The crackdown by PPP government on political activists and lawyers has been slammed by an international human rights group.
The crackdown by PPP government on political activists and lawyers has been slammed by an international human rights group, which said the action mimicked the tactics employed by discredited military governments.
In a strongly worded statement, Human Rights Watch criticised the Pakistan government for using "old and repressive laws to stifle dissent" and asked Islamabad to end its crackdown against activists of opposition groups led by the PML-N headed by former premier, Nawaz Sharif.
The HRW said scores of opposition politicians are in hiding, fearing arrest after authorities detained at least 300 activists of the party and affiliated groups from across Punjab province, the party's stronghold, under various provisions of the Maintenance of Public Order Act or simply detained without charge, since March 10.
"The protesters who were arrested should be freed right away and allowed to demonstrate peacefully without fear of violence or arrest," Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, demanded.
Supporters of the party, are being arrested to prevent them from converging on to Islamabad for a "sit-in" in support of restoration to office of Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, the Supreme Court chief justice who was fired in November 2007 by
Pervez Musharraf, then the country's military ruler.
The Punjab and Sindh provincial governments, the HRW said, have imposed a "discredited colonial-era legal provision," Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which bans gatherings of four or more people, to prevent the protest march to Islamabad.
The Punjab police, acting on orders from the provincial government, have set up police checkpoints and roadblocks across the province.
The watch group said that by placing curbs on rights to peaceful assembly and association, the PPP-led government was making use of the same authoritarian tools it had decried when in opposition.
"Pakistan's transition to democracy is imperilled by the government reacting to a political dispute with unnecessary force," Hasan said.
"Regardless of political differences, rights-respecting leaders don't lock up people for trying to participate in their country's political process," he added.
Pakistan has been gripped by a political crisis since February 25, when the country's Supreme Court upheld a ruling that banned Nawaz Sharif from contesting elections because of a previous criminal conviction.
The court had also disqualified his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, from continuing as the chief minister of Punjab province.
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