প্রকাশ: 26/05/2022
Pakistani police
fired teargas, baton-charged and detained supporters of ousted Prime Minister
Imran Khan on Wednesday to stop them from reaching the capital Islamabad to
demand fresh elections, officials and witnesses said.
Clashes between Khan's supporters and police were reported
in multiple cities.
Khan, ousted in a confidence vote last month after losing
his partners in his coalition, has urged supporters to march on Islamabad and
stay there until the new government is dissolved and a date for a fresh
election is announced.
Islamabad's entry and exit routes have been blocked, as well
as important civic sites, officials said. Entry and exit points were also
blocked to and from all major cities in Punjab province and on the Grand Trunk
Road (GTR).
"No blockade can stop us," Khan said from atop a
truck on the GT road on his way to Islamabad from the northwestern city of
Peshawar.
"We will remain in Islamabad till the announcement of
dates for dissolution of assemblies & elections are given," he later
tweeted.
The government has said Khan's march is illegal and accuses
him of seeking to bring protesters to Islamabad with "evil
intentions".
Khan's supporters also clashed with security forces in other
major cities, including the southern port city of Karachi and the eastern city
of Lahore.
A mob torched a prison van in Karachi after clashing with
police, and another group of protesters set fire to several trees along a main
thoroughfare in Islamabad, officials said.
The political violence has compounded uncertainty in the
nuclear-armed South Asian nation ahead of a likely announcement by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) later in the day on whether it will resume a
$6 billion rescue package.
With falling foreign reserves, a fast-crashing rupee, and
double-digit inflation, Pakistan's new government is struggling to stop a
downward economic spiral.
ARRESTS
Live local TV footage showed police fighting with Khan's
supporters, beating them and in some places breaking their vehicles'
windscreens and bundling them into police vans.
Amjad Malik, an interior ministry official, told Reuters no
one had been seriously injured in the clashes.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah later said police had
carried out a total of 4,417 swoops on Khan supporters' homes, offices and on
protest rallies and had arrested nearly 1,700 people. Of those, 250 were later
freed, he said.
Khan has promised to rally more than two million people in
Islamabad.
"We haven't stopped anyone from exercising their
constitutional and legal right to hold a rally or take part in democratic
politics, but we can't allow anyone to sow violence and chaos," said
Sanaullah.
Pakistan's Supreme Court, later in the day, ordered the
government and Khan's party to negotiate on holding a peaceful public meeting
in Islamabad.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said his government was trying
to clear up an economic mess that he blamed Khan for.
"You've handed over a sinking economy to us, and now
you're planning sit-ins and protest," Sharif said in Islamabad. "We
are trying to energize this weak economy."
- Reuters
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