ISLAMABAD —
Pakistani police detained hundreds of supporters of ousted prime minister Imran
Khan’s
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party ahead of a major sit-in planned by
the former leader, senior party members and police sources said Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
Khan, a cricket
star turned populist politician, was kicked out of power last month through a
vote of no-confidence but has heaped pressure on the country’s fragile new
coalition government by staging mass rallies across the country since then.
“More than 200
supporters of PTI have been arrested in Punjab,” a police official in Lahore,
the capital of
Pakistan’s largest province, told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“We have raided their houses and have arrested many of them.”
A second official, asking not to be named, provided
the same information, adding that those arrested had been booked on public
order offences and remain in detention.
Khan has alleged
that he was removed through a “foreign conspiracy” and plans on Wednesday to
lead an anti-government march from his power base in the northwestern city of
Peshawar to the capital Islamabad, with tens of thousands expected to attend.
The former prime minister said he would stage a sit-in until the government
dissolves parliament and sets a date for fresh elections.
Fawad Chaudhry, the former information minister in
Khan’s government, accused police of carrying out the overnight raids without
warrants and put the number of arrested at more than 400. “More than 1,100
houses were raided overnight. Police entered the houses without any warrants
and insulted women and children,” he tweeted.
Police have not
officially commented on the arrests or allegations.
On Tuesday, Khan
tweeted that his supporters had a right to peacefully protest. “The brutal
crackdown on PTI leaders and workers in Punjab and Islamabad has once again
shown us what we are familiar with — the fascist nature of PMLN when in power,”
he said in a tweet, referring to the party of current Prime Minister
Shehbaz Sharif.
On Saturday, senior
PTI leader and former minister Shireen Mazari was arrested near her house in
the capital over a decades-old land dispute. She was briefly detained before a
court ordered her release.
In 2018, Khan was
voted in by an electorate weary of the dynastic politics of the country’s two
major parties, with the popular former sports star promising to sweep away
decades of entrenched corruption and cronyism. He was brought down in part by
his failure to rectify the country’s dire economic situation, including its
crippling debt, shrinking foreign currency reserves and soaring inflation.
Sharif is now grappling with the same crisis, as well as
rising militancy and soured relations with the West.
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