Source: [Emergency] Mailing List

By Sameer Shaharyar

Just when the lawyers movement had become sacred and had broke all the records of nobility and had earned the respect and esteem of the nation, things turned ugly in Lahore. Dr. Sher Afghun Niazi, a close aide of President Musharraf and an inactive leader of PML-Q went to the chamber of his lawyer Malik Noor Mohammad Awan, when a lawyer who was present opposite to the Malik Noor’s chamber called to the Lahore
high court and few hundred lawyers gathered outside the hotel, where Sher Afgun was present.

Now things start turning interestingly mysterious from here. Dr. Sher Afghun telephoned D.I.G operations Lahore in the afternoon, but he never materialized. Then Dr. Sher Afgun telephoned some highups in the caretaker ministry of Punjab, but no one answered. When thousands of people gathered (and most of them were not lawyers) then D.I.G Operations Lahore came and showed his haplessness.

President of Supreme Court Association Aitzaz Ahsan reached to the scene and tried to rescue the former minister. He pleaded with Police to make a passage from the hotel door to the Edhi ambulance, but there was huge and alarming security lapse. And due to that laps people managed to reach the Dr. Sher Afgun and slapped him and treated him with shoes.

This incident has put a question mark on the lawyer movement. The more you look into it, the more it feels that this is yet another effort to derail the lawyers movement. The way Dr. Sher Afgun has been treated is extremely sad and condemnable. But the leaders of this movement needs to identify the black sheep in their rows. Some lawyers were
surely there beating Sher Afgun, but many people who were on the front were in plain clothes and were not recognizable. But all in all, this incident and the incident with Dr. Arbab Ghulam Rahim are condemnable and against all the civilized and democratic values. Lawyers are the guardians of the law and constitution and they need to excuse from the whole nation for the conduct of some of their laws, but they also need to recognize those invisible hands which are hard at work against them and the deposed judiciary.

This incident will give another breather to the forces of status quo to stick to the rule more by defaming the lawyers movement and the democratic forces.

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Tags: Beating, Lahore, Musharraf, PML (Q), Sher afghan