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These are not your ordinary Pakistani teens. These high school students, probably, belong to the "highest" strata of the Pakistani society and the police knows that. They are not manhandled or beaten up with sticks when pushed inside police vans. In Pakistan, the list of people the police can manhandle might include white-collar lawyers, but not these kids. There is considerable hesitance from the police in the beginning and looks like later on they got the green light from someone very high up to round up these kids. This is a scene you would not normally see in Pakistan, a country where some people are more equal than others and the Islamabadi elite definitely qualify for that. |
This rounding up means that Musharraf and his close allies are willing to deal with pissed off high ranking government officials and businessmen on the detention of their kids, but they will not allow a small innocent protest by school children in the capital. A clear sign of desperation, which is only going to turn more and more people against him.
Kudos to these little souls who seem to have a better sense of civic duty than most of the people in the capital. The students were released after two hours, we are told. The youngest student rounded up was just 12 years old and they were detained even after they agreed to disperse and were on their way back home. A news story about this incident is here.
