Information on whether arrests of and charges against opposition party members is common when a new party is elected [PAK12782]

Please find attached an excerpt from the Amnesty International report entitled Pakistan: Arrests of Political Opponents in Sindh province, August 1990-Early 1992, which provides information related to the above-mentioned subject.

The report identifies two patterns of political detention that it claims have emerged during the past two years in Sindh:

the arrest of individual opposition leaders, often through the use of successive detention orders based on apparently unrelated criminal charges, and mass arrests of opposition supporters (June 1992, 8).
The report states that numerous members of opposition political parties, including legislators, have been "subject to apparently politically motivated detention through repeated arrests" (Ibid., 13). It adds that political arrest has also taken the form of short-term detention and abduction by police, "apparently to prevent opposition leaders from participating in elections or parliamentary votes" (Ibid., 15). The report states that Amnesty International is concerned with the practice of repeatedly arresting persons and laying charges against them and by the fact that these detentions and charges have been prompted by the detainee's involvement in legitimate political activities and organizations within the opposition (June 1992, 24).

Additional and/or corroborative information on this subject is currently unavailable to the DIRB.

Reference


Amnesty International. June 1992. Pakistan: Arrests of Political Opponents in Sindh Province, August 1990-Early 1992. (AI Index: ASA 33/03/92). London: Amnesty International.

Attachment

Amnesty International. June 1992. Pakistan: Arrests of Political Opponents in Sindh Province, August 1990-Early 1992. (AI Index: ASA 33/03/92). London: Amnesty International, pp. 8, 13-29.

The Economist [New York]. 21 December 1992. "Rough Justice," p.5.