Ethics Newsline®

“Barbed-wire barricades surround the residence, and all phone lines are cut. Even the water connection to my residence has been periodically turned off. I am being persuaded to resign and to forego my office, which is what I am not prepared to do…. There can be no democracy without an independent judiciary, and there can be no independent judge in Pakistan until the action of Nov. 3 is reversed. Whatever the will of some desperate men, the struggle of the valiant lawyers and civil society of Pakistan will bear fruit. They are not giving up.”

– From an open letter released last week by Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the former chief justice of Pakistan, who was removed from office and placed under virtual house arrest by Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf shortly before a supreme court ruling that was expected to find it illegal for Musharraf to continue running the country. Musharraf imposed a state of emergency, suspended the constitution, shut down the nation’s private TV stations, and jailed several justices and lawyers of the supreme court, sparking a groundswell of anger and discontent that continues to simmer, according to the New York Times.

Source: New York Times, Jan. 31.

For more information, see: Text of Chaudhry’s open letter, via the New York Times — Related Newsline story, Dec. 3, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007.