KARACHI, Pakistan: Opposition supporters battled with police and set free political prisoners in the southern province of Sind today where an opposition spokesman said about 4,000 people were arrested in a government crackdown this week.
Demonstrators stoned police and blocked roads in the provincial capital of Karachi to pro test against the arrest of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto who spent her first day in solitary
Confinement in a jail.
Crowds of protesters attacked a jail in the southern Sind town of Thatta freeing 28 prisoners and took away arms in an attack on the police station there, opposition sources reported.
An unspecified number of other prisoners were also freed in attacks on police stations in the area, the sources said.
The protesters also damaged five small government offices in the Thatta area and four bank branches in the central Sind district of Dadu, the sources said.
The acting Chief of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Sind, Pervez Ali Shah, told a news conference that about 4,000 political dissidents were arrested in the province.
No confirmation from other sources was immediately available. Bhutto told Reuters before her arrest that more than 1,000 people were arrested in the countrywide police swoop on dissidents since Tuesday night to enforce a ban on political rallies on Pakistan’s 39th Independence Anniversary.
She was arrested after leading antigovernment rallies under a hail of police tear gas shells in a densely packed market area of Karachi.
Her supporters set a small rail way station afire and pelted baton wielding riot police blocking the narrow roads with burning rubbish and rubble. Opposition leaders who escaped arrest prepared to launch a new wave of protests against the government of President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977. The movement for the restoration of democracy (MRD), an umbrella group for 10 opposition parties including the PPP, has vowed to begin protests from August, 18 against the arrests. It has given the government.
Until September 20 to announce fresh party based elections, a demand already rejected by General Zia and his civilian Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo, MRDs acting convener Maulana Mohammad Shah Am roti told reporters here today that the alliance would launch what he called a full-fledged movement from August 18, a day after Pakis tans overwhelmingly Moslem population celebrates the Raladha festival.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 22, 1986
