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Pakistani Lawyers Stand Up for Constitution
The headline in today's New York Times is dramatic: Police Battle Lawyers in Pakistan. The photos that accompany it are no less so, showing Pakistani police in Lahore beating a lawyer with sticks outside the Supreme Court. Pakistani lawyers took to the streets in protest after the country's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, suspended the country's constitution Saturday and fired the judges of its Supreme Court.
In the biggest of the protests, some 2,000 lawyers congregated outside the High Court in Lahore. The Associated Press reports:
As lawyers tried to exit onto a main road to stage a rally -- in defiance of a police warnings not to violate a ban on demonstrations -- hundreds of officers stormed inside.
Police swung batons and fired tear gas shells to disperse the lawyers, who responded by throwing stones and beating police with tree branches. The protesters shouted, 'Go Musharraf Go!'
Police arrested about 250 lawyers, AP says. The Times estimated the number of arrests at 150. These lawyers are heroes, putting their well being at risk to stand up for the rule of law. It is difficult to imagine such a situation ever arising in the United States, but if it ever did, would lawyers here be so quick to do the same?
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on November 5, 2007 at 12:51 PM | Permalink
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