The Pakistani government authorized paramilitary troops to shoot
anyone involved in serious violence in
Karachi
yesterday, where 37 people have been killed over the past two days,
an official said.
On Saturday, 34 people were killed and more than 130 wounded in
the country's worst political street violence in two decades,
sparked when Pakistan's suspended top judge tried to meet
supporters in the southern city.
Violence between pro-government and opposition activists eased
yesterday but three people were killed in separate incidents and
protesters set fire to several shops and cars.
Government attempts to remove Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry
over unspecified accusations of misconduct last Wednesday have
outraged the judiciary and the opposition.
The judicial crisis has snowballed into a campaign against
President Pervez Musharraf and is the most serious challenge to the
authority of the president, who is also army chief, since he took
power in 1999.
But the violence in Pakistan's biggest city sparked by the
judge's visit has also raised the specter of bloody ethnic feuding
that plagued Karachi in the 1980s and 1990s.
"We have increased the presence of Rangers in the city and have
told them to arrest or shoot anyone involved in violence and riots
threatening life or property," Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah
said, referring to a paramilitary force.
Two political activists, one from an opposition party and one
from the pro-government Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which runs
Karachi, were killed yesterday. The body of a third man, shot in
the head, was found in a volatile neighborhood.
Chaudhry, who denies wrongdoing and has refused to resign, flew
into Karachi on Saturday, hoping to meet his supporters. But the
violence prevented him from leaving the airport.
Musharraf condemned the clashes and criticized Chaudhry for
ignoring a government appeal not to go to the volatile city.
In a speech to tens of thousands of supporters in Islamabad on
Saturday, Musharraf ruled out a state of emergency.
He said elections due this year first a presidential election
followed by a general election would be on time.
Mourners at the funeral of two members of an opposition
religious alliance shouted anti-Musharraf slogans and called for an
Islamic revolution as the bodies, draped in party flags, were
carried away for burial.
The police have been criticized for failing to stop the clashes
between members of the MQM, which opposed Chaudhry's visit, and its
old enemies including the religious alliance and former prime
minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
Most of those killed were members of the PPP and the opposition
Awami National Party (ANP), which represents ethnic Pashtuns.
(China Daily May 14, 2007)
