Tag: Protest

BAGHDAD - Thousands of protesters massed on Friday in cities and towns across Iraq after streaming in on foot in defiance of vehicle bans for rallies over corruption, unemployment and poor public services. The demonstrations come after nationwide protests in more than a dozen cities a week ago, which spurred Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to give his cabinet 100 days to shape up or face the sack. On Friday, a crowd of about 2,000 people had descended Baghdad's Tahrir Square by early

QUETTA - Lawyers in Balochistan continued to protest for the fifth consecutive day on Thursday against the police's failure to find two abducted judges and four lawyers. They boycotted court proceedings throughout the province after 11am and protested outside Quetta Press Club, shouting slogans against the governments.
Balochistan Bar General Secretary Aminullah Kakar told the protesters that the government had failed to find the abducted judges and lawyers and there was no writ

GAZA CITY - Banks in the Gaza Strip closed on Thursday for a day of protest after gunmen allegedly protected by Hamas police twice robbed one bank of tens of thousands of dollars. Officials at the Palestine Monetary Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah said armed men forced their way into a branch of the Palestine Investment Bank in Gaza City on Tuesday and again on Wednesday.
"Yesterday (Wednesday) and the day before, a group of armed men wearing military clothing and

SAHIWAL - The activists of political and religious parties as well as civil society members took out a rally against the increase in petroleum products. Speaking on this occasion, the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, Tehrik-e-Insaf, Muslim League-N and different religious parties said that the increase in the petroleum prices would raise the rates of all the household items in the market while the poor would be forced to commit suicide. They demanded government withdraw the decision and

Lahore - The outdoor patient departments (OPDs) of key hospitals of the city remained closed on Wednesday because junior doctors abiding by the strike, announced by the Young Doctors Association (YDA), refused to accommodate incoming patients.
Hospitals affected by the strike include Mayo Hospital, Ganga Ram Hospital, Services Hospital, Children Hospital and Jinnah Hospital. After taking to the streets on early Tuesday the YDA had announced a strike in all hospitals throughout

WASHINGTON - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday that protests across the Arab world have dealt a major setback to Al Qaeda militants and Iran by endorsing democratic change.
"It basically gives the lie to Al Qaeda's claim that the only way to get rid of authoritarian governments is through extremist violence," Gates told reporters. With a wave of unrest and protests toppling regimes in Egypt and Tunisia and prompting reforms elsewhere, Gates said grassroots

SANAA - Huge crowds poured onto the streets of the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Tuesday in what the opposition hailed as the biggest protest yet against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's three-decade rule.
The veteran leader, whose supporters staged a large counter-demonstration, dismissed the opposition rally as a copycat action mimicking protests in other Arab countries that he charged had been fanned by Israel and the US. Saleh then sacked the governors of five provinces where

ISLAMABAD - The Somali refugees on Monday staged a protest demonstration against the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the affiliated NGOs accusing them of violating their fundamental human rights in Pakistan.
A large number of refuges, including women and children, gathered in front of the Diplomatic Enclave in the federal capital and participated in the demonstration which lasted for four hours.
They said the UNHCR and the NGOs were not providing

KARACHI - The Pakistan Hindu Foundation (PHF) -A rights group representing the Hindus of Sindh - has demanded that Minority Affairs Minister Mohan Lal Kohistani should be sacked immediately as "he has failed to provide security to the Hindus of the province."
PHF President DM Maharaj also announced that a protest drive would be launched against the Sindh government from March 10, if it does not meet the demand. "The PPP has always claimed that it believes in providing rights to

BEIJING/SHANGHAI - An online call for anti-government protests across China on Sunday instead brought an emphatic show of force by police determined to deter any buds of the kind of unrest that has shaken the Middle East.
Lines of police checked passers-by and warned away foreign photo journalists in downtown Beijing and Shanghai after a US-based Chinese website spread calls for Chinese people to emulate the "Jasmine Revolution" sweeping the Middle East and stage gatherings in

Quetta - The lawyer community protested outside the Quetta Press Club on Saturday against the abduction of their four colleagues, announcing to initiate protest demonstrations and rallies on daily basis till the safe recovery of abductees.
They also threatened to besiege the chief minister's house against the extra-judicial arrest of lawyers and political workers and recovery of mutilated bodies of missing persons. The demonstration was jointly organized by all three lawyers'

DHAKA - Scores of dog lovers shouting "Don't kill, sterilise" marched through Dhaka on Saturday to protest Bangladesh's brutal canine culling, which involves breaking the animals' necks. Carrying banners with slogans, the protesters linked hands in front of the Dhaka City Corporation, the main government agency responsible for the culling thousands of dogs every year.
Organisers, who arranged the protest using media such as Facebook and Twitter, said they believed it was the

LAHORE - The World Pasban-e-Khatam-e-Nabuwat staged a protest on Thursday against threats and attacks on families of victims of US national Raymond Davis outside the Lahore Press Club. The protesters chanted anti-US slogans and burnt US flags. Addressing the protest, Mumtaz Awan said that after Davis' arrest, terrorist attacks have stopped in the country, as all US spies have gone underground. He accused the US, Israel and India of hatching conspiracies in the country.

ATHENS - Greek police clashed with protesters on Wednesday as around 100,000 workers, pensioners and students marched to parliament in protest at austerity policies aimed at helping Greece cope with a huge debt crisis. Riot police fired scores of rounds of teargas and flash bombs at protesters hurling petrol bombs, choking the main Syndagma square with smoke and sending crowds of striking protesters running for cover.
Public and private sector employees' 24-hour strike grounded

HAFIZABAD - The protest of Water Management Department's employees, demanding increase in their salaries, entered the 8th day. The joint action committee leaders, Zafar Iqbal, Mazaffar Siddique and Amir Shahzad said the government was neither regularising employees nor was it raising their salaries though highly educated engineers, agriculture experts, sub-engineers and computer programmers, serving in the department.
They added that 2,200 families of these employees were facing

LAHORE - Students of the University of Education on Tuesday protested against the unrest being created in the varsity by some students of the IT Department allegedly on the instigation of expelled director of the Science and Technology Division, Dr Anwaarur Rehman Pasha, according to a press release.
According to details, some students of the IT Department forced their way into other departments and started intimidating the students to join their protest. The miscreants also

SANAA - Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since 1978, on Monday said only defeat at the ballot box will make him quit, even as MPs joined thousands of protesters in Sanaa calling for his departure. In the country's south, police shot dead a protester in the regional capital, Aden, where protests have raged killing 12 people and wounding dozens since February 16, medics and witnesses said.
"If they want me to quit, I will only leave through the ballot box," Saleh told