Via the NYT: Musharraf Consolidates His Control With Arrests

Security forces were reported to have rounded up about 500 opposition party figures, lawyers and human rights advocates Sunday, and about a dozen privately television news stations remained off the air. International broadcasters, including the BBC and CNN, were also cut.

Doesn’t really sound like strikes at radical Islamists, now does it?

The crackdown, announced late Saturday night after General Musharraf suspended the Constitution, was clearly aimed at preventing public demonstrations that political parties and lawyers were organizing for Monday.

“They are showing zero tolerance for protest,” said Athar Minallah, a lawyer, and a former minister in the Musharraf government.

[…]

Police officers armed with tear gas broke up a meeting at the headquarters of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission in Lahore and took dozens of people away in police vans, including elderly women, school teachers and about 20 lawyers, according to people at the meeting. In all, about 80 lawyers were detained, and many others who faced arrest warrants remained in hiding, according to members of a nationwide lawyer’s lobby that has grown increasingly influential as an anti-Musharraf voice.

The head of the human rights commission, and one of Pakistan’s most prominent democratic figures, Asma Jahangir, was placed under house arrest Saturday night. Among others arrested were Javed Hashmi, the acting president of the political party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and workers of the political party of the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

[…]

Among the lawyers arrested was the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, who has opposed General Musharraf in legal arguments before the Supreme Court. Mr. Ahsan led the protests last spring over the firing of the Supreme Court Justice, Iftkhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

In terms of fighting Islamic extremism, this whole situation is likely quite counterproductive, as I fear that the following is quite correct:

“If you want to take the country away from Talibanization these are the people who can do it, the secular middle class,” Ms. Haq said.

And nothing says “authoritarian” like state control of media content:

On Sunday, [Prime Minister] Aziz said that the government would meet with television broadcasters to work out a “code of conduct.”

“The government is going to decide what the parameters are,” he said.