LAHORE, Pakistan — A crackdown by the Pakistani government to prevent a national demonstration and detain the country’s leading opposition figure collapsed on Sunday, and what had been a clash between the police and protesters transformed into a huge antigovernment rally.
In what analysts here called an unprecedented reversal by security forces, phalanxes of riot policemen here in Lahore melted away rather than continue to confront protesters who had rallied around the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, when he defied a house arrest order early Sunday.......
Mr. Sharif began the day under house arrest at his home outside Lahore, hemmed in by barbed wire and security roadblocks. But he denounced the crackdown as illegal and said he would move to address an opposition demonstration at the city center and continue with a national opposition march on the capital planned for Monday. He left his house in a convoy of cars that broke through a ring of police barriers.
Then the convoy reached the main thoroughfare in Lahore, known as The Mall, it was joined by truckloads of supporters, who waved banners and shouted slogans calling for the restoration of an independent judiciary. Apparently with the help of sympathetic police officials, Mr. Sharif’s convoy was able to move slowly toward the area around the General Post Office building, where riot police and protesters began scuffling.
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