Thousands of police block Pakistan rally
By Jane Perlez and David Rohde Published: November 9, 2007
ISLAMABAD: In a huge show of force, the Pakistani government stopped a protest rally by the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, before it started Friday, blanketing the rally site with thousands of police, blocking roads to stop demonstrators, and barricading Bhutto inside her residence in Islamabad for most of the day.
In Rawalpindi, the nearby garrison town where the rally had been due to take place, double lines of police and police vans prevented most of the thousands of demonstrators from entering the city to protest emergency rule, which the president, General Pervez Musharraf, declared six days ago. Thousands of party workers had already been arrested over the past few days, party officials said.
At Bhutto's residence, lines of police, barbed wire and concrete barricades kept Bhutto inside. Amid chaotic scenes early in the day, an attempt by Bhutto to leave in a white car was thwarted by police officers as they moved an armored personnel car and a police bus to block her way. After nightfall, the order barring Bhutto from leaving her house was lifted, according to Aamir Ali Ahmed, the acting deputy commissioner of Islamabad, Reuters reported.
On the surface, the crackdown on the rally and Bhutto's daylong detention appeared to be an obstacle to power-sharing negotiations that had been taking place for several weeks between Bhutto and Musharraf. But the events did not exclude the possibility that negotiations continue by back channels.
Late in the afternoon, in what appeared to be a carefully stage-managed move agreed on with the government, Bhutto emerged from her house and made a speech that was broadcast on official Pakistani television. Bhutto said she was "listening to the voice of my conscience" and appealed to the government to end the emergency rule. She said that she had not spoken to Musharraf and would not negotiate with him until emergency rule was ended and the Constitution revived.
"I have been illegally stopped by barbed wired and blockades," she said, adding that she still intended to go ahead with a long march through Punjab Province planned for early next week.
A spokesman for President George W. Bush, Gordon Johndroe, called for the release of Bhutto, who leads the Pakistan Peoples Party, her supporters, other party members and all protesters. "It is crucial for Pakistan's future that moderate political forces work together to bring Pakistan back on the path to democracy," he said in a statement.
In justifying Bhutto's detention, the Pakistan government said that that there had been credible evidence she could have been the target of a terrorist attack during the rally.
Meanwhile, away from the political stand-off in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, violence continued in the north-west of Pakistan in Peshawar where a bomb exploded at the home of a government minister for political affairs, Amir Muqam, killing at least four people, The Associated Press reported. The police said the bombing was a suicide attack.
In Rawalpindi, dump trucks blocked roads, preventing access to Liaquat Park, where the large rally was due to be held, and shutting down the city center. By late afternoon, tensions between the police and the small groups of protesters who had managed to enter the city started to mount, and there were some arrests and use of tear gas, but later the tensions more or less dissipated, and the police began to leave the city. They reported 108 arrests in Rawalpindi.
As many as 5,000 party workers were arrested across the country over the last three days, party officials said, and Friday any groups of people that formed on the street were immediately moved on by police officers.
The authorities said there were 8,500 police officers on the streets of Rawalpindi, and it was clear that many plainclothes officers and intelligence officials were also circulating. Some demonstrators threw stones at the police and were hauled off in vans.
But blocking protesters from the city and keeping Bhutto from leaving her home appeared to prevent her party from any significant protest in Rawalpindi. Party members said they were waiting for orders from Bhutto.
"As soon as she comes to Rawalpindi, we will go and break the barriers," said Shiaz Kayani, a Pakistan People's Party district president.
A government spokesman, Tariq Azim Khan, said this evening that the government had issued a restraining order against Bhutto for her own protection.
"Probably the restraining order will be removed tonight," Khan said. "It was to try to get her not to lead the rally. There was credible information that she would be the target of an attack."
In mid-October, Bhutto's homecoming procession in Karachi was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing more than a hundred people. Khan said she had not followed the government's warnings then. "Last time she wouldn't listen, and that resulted in 140 deaths," Khan said.
Pakistan Peoples Party workers who showed up near Bhutto's residence during the day were arrested, shouting "Prime Minister Benazir!" as they were shoved into police buses and vans. By early afternoon, at least 20 workers, including at least six women, were in custody.
The rally that was scheduled Friday in Rawalpindi has assumed critical importance in the political machinations between Musharraf and Bhutto, who served twice as prime minister and wants to return to power.
Outwardly, the standoff Friday appeared to deepen the confrontation between the two, making Bhutto an opponent of Musharraf rather than a partner in the transition to democracy that she and her American sponsors, who helped negotiate her return to Pakistan, envisaged.
But analysts said that the strategies for both sides for the day had probably been worked out quietly in advance, to give each side a face-saving way to avoid a potentially bloody clash on the streets.
Official television carried the audio of Bhutto speech and showed a still picture of her.
Bhutto has rejected Musharraf's Thursday statement that parliamentary elections would be held by Feb. 15, calling it "vague." She also said it fell short of her demands that he relinquish his role as head of the army and end emergency rule.
But Bhutto and Musharraf are described by Western diplomats as continuing to negotiate a power-sharing deal that was envisaged when she returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile abroad last month.
"If the tensions persist, the negotiations might be in jeopardy," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and military analyst in Lahore who also lectures at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.
"The stage is set for a serious confrontation with massive arrests within a couple of days," Rizvi said. Adding to the government's troubles, Rivzi, said was the pledge Thursday by Jamaat Islaami, a religious party, that it would stage large protests if Musharraf did not step down as leader of the military by November 15.
Rizvi said there was no sign of Musharraf renouncing his military role.
"If Musharraf can contain these protests for three days, fine," he said. "But if the protests spread to cities and persist for a week then Musharraf will have problems."
Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad and Steven Lee Myers from Crawford, Texas