A flurry of SMS’s were posted on this blog which started of first on that I might actually be arrested by the police and my car impounded and a good 30 or so minutes later I posted that I was free to go credit to some intense on street side negotiations by the men and women of the People’s Resistance. The narration of the police arriving onto the scene is nothing glamorous quite simply we were in violation of section 144 imposed throughout the country, though the actual activists were barely 5-6 on one area the others were walking along the beach talking to people.
People’s Resistance, a group of concerned citizens of Karachi who have joined hands to raise their voice against the Martial Law in Pakistan had organized a public out reach program at Sea View, our intention was simply to engage in dialog with the common man and convince them that its time to stand up. The gathering kind of got into a crowd as by standers wanted to come watch whats going on, as a few artists were simply sitting on the side spray painting banners aka Graffiti art. The 5-6 artists kind of attracted too much attention and it in turn led to the arrival of the police, as soon as the police arrived, I impulsively started snapping pictures to record the heated attitude of the police and in all the commotion they saw me talking pictures and hit out at me (at that moment I thought I had actually snapped his angry face and upheld hand but on reviewing them later I realized to have only gotten his feat as the shutter went off too late). They soon rounded up all the banners but had resolved to arrest me.
Seeing the chaos the entire team of People’s Resistance converged on the scene and after 30-40 minutes of intense argument they managed to barely convince the SHO to let me and my car go. I might not claim that all this was a victory in anyway, I think I was plain and simple lucky and the insitence of the other fellow activists saved the day, it has been People’s Resistance goal to not engage with the police in anyway but in our defense we were a limited group but the crowd threw our organization into disarray and we could not disburse before the arrival of the police. IN the end all is well that ends well, yes we live to fight another day – DEFY THE DICTATOR
—- this is a draft post and is being edited —-
Comments
One response to “People’s Resistance faces Police Resistance”
Doc, I agree it was a mistake of “tact” and nothing else. And I think you and the others carried it off very well. There was conviction, peace, and most of all solidarity.
The other very positive thing was that the 50 to 70 passers by who stopped to look, agreed unanimously (well, except one !) with the whole idea of not accepting a dictatorship.