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Protesters march on Pakistan parliament Protesters march on Pakistan parliament 'red zone'
(about 4 hours later)
Thousands of anti-government protesters carrying wire cutters and backed by cranes marched on Pakistan's parliament on Thursday, planning to remove barriers blocking them from soldiers guarding the seat of government. Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters swarmed towards Pakistan's parliament late on Tuesday night after using bolt cutters and cranes to swiftly remove barricades designed to keep them away from the most sensitive areas of the country's capital city.
Television channels showed live footage of troops taking up positions in the so-called red zone, which also covers the president and prime minister's ceremonial homes and many diplomatic posts. That set up a possible showdown between hundreds of soldiers and 30,000 supporters of the opposition politician Imran Khan and the anti-government cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri. An estimated 50,000 protesters, led by an opposition politician and a Canada-based cleric, had been holding demonstrations in Islamabad for five days to demand the resignation of the government led by prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Both men have called on the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to step down over allegations of fraud in last year's election. Sharif has refused and ordered the soldiers out on to the streets, the first military deployment in the capital since Pakistan has been under civilian leadership. But until Tuesday they had held back on threats to move on Islamabad's "red zone" which houses parliament, the prime minister's office and most foreign embassies.
Two Pakistani security officials said a total of 700 troops had been deployed to guard the red zone. Another 30,000 members of the security forces were also in the area, authorities said. Shipping containers and barbed wire blocked many roads. Such a move risked sparking a violent confrontation with police and the army, which in an unusual move had in recent weeks been called in to buttress security in the capital, with around 700 posted inside the red zone.
The interior minister, Nisar Ali Khan, pleaded for calm before the march. "Violence can't be allowed to happen," he said. "What is this all we are showing to the world?" The challenge from the protesters to state authority puts Sharif in a difficult position. Major bloodshed caused by efforts to defend the red zone could create the conditions for an intervention by the country's powerful army, which has a long record of sacking civilian governments throughout Pakistan's turbulent history.
Nisar had earlier announced that the military would co-ordinate the defence of the red zone. "The government has decided to hand over the security of the red zone of Islamabad to the army," he said at a news conference. Three tiers of security had been put in place, he said, using police and government paramilitary forces. Instead, at the risk of looking weak, Sharif opted to allow the demonstrators to move into the heart of the capital.
The demonstrators have camped out in Islamabad in two rallies since last week. Khan and Qadri have vowed to keep up the sit-ins until Sharif resigns. No attempt was made to block the progress of marchers by police, many of whom were armed with nothing more than sticks. Protesters were even able to drive cranes into the capital to remove stacks of sea containers placed on key roads leading to the red zone.
Khan, who heads parliament's third-largest political bloc, announced on Monday that he and his supporters would march into the red zone. On Tuesday, Khan said they would establish a "Tahrir Square" outside the parliament, referring to the square in Egypt where mass protests were held in 2011. In a tweet his daughter Maryam Sharif said the prime minister had ordered police "not to use any kind of force against the protesters" in order to protect the many women and children among them.
"Let us promise that we will remain peaceful," Qadri told his followers. Khan said: "No one will trespass into any building." Women and children were among the protesters who surged towards parliament. Imran Khan, one of the leaders of the demonstrations, deliberately put women and children at the head of the marchers, while he was conveyed with senior party members on the roof of a specially converted sea container.
Khan's Tehrik-e-Insaf party has been complaining that Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N rigged last year's elections. Sharif has agreed to set up a judicial commission to investigate the allegation but has refused to step down. Khan has said he will not go home without Sharif's resignation. Despite repeatedly claiming in a speech earlier in the evening that he would lead a peaceful demonstration, many of his supporters carried sticks and were prepared for tear gas with goggles.
Sharif, who was overthrown in the 1999 coup that brought the former army chief Pervez Musharraf to power, met senior advisers and the army chief before the rally. The government has invoked a rarely used article in the constitution allowing the military to introduce martial law if needed. Khan, the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, is demanding the resignation of Sharif's government which he claims won a landslide victory in last year's general election on the basis of massive electoral fraud, although his allegations have not been supported by independent observers.
He has promised to turn the area in front of Pakistan's National Assembly building into a "Tahrir Square", referring to the 2011 protests in Cairo that ousted president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
On Monday he also announced the 34 members of his party who won seats in last May's election will quit parliament.
He has joined forces with Tahir-ul-Qadri, a Barelvi cleric with a considerable support base, who also wants to see the resignation of the government.
Unlike Khan, however, Qadri does not want fresh elections but the establishment instead of a "national government" of technocrats.
The protests in the capital have already gone on for five days. The prospect of the standoff continuing outside the nation's parliament could see the army playing an arbitration role.
Late on Tuesday army spokesman General Asim Bajwa tweeted an appeal for "patience, wisdom [and] sagacity from all stakeholders through larger national and public interest".
Over the last year Sharif has been weakened by damaging disputes with the powerful military establishment which removed him from power in the 1999 coup led by Pervez Musharraf.
Despite an outright parliamentary majority, the ongoing political crisis is likely to weaken him further and could make him reliant on the army for his political survival.