Countrywide lawyers protest against Karachi killings

The lawyer community on Thursday protested the targeted murder of their three colleagues who were killed in what police and government authorities described as a sectarian attack.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Three lawyers, among them a father and his son, were shot dead and a fourth wounded on Wednesday after armed motorcyclists sprayed bullets at their car in Arambagh area. The slain lawyers were identified as Shakeel Jafferi, Kafeel Jafferi and Badar Munir.
Police officials and Sindh Home Minister Manzoor Wasan said the attack was sectarian in nature.
“We have noticed a few sectarian killings lately, which are aimed at creating chaos in Karachi,” he told reporters.
Also, the Sindh High Court (SHC) has taken a suo moto notice of the assassinations, summoning Inspector General (IG) Sindh Police and Director General Rangers, seeking a report from the officials on Wednesday’s murders and law and order situation in the city.
Meanwhile, the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry also vehemently condemned the murders.
The incident prompted Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) and other national bodies of the legal fraternity to announce a nation-wide strike and court boycott in protest against the incident.
Responding the call, law practitioners in Karachi boycotted proceedings of City Court and Malir Court on Thursday, and took to roads, staging sit-in on M.A Jinnah Road.
They chanted slogans against the government for what they called its failure in providing security to the lawyers and curbing target killing incidents in the metropolis.
The lawyer leaders on the occasion announced a three-day court boycott in Sindh, and demanded immediate arrest of the culprits.
In Islamabad and Rawalpindi, the lawyers boycotted courts, expressing solidarity with their colleagues in Karachi. They also condemned sectarian and politically-motivated attacks against Karachi’s lawyers.
Moreover, a similar strike was also observed in high courts and civil courts of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, where the lawyers demanded of the government to give compensation to the victim families.
According to the Karachi Bar Council, 20 lawyers were killed in Sindh last year, 15 of them in Karachi.