According to police sources, Pakistani police on Monday evening arrested hundreds of supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan ahead of a mass rally planned by his party in Islamabad.
Imran Khan was ousted on April 10 by a memorandum of no confidence. His Pakistan Justice Movement party has since been trying to mobilize the street to increase pressure on the fragile coalition government to push for early legislative elections.
“More than 200 supporters of the movement in Punjab have been arrested… We ransacked homes and arrested many of them,” a police officer in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province, told AFP on condition of anonymity. Another police officer confirmed the information, also refusing to give his name, explaining that these people were arrested on charges of violating public safety and are still under arrest.
Fuad Chaudhry, a former information minister in the Tehreek-e-Insaf government, accused the police of carrying out unsanctioned raids and arresting more than 400 people. Officially, the police did not comment on this information.
The government of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif accused Imran Khan of seeking to sow “chaos” in the country. Khan planned to stage Wednesday a long march that would draw tens of thousands of people between Peshawar (NW), the capital of the Tehrik-e-Insaf province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the capital, Islamabad. By doing so, he wants to force the government to quickly call elections, which should take place before the scheduled date of October 2023.
Imran Khan, a former cricket star, was elected in 2018 after condemning the corruption of elites led by Sharif or the Bhutto family’s Pakistan People’s Party, two rival parties that have dominated national politics for decades. But the country’s depleted economy with growth that hasn’t been seen in the past three years, high inflation, a weak national currency, and rising debt are all factors that cost him his position, allowing the two parties to return to power during a coalition government.
