received today:

It’s all go on Pakistan. President Musharraf arrives on these shores tomorrow (Friday) and is due to meet Gordon Brown on Monday. And then there are the elections scheduled in Pakistan on 18 February.

The likelihood of those elections being free and fair elections looks pretty unlikely at the moment. During the recent State of Emergency, Musharraf dismissed most of the senior judges and replaced them all with his cronies. He’s also been responsible for detaining without trial thousands of lawyers, journalists and human rights activists.

Tomorrow, we’re issuing a press release condemning Musharraf’s actions and stating our belief that Pakistan is on the brink of “political catastrophe”. The press release should be up on the Amnesty site first thing.

It goes into more detail about the wide range of human rights violations that are ongoing there and also what we’re calling for. We could really do with these issues being spread far and wide, so it would be great if you could blog on this.

In the meantime, details of our concerns can be found here.

Then on Saturday (26th January), Amnesty is taking to the streets with a demonstration outside Downing Street. The event is being led by lawyers in support of their colleagues in Pakistan and starts at noon. Feel free to spread the word and do come along if you can.