High Court benches: Lawyers boycott courts in support of Islamabad protesters

LHCBA condemns media coverage of protest, announces Jang Group boycott.

LAHORE:

Lawyers boycotted court proceedings here on Wednesday in support of their colleagues who staged a sit-in in Islamabad a day earlier to demand that High Court benches be set up in five divisions of the Punjab.

Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA) members boycotted the courts on the call of the Pakistan Bar Council, apart from in urgent cases, in protest at the use of force to break up the lawyers’ protest at the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The LHCBA passed a resolution condemning the police and demanding that the SC registrar and others be prosecuted for “torture”.

The LHCBA resolution also condemned the use of the term “wukla gardi” an amalgamation of the Urdu words for lawyers and thuggery by the media to describe the lawyers’ protest. The lawyers declared that the Jang Group would not be allowed to cover any events at the bar and kicked a reporter from the media group out of the general house meeting that passed the resolution.

Speaking at the meeting, several lawyers condemned the use of force to stop the protest in Islamabad. Advocate Muhammad Kazim Khan said that the protesters had a constitutional right to protest. He said that they had been “tortured” when attempting to use the washrooms at the Supreme Court. The use of tear gas and rubber bullets was “shameful”, he added.

Advocate Allah Bakhsh Gondal said that the state had forgotten the sacrifices made by lawyers for the restoration of the chief justice. Lawyers had been burnt alive, shot dead, tortured, had their offices demolished and been jailed for backing the judiciary, he said.

LHCBA President Abid Saqi said that the lawyers would launch a countrywide protest should there be similar future incidents.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2013.