Lahore: Imran Khan, a former prime minister of Pakistan, issued a call for widespread "freedom" demonstrations on Sunday after his brief detention and arrest last week caused deadly unrest.
The former cricketing icon, who has been embroiled in numerous legal proceedings since being removed from office in April of last year, was released on bail on Friday after the Supreme Court ruled that his detention was illegal.
Furious over the arrest, Khan's supporters destroyed military property, blocked roads, and set fire to government buildings, which they claimed was the cause of Khan's downfall.
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"Freedom does not come without struggle. You must seize it. In a speech that was broadcast on YouTube Saturday night, he said, "You have to make sacrifices for it.
He urged his supporters to hold demonstrations "at the end of your streets and villages" throughout the nation on Sunday and declared he would resume his campaigning for immediate elections on Wednesday.
The leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has been fighting the military in a defiant manner for months.
He was reprimanded for saying senior officials were involved in an assassination attempt against him the previous year just hours before his arrest on Tuesday.
For nearly half of Pakistan's 75-year history, the country has been directly ruled by its powerful military, which also maintains control over the political system.
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The actions of the army chief have degraded our military. Not sure if he meant the current chief or his predecessor, whom Khan has held accountable for his ouster, Khan said from his home in Lahore, "It is because of him, not because of me.
He previously claimed to reporters that his arrest was the result of "one man, the army chief."
Khan, however, distanced himself from the violence committed against the military's facilities during the protests, denying that any of his party's members were involved, and called for an impartial investigation into the incident.
Khan's accusations are untrue, and the army issued a warning against trying to spread "misperceptions" about the organisation on Saturday.
According to police and hospitals, at least nine people died during the unrest last week. According to authorities, hundreds of police officers were hurt and more than 4,000 people were detained, mostly in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Since the protests started, at least 10 senior PTI leaders have been detained, according to one of Khan's attorneys. The unstable coalition's prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, issued a warning on Saturday requesting that anyone "facilitating, abetting, and perpetrating" the violence be apprehended within 72 hours.
During a visit to Lahore, he declared, "Those who displayed anti-state behaviour will be arrested and tried in anti-terrorist courts."Rana Sanaullah, the interior minister, has repeatedly vowed that police will detain Khan again before the upcoming elections in October. Khan is still incredibly popular.
According to the Islamabad High Court, Khan should be protected from arrest until Monday. Khan was elected in 2018 by an electorate weary of decades of dynastic politics thanks to his anti-corruption campaign.
According to unaffiliated analysts, the military helped bring him to power before he had a falling out with the generals.
Everyone is aware of who it is. Outside the home of the party chief, Mohsin Khan, a 21-year-old PTI supporter, told AFP that the military was responsible for Khan's arrest. The pushcart vendor went on to say that he wanted politicians and the military "to work together."
Khan has been trying to topple the coalition government for months by dissolving two provincial parliaments that he controlled and calling for early elections.
As of Saturday, mobile data services and access to social media sites like Facebook and YouTube, which were suspended shortly after Khan's arrest on Tuesday, had partially been restored throughout the nation.
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Currently, the nation appears to be setting itself up for a "progressively ugly showdown in the days and weeks to come," according to an editorial in Dawn, the nation's top English-language publication.
None of the institutional or political leaders involved in this tug-of-war "appears ready to take a step back," the statement read.