Pakistan:Pakistan's deposed chief justice urged embattled lawyers to defy President Pervez Musharraf's crackdown yesterday as the government considered delaying elections by several months.
Speaking from house arrest, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry told a gathering of lawyers in Islamabad to "rise up and restore the constitution".
"Go to every corner of Pakistan and give the message that this is the time to sacrifice," he said. "Don't be afraid. God will help us and the day will come when you'll see the constitution supreme and no dictatorship for a long time." But street protests diminished in the rest of the country as security forces continued to crush dissent.
Continuing western pressure, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, "strongly urged" a return to constitutional rule. More than 2,500 people have been arrested since Saturday's declaration of emergency rule, under which the constitution has been suspended, television channels silenced and independent-minded judges fired.
The largest demonstration was in the southern city of Multan, where riot police attacked hundreds of lawyers, leaving some bloodied as they were loaded into police vans. The prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, convened the cabinet to consider the timing of elections due by mid-January but no decision was taken. However one minister indicated they could be postponed by up to three months, despite US and British pressure for early polls.
The opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who flew from Karachi to Islamabad, said the government had already decided to delay elections by at least a year.
Ms Bhutto, whose party has avoided the worst of the crackdown thanks to a recent political deal with Gen Musharraf, said her party would "build pressure" on Gen Musharraf to resign from the army and hold early elections by protesting outside the national parliament. "We are very worried that if Pakistan implodes it could have far-reaching consequences," she said. "This is a nuclear armed country and it is facing a very serious crisis." Ms Bhutto said she would meet opposition leaders instead of Gen Musharraf.
Last night, the acting leader of Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party, Javed Hashmi, was in jail, as was Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamaat Islami party. Former cricketer Imran Khan was on the run, having fled his home before police could seize him. "Our aim is to continue the struggle and mobilise the youth of the country from underground," he said in a message sent through his former wife, Jemima.
Although Gen Musharraf has used Islamist violence to justify the imposition of emergency rule, many Pakistanis see it as a last-ditch effort to cling to power.
But street protests have failed to ignite support outside politicians, lawyers and human rights activists. Public cynicism about class-ridden politics offers one explanation for the inaction.
Yesterday about 200 lawyers listened outside the offices of the Islamabad bar association as Justice Chaudhry delivered his speech. Lawyers marched around the marketplace afterwards.
But few of the shopkeepers or legal clerks in the market looked inclined to join them. "What's going on is not good. But I don't want to put my family at risk. They arrest us if we took part," said bystander Muhammad Javed. A court in Lahore granted bail to 54 human rights activists, 30 of whom were released last night. Friends said the US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, had lobbied for their release.