I diaried about Pakistani lawyers leading a long march for restoration of independent judiciary in Pakistan yesterday: Why a Long March in Pakistan should matter to US
Follow me below the fold for some updates on the march and some pictures from the movement.
The march started off from different parts of the country and over the period of 4 days converged in Islamabad. Here is a map of how these processions came together courtesy of Pklongmarch blog:
Yesterday the march concluded peacefully in Islamabad making a statement that the nation wants an independent judiciary. To get here, some people travelled as many as 1000 miles by road in 100-110 degree temperature. When finally converging towards the parliament, the crowd was so enormous that it took them 10 hours to travel 6 miles. No reliable estimates were available for the number of people joining the march but the number is believed to be in hundreds of thousands.
This march has been affectionately dubbed as penguins' revolution in some quarters of media highlighting the role lawyers' have played.
Some pictures from the march below taken from this youtube video:
In front of the parliament, participants of the march stayed assembled for hours as they listened to passionate speeches and chanted slogans for independent judiciary and against Musharraf. At the end, many participants wanted to have a sit-in until the judiciary was restored. The lawyers leadership, however, thought that this would not be practical as most people have their jobs and homes to go back to and they did not want to turn a rally of hundreds of thousands of people into a sit-in by only few thousand people. They said that people are welcome to do a sit-in on their own but the march has achieved its purpose and will now go back to the towns and cities it came from.
Here is a report from Al-Jazeera:
Another video courtesy of YouTube: What's remarkable is that the march was peaceful. No riots. No burning or trashing of government or public property as is the norm. Kudos to the participants of the march and their leadership for peacefully sending a strong message to the government that the nation wants an independent judiciary. And for teaching a new generation in Pakistan how to mobilize for a cause.