Pakistan police arrest opposition activists ahead of protest

PAKISTANI police clashed with opposition party supporters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi today (October 28), arresting dozens ahead of a planned protest by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan aimed at unseating the government.

Police charged stone-throwing protesters with batons and fired tear gas at the supporters, who had come out on the streets of Islamabad’s twin-city to demonstrate against arrests made the previous night after authorities banned all public gatherings in the capital for two months.

Municipal workers meanwhile used shipping containers to block major roads leading from Rawalpindi to Islamabad, where Khan has vowed to lead a demonstration on November 2 to demand Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif step down over revelations made in the Panama Papers that his family have offshore bank accounts.

The exact number of arrests could not be confirmed, but a spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek Insaaf (Movement for Justice) party said 43 workers arrested last night (October 27) were still in detention while others had been released.

A heavy contingent of police meanwhile surrounded Khan’s house in Banni Gala, a leafy suburb of Islamabad, preventing him from leaving - though he has not been formally arrested.

Dozens of Khan’s supporters also gathered around the house, chanting anti-government slogans calling for Sharif to resign.

Sharif is under growing pressure from opposition parties over his children’s offshore bank accounts that were revealed in the Panama Papers leak.

“This will be a decisive and historic gathering, people will come together with resolve to hold the prime minister accountable,” Khan told reporters.

Khan led a previous mass protest in the summer of 2014 that lasted four months, allying himself to populist cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri to back a sit-in in front of parliament calling for the government to resign over election rigging allegations.

The new protest plan comes at a sensitive time for Sharif, with Pakistan’s Supreme Court due to start hearing a case about the Panama Papers revelations on November 1.