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The 2007 Karachi riots, also known as Black Saturday riots, were a series of violent clashes between rival political activists in Karachi. The unrest began as the recently suspended chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry arrived at the Jinnah International Airport on 12 May 2007. Gunfights and clashes erupted across the provincial capital as Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Awami National Party (ANP) activists who supported the judge and the pro-government Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) activists took to the streets against each other.Government machinery was used to blocked all major roads. Police was accomplice and a silent spectator to this gory spectacle.Even media was under firing at Guru mandir(Business Recoreder Road) when MQM activists began firing at AAJ tv headquarters which was shown on live television. Chaudhry's supporters had announced a public rally to welcome the judge while at the same time, the MQM also announced a demonstration of their own to protest against the politicisation of the issue of judge's suspension. The MQM made plans to deliberately converge at the mausoleum of Muhammad Ali Jinnah where the chief justice was to make an appearance to address a lawyers' convention and a bar association meeting at the 50th anniversary of the Sindh High Court Bar Association. Before the city-wide riots escalated, several roads were cordoned off and all routes to the airport were blocked to avoid clashes between groups. In the carnage that ensued, armed groups did a lot of carnage, cars were burnt and buildings smashed into while the ensuing gunfights left more than 40 people killed with several hundred injured and arrested. The violence continued for several days, culminating in events that led to the historic Lawyers' Movement. Several law makers and analysts have since questioned the incompetence of the city's security apparatus on the day of the riots and the complicity of MQM in giving rise to the riots. The MQM officially denied starting the chaos and blamed it on the PPP, ANP, Punjabi Pakhtun Ittehad (PPI) and Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N) activists. ==Background== (詳細はchief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and the Pakistani government, particularly with regard to the Pakistan Steel Mills corruption case where the chief justice ruled against the sale of the state-owned steel mills at a "throw-away price". Issues pertaining to the privatisation of the state-owned steel mills upset Shaukat Aziz, who served as the prime minister under the Musharraf administration.〔 What irked president Pervez Musharraf however was the controversial Missing Persons case that found Pakistan's intelligence agencies (including the FIA and the ISI) to be complicit in the forced disappearances of up to 400 people (including terror suspects and human rights activists) without due process since 2001. Under Chaudhry's leadership, the courts had increasingly started "exercising independence from the government"〔 when it ordered the security agencies to produce the missing people in court.〔 When the Musharraf administration asked the judge to quit, Chaudhry refused to go.〔 On 9 March 2007, Musharraf had no other choice but to suspend Chaudhry from his post for alleged and unspecified charges of misconduct and misuse of authority. The sacking of the head of the judiciary sparked bloody protests throughout Pakistan and "edged the country towards a constitutional crisis".〔 The civil unrest grew with regards to the validity of the allegations as well as doubts as to whether Musharraf had the power to suspend the chief justice. It was on these grounds that Chaudhry waged a legal battle in the Supreme Court seeking his reinstatement. He called his suspension a "thinly veiled assault on the independence of judiciary in Pakistan". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「2007 Karachi riots」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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