Don’t let Musharraf get away with what he has just done
by Abid Ullah Jan
“All criticism of Musharraf’s declaring an emergency in the Western circles will be utterly meaningless if Musharraf is left to get away with the changes he has made under the cover of emergency declared on Nov 3, 2007.”
The situation in Pakistan has been tense for months for a number of reasons: the illegal steps by General Musharraf to grant amnesty to Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan despite charges of corruption, the decreasing popularity of the military regime, fall of Pakistan’s mercenary forces in the eyes of general public, bloody adventures in Waziristan and lately in Swat in a bid to curry favours with Washington and the battle with Pakistan’s judiciary are just some of the headaches that the South Asian country were facing.
On Saturday, those complications came to a head as dictator Musharraf announced that he’d be imposing martial law. Pakistani television and Reuters are reporting that the constitution has been suspended. The move was rejected by members of the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Mr. Chaudhry has had a long history of opposing Mr. Musharraf.
The military regime has now removed Mr. Chaudhry and appointed Mr. Dogar as the Chief Justice of Pakistan. In the PCO, the military regime has specifically accused the Supreme Court of becoming a hurdle in the way of the war on terror. These allegations is the only way, it can sell martial law to the outside world. Dr. Shahid Iqbal reported on Geo TV that officials of the military government were already visiting and meeting officials of the Western embassies, telling them that the Supreme Court is undermining the regime’s efforts in the “war on terror.” It is important to note that just last week the Supreme Court told the military regime to release all the illegally detained persons by the 13th of November 2007.
This shows that the US-led war of terror needs the Supreme Court to submit to the will of a dictatorial regime and let the intelligence agencies detain and torture their fellow citizen’s indefinitely without charging them. [more]