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Pakistan has put the capital Islamabad under lockdown as thousands of supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan marched towards the city to demand his release, in the latest threat to the legitimacy of the military-backed government.
Protesters from across the country are descending on Islamabad in support of Khan, who remains a widely popular figure in Pakistan and was imprisoned last year on corruption charges.
He has been acquitted or received bail in five cases, but faces criminal charges in more than 100 others, ranging from graft to terrorism, according to his party. Khan has denied all of the charges, which his supporters say are politically motivated.
The latest protests, which began on Sunday, are the largest in the country since elections in February, when candidates loyal to Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party won the most seats but were blocked from power by the military and traditional dynastic parties.
Hundreds of PTI members have also been imprisoned since May 2023, after riots that targeted military installations.
Khan’s party has demanded the government, now led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, release “political prisoners” and “return the stolen mandate”, a reference to allegations that the election was rigged against the PTI, according to a statement posted to Khan’s X account on Tuesday.
Sharif’s military-backed government has responded by bringing Islamabad to a standstill for the second time in as many months. Police sealed off main routes on Saturday with shipping containers, and riot police and paramilitary forces were deployed throughout the city.
Mobile and internet services were also blocked in “areas with security concerns”, according to an interior ministry statement on X, which is banned in Pakistan and only accessible via a virtual private network.
“Whoever comes, you must arrest them, do not let them go,” Mohsin Naqvi, Pakistan’s interior minister, told a gathering of police officers on Saturday that was broadcast on television.
Islamabad’s High Court last week also ruled the PTI gathering as unlawful. Officials have banned gatherings of five or more people for two months.
Authorities also closed many of the roads leading out of Lahore, Khan’s hometown and political stronghold, as they hope to throttle convoys headed towards the capital 400km away. Local authorities have dug trenches into motorways in other parts of the country.
The PTI estimated at least 3,000 party members, including three parliamentarians, had been arrested since last week. Pakistan’s interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite the authorities’ efforts, roads leading into Islamabad were filled with thousands of supporters carrying PTI flags on Monday, and videos on social media showed protesters using tractors to remove containers from the roads.
“This is a case of a critical mass of the population rejecting any notion of a public mandate for the government,” said Michael Kugelman, a fellow at the Wilson Center think-tank in Washington.
The protesters “are coming out to call for Khan’s release and condemn the government’s policies, but at the root of their anger is what they regard as the illegitimate government”.
The march is the latest sign of political instability in Pakistan, as Sharif’s government grapples with multiple insurgencies in resource-rich provinces along the border with Afghanistan.
Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US and UN, said the government’s inability to satisfy the PTI’s grievances risked becoming a “fatal distraction” amid a deteriorating security situation.
Last week, at least 70 people were killed in sectarian fighting in north-west Pakistan. A separate series of terrorist attacks in Balochistan have shaken the confidence of Chinese and other foreign investors.
The lockdown of Islamabad also coincided with a state visit on Monday by Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko, in an additional embarrassment for Sharif’s administration as it seeks to court trade and investment for its cash-strapped economy.
“Hitting Pakistan’s overall economical stability is no service to Pakistan,” Jam Kamal Khan, the commerce minister, wrote on X, criticising the PTI protests.