The "arbitrary detention" of Pakistan's top judge must end, along with the political persecution of lawyers protesting his arrest, a New York-based rights group said on Monday. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suspended chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on misconduct charges on Friday.
"By brazenly and unlawfully dismissing, detaining and humiliating the chief justice of the Supreme Court, President Musharraf has created a constitutional crisis at the judiciary's expense," said Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.
"Musharraf has undermined judicial independence before and nothing could make that more clear than his arrest of the Chief Justice," the New York-based group said in a statement.
Thousands of lawyers clashed with baton-wielding riot police on Monday during a nation-wide day of action against the sacking. Chaudhry has since been confined to his official residence in Islamabad and journalists are barred from meeting him. The government denies he is under house arrest.
He had been at loggerheads with the government since the Supreme Court overturned the sale of Pakistan's steel mills in June 2006. "The Pakistani government must end the arbitrary detention of the chief justice of the Supreme Court and cease the police crackdown on lawyers staging peaceful protests," Human Rights Watch said.
"It appears Justice Chaudhry has refused to resign," the group said, calling for "Chaudhry's immediate release from illegal detention." Witnesses said that around 3,000 lawyers wearing black suits and chanting "Down with Musharraf" dismantled barriers in an attempt to stage a sit-in outside the Lahore High Court building.
"The brutal assault on lawyers demonstrating for the chief justice raises bigger issues about the rule of law in Pakistan," said Hasan. "The government needs to respond to this by taking appropriate action against those government officials responsible."
Rights groups, opposition parties and lawyers have condemned the move by Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, as an assault on the independence of the judiciary.
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