Pakistani judge speaks out

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As lawyers protested for a second day in Pakistan on Tuesday, the ousted chief justice of the country's Supreme Court urged them to continue to defy de facto martial law imposed by the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

"The lawyers should convey my message to the people to rise up and restore the constitution," the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, told dozens of lawyers on speakerphone at a meeting of the Islamabad Bar Association. "I am under arrest now, but soon I will also join you in your struggle."

The chief justice's defiance came as protests and arrests continued Tuesday, with the police arresting 50 lawyers in the eastern city of Lahore and 42 in Multan, a city about 200 miles southwest of Lahore, where lawyers clashed with the police.

More than 100 lawyers were injured in street battles in which the police beat lawyers with batons and lawyers hurled stones at police officers.

With hundreds of lawyers and human rights activists already in jail, protests were smaller on Tuesday than on the previous day. At least 2,000 people have been rounded up by the authorities, among them 500 to 700 lawyers, according to lawyers and political officials.

It was unclear how Chaudhry, who was fired on Saturday and is under house arrest, gained access to a cell phone. In addition to the call to the lawyers on Tuesday, he has been calling Pakistani newspaper journalists, who are defying an emergency order that prohibits coverage that "brings into ridicule or disrepute" Musharraf and other officials.

How long the lawyers can keep up their demonstrations without the support of opposition political parties, which so far have been lying low, remains in question.

On Tuesday night, the leader of the biggest opposition political party, Benazir Bhutto, flew to Islamabad to meet with the leaders of other civilian political parties to discuss strategy. At a press conference, she ruled out talks with Musharraf. "The talks are off," she said. "Instead of going toward democracy, we ended up with martial law."