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Pakistan lawyers plan to revive court boycott

ISLAMABAD: The demand for restoration of the pre-November 3, 2007 judiciary, which receded to the background in the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto’s killing, is moving to centre stage again.

Pakistan’s legal community is reconsidering an earlier decision to end the boycott of the superior courts and restricting to Thursdays its protests against the judges who were allowed or who opted to stay on after the imposition of the Emergency.

Several bar associations have opposed the decision to end the boycott, which was made by the Pakistan Bar Council, and there is now talk of reviving it.

On Thursday, lawyers in Islamabad came out in force for the first time since November, massing first outside the home of the Supreme Court Bar Association president and Pakistan People’s Party leader Aitzaz Ahsan, who is under arrest in his Lahore home, and marching from there to the home of the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary, also under effective house arrest.

Shouting “Zinda hai vukala, zinda hai (the lawyers are alive)” and anti-Musharraf slogans, the processionists tried to break through a police cordon around Mr. Chaudhary’s home but were teargassed and baton-charged back.

In the melee, some lawyers snatched riot helmets and shields from police and made trophies out of them.

“Musharraf has become completely unpopular except among his lackeys and sycophants,” said Ajmal Aziz, a Punjab High Court lawyer.

Another lawyer, Mohammed Faisal Butt, said: “India must not support Musharraf, he is dictator, he is a usurper, and he does not have the backing of either the nation or the law.”

With its three main leaders under detention from November 3, when the Emergency was imposed, and a fourth leader released but too ill to move, the legal community appeared to have all but lost the momentum it had built up against President Pervez Musharraf all through last year. The division among lawyers over court boycott was also a setback to the movement.

With the lawyers turning out in numbers on Thursday, Athar Minallah, a senior Supreme Court lawyer, said the movement was far from over. “It will actually begin when our leaders are released, and they will come out and lead the movement for the rule of the law and restoration of the judiciary. The government cannot hold them under house arrest forever.”

The movement also got a shot in the arm with the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declaring in Peshawar on Thursday that the lawyers had achieved what the politicians could not.

The PML(N) leader declared February 6 a day of solidarity with the legal community and said his party’s candidates would take an oath that day that they would, on being elected, work towards restoring the pre-November 3 judiciary.

On Wednesday, he tried to march to Mr. Chaudhary’s home but was blocked by the police. The government denies that Mr. Chaudhary or any other judge has been detained, and says the restrictions on their movements are for their own “security.”

Meanwhile, the detained leaders of the lawyers’ movement have refused to move court for their release when the maximum 90-day detention under the Maintenance of Public Order ends in the next few days.

“We do not recognise any of the judges of the higher courts. We will never seek relief from them because they will not give justice and they are not capable of giving justice. It is all a farce,” said Mr. Minallah.

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