Word: crackdowns
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Pakistan's political turmoil has deepened as a result of a government crackdown on opposition groups across two provinces. In a desperate attempt to halt next week's lawyer-led "long march" for the reinstatement of deposed judges, police and intelligence officials carried out early-morning raids across Punjab and Sindh, arresting more than 300 lawyers and political activists. All major entry points to the capital, Islamabad, have been blocked by either large containers or manned checkpoints. As human-rights groups denounce the moves, political observers wonder how much longer the already shaky government of President Asif Ali Zardari...
...crackdown began late Tuesday night, with the government invoking Section 144 of the 1860 Penal Code, a law from the British colonial era that forbids public gatherings of four or more people. As whispers of imminent arrests gathered momentum and local television channels exhibited lengthy lists of intended targets, many prominent lawyers and politicians went into hiding, just as they did during a crackdown operated by former President Pervez Musharraf (who was defeated at the polls by the combined parties of Zardari and his now estranged ally Nawaz Sharif). (See pictures from the historic 2008 election that brought down Musharraf...
...Aitzaz Ahsan, a leading attorney and member of the PPP who opposes Zardari's crackdown, counters that the lawyers are merely fighting for an independent judiciary that will fortify democracy in Pakistan. "We don't want military intervention; we want to strengthen parliament and the democratic system," he told TIME, also speaking by cell phone from an undisclosed location to evade arrest. "Existing examples of democratic government are testament to the fact that you can't have a stable parliament without an independent judiciary - it's a sine qua non. A democratic system will remain weak if there are timorous...
...crackdown on Final Exit Network, a group based in Marietta, Ga., that is accused of assisted suicide, has revived the right-to-die debate that was fueled in the 1990s by Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan doctor who assisted in the deaths of 130 terminally ill people. But Final Exit claims that its volunteers do not perform assisted suicides à la Kevorkian, who was convicted of second-degree murder and went to prison for giving a lethal injection to a man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Rather, the group argues that it merely provides a "compassionate presence" for terminally...
...recent events have caused concern among Pakistan's Western allies, who hope to see a tougher government crackdown on militancy - and, at least in Swat, have emboldened the militants, who believe they have prevailed over the government's effort to militarily dislodge them...