Stop Crackdown on Democratic Forces in Pakistan

To:  Government of Pakistan

We the undersigned strongly condemn the crackdown on democratic forces in
Pakistan by the government of that country, about which we have been informed
on 09 January 2008, and demand that this stop immediately.


[INFORMATION to readers of this Petition, for which signatories are not responsible:

The following message concerning the situation in Pakistan has been received:

From:
Taimur Rahman
Date:
9 January 2008 09:47 GMT
To:
cmkp_pk@yahoogroups.com,...
Subject:
Crack down on democratic forces by Musharraf government

After the enormous reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister and a popular politician, the Musharraf government has registered more than 3,000 cases against more than 500,000 people in one province of Sindh alone. The government has started arresting and threatening them with arrests in cases of fire, murder, looting and provoking people to resort for violence. Up to now the government has arrested around 2000 persons from the province and about 400 people from Karachi.

On the other hand the ruling coalition party of Musharraf’s government, the MQM, is instigating ethnic clashes between two major linguistic groups, the Sindhis and Urdu speaking people, prior to the coming elections. The major ruling party of Musharraf, the PML-Q, has formed some camps in the Punjab province to show that Sindhi speaking people are threatening the Punjabi speaking people. This situation is leading to bloody clashes which will ultimately help Musharraf’s government to further postpone the already extended elections.

When democratic parties belonging to the opposition started to demonstrate the provincial government arrested several activists and resorted to tear gas and baton charging the protesters in different cities of the province. The arrested people are being charged with murder, arson and looting on the charges of already constituted cases during the period of mass protests after the Benazir Bhutto assassination in late December 2007.

In the latest development the leadership of the Pakistan Fisher Folk (PFF), a trade union of fishermen, was booked in the murder of seven workers of a garment factory who died in a fire. The fire on December 29 was the sheer negligence of the owners of the factory and the provincial authorities. The son of Mr. Mohammad Ali Shah, chairperson of the Pakistan Fisher Folk and Mr. Akhter Shiekh, secretary of coordination of the PFF along with several other activists were falsely charged in the murder of the factory workers. Their houses were fired upon by unknown persons.

CMKP Website:- http://cmkp.tk
CMKP YahooForum:- http://groups.yahoo.com/
CMKP News:- http://cmkp_pk.blogspot.com

END of the information to readers, for which signatories are not responsible]

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Stop Crackdown on Democratic Forces in Pakistan Petition to Government of Pakistan was created by MF, RM on Modern Marxism list and written by Rolf Martens (rolf.martens@comhem.se).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.