For conservative lawyer-haters and bashers, who love to throw around quotes without understanding them, this story below contains the true meaning of Shakespeare's much-abused line, "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"
Police Battle Lawyers in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 5 — Police armed with tear gas and clubs attacked thousands of protesting lawyers in the city of Lahore today, and rounded up lawyers in other cities as the government of the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, faced the first signs of concerted resistance to the imposition of emergency rule.
An estimated 150 lawyers were arrested in Lahore after a pitched battle between police and lawyers who stood on the roof of the High Court throwing stones at the police below. Some of the lawyers had bleeding heads as they were shoved into police vans, and some fainted in the clouds of tear gas.
In Multan, another city in the province of Punjab, two new judges who had taken the oath of office under emergency rule Sunday were forced to leave the courtroom after hundreds of lawyers threatened to throw eggs at them.
"We threatened them saying: ‘You’ve taken an unconstitutional oath, if you don’t go we will throw eggs at you.’ They left,” said a lawyer from Multan, Riaz Gilani.
The tough response of the Musharraf government to the opposition took various forms today, ranging from overt police repression to threats of arrests of political opponents.
Lawyers in the capital, Islamabad, and the nearby garrison town of Rawalpindi said they did not go to the courts because they were warned they would be arrested and possibly beaten.
Despite the warnings,, more than 100 lawyers demonstrated outside Islamabad’s main court complex today.
The lawyers — clad in black suits and ties — shouted “Musharraf dog” and “A Baton and a bullet will not do!” Haroon Rashid, president of the Islamabad Bar Association, instructed lawyers not to attack watching police because he did not want to give the police a pretext for arrests, he said.
In the first practical sign of international displeasure at the emergency rule, the United States said today it had suspended annual defense talks with Pakistan.
Eric Edelman, an under secretary of defense, was meant to head an American delegation to the talks, beginning on Tuesday, but the meetings will be delayed until conditions are "more conducive to achieving the important objectives of all those who value democracy and a constitutional role," said Elizabeth Colton, a spokeswoman at the American embassy.
More than 500 opposition figures have been arrested since emergency rule was imposed at the weekend, although lawyers and analysts said the figure could be far higher
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/world/asia/06pakistan.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Police Battle Lawyers in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 5 — Police armed with tear gas and clubs attacked thousands of protesting lawyers in the city of Lahore today, and rounded up lawyers in other cities as the government of the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, faced the first signs of concerted resistance to the imposition of emergency rule.
An estimated 150 lawyers were arrested in Lahore after a pitched battle between police and lawyers who stood on the roof of the High Court throwing stones at the police below. Some of the lawyers had bleeding heads as they were shoved into police vans, and some fainted in the clouds of tear gas.
In Multan, another city in the province of Punjab, two new judges who had taken the oath of office under emergency rule Sunday were forced to leave the courtroom after hundreds of lawyers threatened to throw eggs at them.
"We threatened them saying: ‘You’ve taken an unconstitutional oath, if you don’t go we will throw eggs at you.’ They left,” said a lawyer from Multan, Riaz Gilani.
The tough response of the Musharraf government to the opposition took various forms today, ranging from overt police repression to threats of arrests of political opponents.
Lawyers in the capital, Islamabad, and the nearby garrison town of Rawalpindi said they did not go to the courts because they were warned they would be arrested and possibly beaten.
Despite the warnings,, more than 100 lawyers demonstrated outside Islamabad’s main court complex today.
The lawyers — clad in black suits and ties — shouted “Musharraf dog” and “A Baton and a bullet will not do!” Haroon Rashid, president of the Islamabad Bar Association, instructed lawyers not to attack watching police because he did not want to give the police a pretext for arrests, he said.
In the first practical sign of international displeasure at the emergency rule, the United States said today it had suspended annual defense talks with Pakistan.
Eric Edelman, an under secretary of defense, was meant to head an American delegation to the talks, beginning on Tuesday, but the meetings will be delayed until conditions are "more conducive to achieving the important objectives of all those who value democracy and a constitutional role," said Elizabeth Colton, a spokeswoman at the American embassy.
More than 500 opposition figures have been arrested since emergency rule was imposed at the weekend, although lawyers and analysts said the figure could be far higher
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/world/asia/06pakistan.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
