LAHORE: A large number of workers of Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) on Friday broke through a police cordon blocking main entrances to Model Town, where the secretariat of Dr Tahirul Qadri's Minhajul Quran is located.
Television footage showed PAT workers armed with clubs chasing policemen stationed around the Model Town area. The youth wings of the PAT and the Tehreek Minhajul Quran armed with clubs were roaming the streets around the secretariat.
DIG operations Lahore Haider Ashraf said that the barricades will not be removed at any cost, and that an additional contingent of law enforcement personnel has been called in to quell the situation.
Lahore police has been carrying out an extensive crackdown on PAT office-bearers and activists with hundreds of detentions, and has blocked all entrances to Model Town to bar PAT workers from reaching the secretariat.
Qadri has announced that they will hold a ‘Martyrs’ Day’ on Aug 10 in protest of the killings of PAT workers in violent clashes in Model Town in June.
The cleric-turned-political activist has vowed to topple and jail government ministers by the end of the month.
Speaking to reporters earlier today, Qadri said the Punjab government was resorting to ‘state-terrorism’ in their crackdown against activists and supporters trying to reach his Model Town Residence.
The PAT chief claimed the government was carrying out mass-detentions of PAT workers and had blockaded all roads to his residence, turning the situation in Model Town similar to that in Gaza.
He said such tactics by the government will not stop ‘the revolution’.
