Police detained Pakistani opposition figures and lawyers today as military ruler President Pervez Musharraf tried to stifle the outcry over the imposition of emergency powers.
The United States and other Western allies condemned General Musharraf's decision to announce emergency rule yesterday. Musharraf said he acted in response to rising Islamist militancy in nuclear-armed Pakistan and what he called a paralysis of government by judicial interference.
Most Pakistanis and foreign diplomats believe his main motive was to prevent the Supreme Court invalidating his October 6th re-election by parliament while still army chief.
General Musharraf, in a midnight televised address, said the country was in grave danger of becoming destabilised.
"I cannot allow this country to commit suicide," he said, after purging the Supreme Court of judges opposed to him and rounding up lawyers.
The United States, which regards Musharraf as a crucial ally against al-Qaeda in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan, had earlier urged Musharraf to avoid taking authoritarian measures.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who became a cause celebre after Musharraf suspended him eight months ago and was reinstated in July, was fired after refusing to take a fresh oath following the suspension of the constitution.
A lawyers' movement that emerged at the vanguard of an anti-government campaign last March called for a countrywide strike tomorrow to protest Musharraf's move.
Pakistan's English-language newspapers were unforgiving of the draconian measures that included a ban on any coverage "that defames, and brings into ridicule or disrepute the head of state" on pain of up to three years' jail.
"General Musharraf's second coup," was Dawn'sheadline. "It is martial law," the Daily Timessplashed across its front page. "He has sent the country into a tailspin just to save his job," the Nationsaid in an editorial.
There were no troops or large numbers of police on the streets of the capital, or the other main cities, Karachi, Lahore or Peshawar. But barricades blocked the main boulevard leading to the presidency building in Islamabad.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appealed today for restraint on all sides and said Musharraf must affirm that elections will take place.
General Musharraf had been promising to quit the army and become a civilian leader if he was given a second five-year term, but uncertainty over the court's decision had left the country in suspense and stock markets fell last week amid the uncertainty.
Pakistan's internal security has deteriorated sharply in recent months with a wave of suicide attacks, including an assassination attempt on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last month that killed 139 people. In July, Musharraf ordered troops to storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad to crush a Taliban-style movement based there. At least 105 people were killed in the raid and a wave of deadly militant attacks and suicide bombings followed in which more than 800 people have been killed.