70,000 Demonstrate, Burn Effigies of Pakistan’s Leaders

Dancing crowds burned effigies of Pakistan’s president and prime minister Friday as up to 70,000 people gathered to mark the seventh anniversary of the execution of former Prime Minister Zulkifar Ali Bhutto.

“Down with Zia and Junejo,” the clapping crowds chanted in the most open protest in years against President Zia ul-Haq and Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo.

Six people died and 40 were injured when a bus taking them to the ceremony at Bhutto’s grave overturned Thursday night, residents said. Another 11 fainted in the heat.

The crowds began filing past the grave draped with the black, red and green flag of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party early Friday morning, spilling into the wheat fields surrounding the hamlet of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, 200 miles north of here.

They chanted “roti, kapra, makan” (bread, clothes, shelter), the motto of the former leader who ruled Pakistan for 5 1/2 years until Zia overthrew him in 1977.

Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979, after a controversial trial for conspiracy to murder, which provoked clemency pleas from around the world.

Benazir, his daughter by his second wife, Nusrat, and now head of the party, is expected to attract even larger crowds when she returns from her European exile next Thursday.