Punjab has banned gatherings of five or more people across the province from 13 to 17 September (Express Tribune).
What the order does
Prohibits assemblies of five or more in public places, processions, carrying weapons, and inciting participation in unlawful assembly. Weddings, funerals, prayers at mosques, courts, government institutions and law enforcement on duty are exempt.
It was issued by the home department under section 144(6) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898.
The stated reason
“Serious threats to public peace” and “imminent security threats” from terrorist organisations targeting public gatherings. “Law enforcement agencies had requested immediate preventive measures.”
The timing
The order precedes a Punjab tour by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi to promote PTI’s 27 September protest and long march.
PTI says 54 workers from districts in southern Punjab were arrested during a mobilisation drive.
Reading the stated reason against the timing
The security justification is not implausible on its face. Pakistan has had a bad month, and gatherings are targets.
But a threat from militants is a reason to protect a gathering, not to forbid one — and the order runs for exactly the five days of an opposition chief minister’s political tour, ending on the 17th. It does not cover the 20th, when Jamaat-i-Islami marches over the petroleum levy, or the 27th, when PTI marches.
An order that expires before both announced protests but covers the week a rival is campaigning is difficult to read as a counterterrorism measure.
The law it rests on
Section 144 is a colonial provision from 1898, written for magistrates facing imminent disorder. It requires urgency and is meant to be temporary and narrow. It has become, in practice, the routine instrument for managing political assembly in Pakistan — renewed, province-wide, for stretches at a time.
Article 16 of the Constitution guarantees peaceful assembly, subject to “reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of public order”. Whether a five-day province-wide ban on five people standing together is reasonable is a question a court could answer. None has been asked to.
The wider picture this week
This newspaper reported that Rawalpindi and Islamabad have sought 15,000 additional personnel and 1,000 containers, that about 500 loaded container vehicles were impounded, and that 30-plus PTI activists were detained under public order powers.
What is not established
No specific threat, group or target has been identified in the order as reported. Neither PTI nor the KP chief minister’s office had responded at the time of writing, and no legal challenge has been filed.
[Image: The Express Tribune]
