Sindh’s lawyers threaten strike on Friday

Lawyers in Sindh will go on strike on if action is not taken against police who beat lawyers in Lahore.

KARACHI: Lawyers in Sindh will go on strike on Friday if action is not taken against the police who beat lawyers in Lahore, said representatives in Karachi on Monday.

“I condemn the brutal beating of lawyers in Lahore, the breaking of the [window]panes of the chamber [of the LHC CJ], the violation of the sanctity of the Aiwan-e-Adl,” said Mehmood-ul-Hasan, the vice chairman of the Sindh Bar Council at a joint press conference. It was held at the council’s office at the Old Annexe Building of the High Court of Sindh (SHC) after noon. Hasan went on to demand the identification and suspension of police officials who beat lawyers.

Hasan, Barrister Salahuddin, who is the honorary secretary of the Karachi Bar Association, and Hanif Kashmiri of the Pakistan Bar Council said that the sudden outburst by lawyers in Punjab’s capital was a conspiracy by Senator Latif Khosa and federal law minister Babar Awan.

The PBC’s Hanif Kashmiri said the outburst by lawyers in Lahore was not “spontaneous”  but a “planned affair”.

Explaining why they ignored the PBC’s call for a strike on Monday, Kashmiri said that the PBC had not taken the provincial bars into confidence before announcing a countrywide protest.

Justice (retd) Rasheed A Razvi, the president of the Sindh High Court Bar Association (SHCBA), who was in Islamabad, told The Express Tribune that he was with the men in black and white but would not favour hooliganism. “I have been informed that the Lahore Bar has banned my entry too but I still cannot part ways with my friends who waged a struggle for the restoration of the judiciary even though they are now playing into the hands of some divisionary forces,” he said, condemning the beatings, registration of cases under the Anti-Terrorism Act and the imposition of section 144 of the Cr.P.C.

Senior lawyers in Karachi expressed concern over the increasing friction and while buying into the conspiracy theory, said it was designed to “defame the lawyers who played a pivotal role in the restoration of the superior judiciary, malign the Punjab government and undermine the judiciary”.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2010.