Samad continued: ìLater students were asked to go back and they complied. It was while they were returning that 600-700 policemen, female police officers, anti-terrorist squad commandoes and plain clothed officers came saying they would arrest them as protest rally was not allowed. The police then started charging the students with batons and manhandled them. They pushed and dragged, abused and shoved students into police vans. Most of those arrested were class 9-12 students, while one of them was only a 12-year- old.That is very sad. I guess what is interesting is that all th calls for such protests are happening through the internet as Spiegel Online Reports:
Indeed, the LUMS protest sparked one in Boston at the same time, thanks to Facebook. News of a protest by opposition leader Benazir Bhutto sparked one in London, led by Jemima Khan, the former wife of another opposition leader, Imran Khan, who is under house arrest. Since the weekend, students have been holding "flash" protests in Karachi, the country's commercial capital. Through cell-phone text messages, students have been gathering, 10 at a time, across the city, shouting protest slogans, and disappearing quickly before the police arrive. If it sounds like a youth gimmick, consider the dangers involved. A student flash mob could find itself in hostile territory, liable to arrest.
The whole scenario is quite depressing for most Pakistanis I have talked to ( in canada). Some even the change the topic when you mention this. If we believe Mr. Musharaf who thinks the imposition of emergency will improve the security situation then my question is what happens after? This is a short term measure. What is he doing to ensure long term security of the country? The roots of terrorism and extremism ( believed in by a minority in Pakistan), is generally a result of dis empowerment and disenfranchisement of people on the fringes of society making them more susceptible to extremist propaganda. Remove the causes of this dis empowerment and disenfranchisement and you are removing extremism.
2 comments:
musharraf is not battling a single opponent. he has in fact now a host of enemies from both within the country and outside. he wants to lead us (and more importantly foreign observers) to believe that the challenge we are up against is a monolithic culture of intolerance and extremism. an excellent article from imran khan @ http://www.countercurrents.org/khan101107.htm
explores these various challenges and how they may in fact become one unified reactive force if we do not act fast to establish justice.
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