Pakistani Police Crack Down on Protesters

Police in this port city fired tear gas and arrested hundreds of protesters demanding an end to military rule, as authorities tried to prevent a rally calling for early elections.

Authorities used barbed wire, bamboo poles and steel barricades to block roads leading to Nishtar Park in eastern Karachi, where the rally was scheduled for Tuesday. Armed police officers and paramilitary troops patrolled the densely populated neighborhood.

In the Banaras neighborhood, police fired dozens of tear gas canisters to disperse 100 stone-throwing protesters, witnesses said. More than 250 activists in different parts of Karachi were arrested as they tried to defy the government ban on rallies.

The 16-party Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy had announced the rally for Tuesday--a workers’ holiday worldwide--to demand early elections.

The military-led government, which banned rallies soon after it seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999 by toppling the elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, reacted with a massive crackdown, arresting hundreds of ARD supporters.

Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League and the Pakistan People’s Party of ousted Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto are the key members of the alliance.

The self-exiled Bhutto said the regime’s crackdown exposed its weaknesses. “The brute use of force against peaceful political workers has exposed the sandy foundations on which the regime is standing,” she said in a statement.

Many leaders have been placed under house arrest and others banned from traveling to Karachi.

Workers should not allow “useless politicians” to hijack the holiday, military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Monday in Islamabad, the capital.

He has pledged to return democracy to Pakistan by October 2002.