Nobody can stop us, I’ll make them all weep: Imran

ISLAMABAD: Reacting to the Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) order, PTI Chairman Imran on Thursday said nobody could stop them from staging a peaceful protest against the “corrupt rulers”.

“Come what may, our protest can’t be halted. If the courts stopped us, then the country would drift towards anarchy,” he said while talking to reporters here after chairing an emergency meeting soon after the police crackdown on his party workers.

He condemned the police crackdown as a ‘shameful act’ and vowed to take part in the AML President Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad’s rally at the Lal Haveli on Friday (today). He said the police crackdown showed how coward both Nawaz and Shahbaz were. He said the state institutions gain strength only in a true democracy.

Imran said they would challenge the IHC order in the Supreme Court and make the rulers weep, as it was their legal and democratic right to stage a peaceful protest.Senior lawyer Naeem Bokhari, who joined the PTI a few months back, said the order was given without listening to them.

“Is the high court empowered to give its order on a matter without hearing the other side?” he wondered. Women police were also seen in action against the PTI female supporters outside a hotel, where the party’s youth convention was being held.Senior leaders Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Asad  Umar were to address the function, but they could not and wondered under what law the police were resorting to violence against peaceful party workers, who did not carry arms or even batons. 

They billed the police action as the real face of dictators. Imran claimed that after the police violence even more than one million people would attend the PTI protest.

He said there would be countrywide peaceful protests on Friday (today) against the police crackdown on his party activists. He asked the opposition leaders, including the JUI-I chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Asfandyar Wali, if this was democracy that the entire nation had seen.

About his planned visit to Lal Haveli, he dared the government to arrest him but warned that it would not work if he was detained. “Both brothers, who were nurtured during military dictatorships, have today again proved that they are a product of dictatorship and behaved like Hosni Mubarak and Saddam Hussain on facing protests,” he alleged.

He said it had become even more important now to come out on November 2 to rid Pakistan of Sharifs and the corrupt gang that could go to any extent to save itself from accountability despite being caught red-handed for corruption, as had been revealed in the Panama Papers.

Imran charged that Nawaz could make Modi, Zardari and even Altaf his friend and defame the army for his vested interests.  The PTI chief said he was in pain when the PTI female workers were manhandled by the police at the behest of “shameless rulers”.  “I heap curse on both brothers, who have done so in the past as well to save themselves,” he said.

He said their party workers had been taken to police stations but the PTI lawyers were not being allowed to see them. He said even the media was denied access to them. Imran pointed out that they were receiving information from different parts of Pakistan about the arrest of party workers and warned that their movement would take a new turn.

Imran said they had pledged to remain peaceful provided the government remained peaceful. He said they were not the party of 2014 and had gained experience and trained workers. The PTI chief repeated his demand that Nawaz will have to either resign or present himself for accountability and said that in the so-called democracy the bank accounts of rulers increased while half of the country’s population could not afford food.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Assad Umar said the crackdown showed how nervous the rulers were. The two leaders said Nov 2 protest would be held at all costs whether they were inside or outside.