The conflict erupted when former Prime Minister Imran Khan was holed up in his house
Clashes erupted overnight between supporters of former Pakistan minister Imran Khan and police in Lahore (East), where he has been held at his home despite attempts to arrest him.
Clashes outside Imran Khan’s house on March 14, 2023.
AFP
Although he remains highly popular and hopes to return to power in October’s parliamentary elections, Imran Khan was ousted in April 2022 by a no-confidence motion and has since faced a number of legal proceedings.
Police clashed with militants from Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, Pakistan Justice Movement) party near his residence in Zaman Park throughout the night, firing teargas shells and pelting stones thrown by angry mobs.
Earlier in the day, the former head of government released a video of himself sitting in front of Pakistan and PTI flags at a table decorated with used tear gas canisters. I am telling the whole nation today that they (police) are ready again and they will come back,” he said. “They will use tear gas against our people and do other things like that, but you know there is no reason for them to do that. should.”
Videos circulating on social media – mostly posted by official PTI accounts – show several bloodied supporters and others fighting with tear gas. A PTI official tweeted that first aid kits are “urgently needed” at Zaman Park. A party account also posted a video showing tear gas being fired into Imran Khan’s garden, but police did not appear to have breached the gate or the wall.
“unprecedented”
“The way the police are going after our people is unprecedented,” said Imran Khan. “Water cannon, tear gas (…) they bombarded the interior of the house where the servants and women were,” he added.
This is the second time this month that police have been sent from the capital Islamabad to Imran Khan’s house in Lahore to execute an arrest warrant, citing security reasons, bypassing multiple court summonses.
“We have executed an arrest warrant and have come to arrest him,” senior Islamabad police official Syed Shahjad Nadeem Bukhari told reporters outside Imran Khan’s residence. Hundreds of his party activists, some brandishing sticks, throwing stones and draped in red and green PTI flags, greeted the police at the former head of government’s residence. .
Police used water cannons to disperse the crowd and tried to enter the building. PTI vice-chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters that his party wanted to remain “calm”. He insisted that the police issue an arrest warrant for him and said he would “try to find a solution to avoid bloodshed”.
Imran Khan, 70, has been summoned to court on charges of failing to declare all the diplomatic gifts he received during his tenure and reselling some of them to make money. The first attempt to arrest the former cricket champion failed as he was “reluctant to surrender”, police explained without elaborating.
Since his ouster, he has scaled up large rallies and political speeches, or sought to dissolve the two provincial assemblies controlled by his party and seek early elections, which the government denies. In November, he was shot and injured during a political rally. He did not provide evidence for his allegations and attributed the assassination attempt to his successor, Shebaz Sharif, and a senior military intelligence officer.
Pakistan, home to over 220 million people, is in the grip of serious economic problems such as inflation, insufficient foreign exchange reserves and deadlock in negotiations with the IMF. The security situation has worsened with a series of deadly attacks on police linked to the Pakistani Taliban.
AFP
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