Pakistan: Lawyers protest against removal of top judge

Lawyers throughout Pakistan boycotted court proceedings, clashed with riot police and burned an image of President Gen Pervez Musharraf today in a protest against the removal of the country’s top judge.

The country’s main opposition party also decried the removal of Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry in a high-profile test of judicial independence in military-dominated Pakistan.

Chaudhry, who has a reputation for cracking down on government misdeeds and human rights abuses, was suspended by President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Friday. The government said Musharraf had received complaints against Chaudhry alleging that he had abused his authority, but declined to provide details.

Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani said the Supreme Judicial Council would hear the case against Chaudhry at a closed session tomorrow, despite reported calls from the suspended judge for the proceeding to be open to the public.

The council, a panel of top judges that handles claims of wrongdoing in the higher judiciary, can recommend that Chaudhry be fired. Durrani said Musharraf would abide by the council’s findings.

Durrani also denied reports that the chief justice was under house arrest.

However, police posted outside Chaudhry’s official residence in the capital, Islamabad, have allowed few people to enter and riot police armed with batons and shields were posted around the area today.

Today, attorneys boycotted courts in various cities to protest.

At the Supreme Court in Islamabad, a group of lawyers chanted “Shame, shame, shame” outside a courtroom where acting chief judge Javed Iqbal was to hear a court adjourn the proceedings because no counsel for the petitioners appeared.

Two dozen other lawyers outside the building shouted “Long live Iftikhar Chaudhry” and “Free the chief justice.”

In the eastern city of Lahore, police stopped hundreds of lawyers from marching toward the provincial assembly, sparking a clash in which protesters pelted police with bricks and stones and officers beat them back with batons, police said.

About 20 lawyers were injured in the scuffle, said Imtiaz Habib, a police officer in Lahore.

Eight protesters were detained temporarily but were not formally charged, Habib said.

The lawyers later staged a sit-down protest in front of the provincial High Court.

In Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, hundreds more lawyers staged a similar sit-down protest in a street near the main court complex, chanting “Death to Musharraf” and burning a portrait of the military president.

“No to attacks on the judiciary,” the protesters also chanted as they sat on the road for about half an hour.

About 200 riot police were posted nearby until the protesters dispersed peacefully.

Chaudhry has made a name for himself as an independent-minded judge.

In one ongoing case, he has pressed the government hard to provide information on the whereabouts of dozens of people said by relatives to be secretly held by Pakistani intelligence agencies. Last year, he crossed the government by blocking plans to privatise a huge state-run steel company.

Ali Ahmed Kurd, deputy chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council, the country’s main lawyers’ group, said Sunday that the government’s charges against Chaudhry undermined the judiciary and were based on “ill-intention and political motives” – something the government denies.

Opposition parties also called foul.

“Many people suspect that the government was uncomfortable with some of the chief justice’s recent verdicts,” said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for the main opposition Pakistan People’s Party.

Babar’s party also accuses Musharraf of seeking to cow the judiciary ahead of parliamentary elections expected this year. Pakistani politicians regularly accuse opponents of ballot-rigging and take their complaints to the courts.

Chaudhry’s removal was “a warning signal to the other judges during the election year,” he said.