HONG KONG — Pakistan’s main lawyer’s organization plans to fight until Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is removed from power, according to an attorney representing Chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhry, whose dismissal from Pakistan’s Supreme Court earlier this spring sparked a nationwide backlash that threatens Musharraf’s grip on power. Musharraf suspended Chaudhry March 9, leading to the largest political protests Pakistan has seen in 24 years. Pakistan’s lawyers, or “blackcoats” as Pakistanis have taken to calling them, were among the first to protest in the wake of Chaudhry’s suspension. Television images of lawyers battered by government police forces helped galvanize the nationwide [...]
Editor’s Note: Corridors of Power, penned by WPR Editor-at-Large Roland Flamini, appears in WPR every Monday. SORRY ABOUT THAT NO. 1 — It’s generally considered poor form in the international community for a foreign leader visiting a friendly country to have a private meeting with the leader of the opposition, but President George Bush wasn’t going to be in Rome and pass up a chance to spend quality time with prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Prior to Saturday’s presidential visit, the Italian government had made it clear to the White House that a meeting with Berlusconi would not be appreciated, and [...]
Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a new weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. GOING DIGITAL ON DARFUR — Amnesty International launched a new program Wednesday to monitor villages in Darfur in the hopes of putting pressure on the Sudanese government to admit a large United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force. Under the program, the rights group is using satellites to track some of the most vulnerable villages in war-ravaged Darfur, posting images online and urging members of the public across the world to log on to www.eyesondarfur.org and [...]
