government arrested 1,650 activists in Punjab in a bid to block a rally planned for Friday in Lahore and meant to kick off the anti-government campaign.

Witnesses said those driven away in police vehicles to unknown places included ailing alliance chief Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan and acting leaders of the country's two main parties — the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of self-exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) of exiled ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Bhutto, who now lives abroad, called the police action "brutal and barbaric" in a statement issued by her party.

She called for world pressure on the military government to release the detained leaders and said, "The days of the regime are numbered and such strong-arm tactics cannot rescue it from doom, which is writ large on the wall."

"It is the beginning of the end," former PML legislator Tehmina Daultana, who hosted the ARD meeting, said as the police took her into custody at her house.

The ARD leaders said they planned to persevere with the Lahore rally despite the activists' arrests.

"We will hold the rally as planned," Khan told party workers and journalists as he was led away.

The detentions coincided with elections in 20 districts in Pakistan's four provinces in the second phase of nonparty elections to local councils that Musharraf aims to create as part of what he calls a plan to devolve power.

The ARD, Pakistan's main political alliance, wants Musharraf to hold national elections immediately and leave local councils to a future civilian government.

The alliance has rejected the months-long series of staggered elections for district and municipal councils because political parties are not allowed to participate. All candidates must run as independents.

The arrests came as a Commonwealth ministerial group warned that tougher action against Pakistan loomed unless Musharraf set a timetable to return rapidly to democracy.

Earlier Wednesday, Pakistan's main human rights group condemned the crackdown on the alliance.

"The mass arrests ! suggest a continued determination on the part of the regime to hold back democracy … and deter political parties from legitimate activities," Pakistan's Human Rights Commission said.

In October 1999, the army overthrew Sharif's government in a bloodless coup amid allegations of corruption and misrule. Musharraf has promised elections before the end of 2002 but according to the U.S. State Department "has not set a timetable" for them.

Many political parties, including some in the alliance, had welcomed the military takeover, but now criticize the government's anti-corruption drive as unjust.

The military junta's human rights record has been sharply criticized.

In its 2000 human rights report on Pakistan, the State Department said that while some conditions, especially freedom of the press, had improved since 1999, "Police committed numerous extrajudicial killings" and "Prison conditions remained extremely poor, and police arbitrarily arrested and detained citizens."