Mahtab Bashir
ISLAMABAD: Adjacent to the President House and Parliament House in the Red Zone area, D-Chowk is a bustling town square at the crossroads of Jinnah Avenue and Constitution Avenue in Islamabad.
It is a spacious public square, near the official residences of the president and prime minister, as well as the Parliament House and the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It derives its name from its distinctive D-shaped design, located near the Parliament House.
But at the same time, it has a significant history of protests, most recently featuring a violent demonstration orchestrated by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI). Once remembered for an annual graceful gathering of National Armed Forces, marking Pakistan Day (23rd March) with a full-fledged display of armaments, D-Chowk has now become an attractive spot for the protesters.
Indubitably, the protestors exercise their right to the freedom of assembly, guaranteed in the Constitution, but at times, it jeopardises the fundamental right of the citizens to live in peace.
In retrospect, it all began back in July 1980 when Mufti Jafar Hussain — a religious scholar hailing from the Shia sect — took out a rally against the promulgation of the Zakat and Ushr Ordinance imposed by the military dictator General Muhammad Ziaul Haq. The protesters occupied the Pak Secretariat building.
Subsequently, the government surrendered to their demands and exempted the members of the Shia sect from paying Zakat to the State.
Since then, D-Chowk has evolved into a vibrant stage for voices seeking change of governments. Lately, D-Chowk has been given many names, certainly unofficially, such as ‘Tahrir Square of Islamabad’, ‘Gaza Chowk’ and ‘Khooni Chowk’, the latter which can rightly be translated as the ‘bloody square’.
In the years that followed, the D-Chowk turned into a central hub for political demonstrations.
On 17 August 1989, during the first term of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister, the nine-party opposition alliance — Islami Jamhoori Ittehad — led by Mian Nawaz Sharif moved towards the Red Zone, demanding Bhutto’s resignation.
On 16 November 1992, the opposition parties again marched towards D-Chowk, this time led by Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader in the National Assembly. They were protesting against the alleged rigging of the 1990 general elections.
The next year on 16 July 1993, the opposition parties, again led by Benazir Bhutto, took out a massive rally which moved towards the Pak Secretariat. As a result, then Chief of Army Staff General Abdul Waheed Kakar, intervened and asked both Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan to resign from their offices to resolve the political turmoil caused by the power struggle between two highest offices of the country.
Later on, in March 2007, the lawyers’ movement started against former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf against his decision to unceremoniously depose the top judge of the country, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
The lawyer fraternity gathered at the Constitution Avenue and D-Chowk. In the wake of this movement, espoused by major opposition parties of the country, General Musharraf imposed ‘emergency’ in November 2007 and sent the top judge packing for the second time.
In March 2014, 30 Baloch nationalists, who started their journey from Quetta in October 2013, arrived outside the Parliament building at D-Chowk after covering a long distance of 2000-kilometre on foot. They were demanding the release of their “arbitrarily-disappeared” dear ones allegedly rounded up by the security agencies. However, they appeared to be unable to sustain the pressure of the government and could not continue their protest outside the Parliament House for long.
On 14th August 2014, one of the biggest marches of the country’s history named as ‘Tsunami March’ — jointly led by the PTI and Pakistan Awami Tehrik chiefs — started from Lahore and moved towards the Parliament House, marking their indignation against what they called rigging in the general elections of 2013.
They reached Islamabad and staged their sit-in at D-Chowk which continued for 126 days. It ended on 16th December 2014 in the backdrop of the bloodied terrorist attack at the Army Public School in Peshawar, which left around 150 people dead, most of them students.
On 27 March 2016, thousands of protestors from religious groups camped out at D-Chowk for several days after observing the Chelum of Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, who was executed following a court conviction for assassinating the Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, in January 2011.
In February 2022, Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari led his ‘Awami March’, which commenced from Karachi and ended at the D-Chowk.
Most recently, PTI staged a protest at the D-Chowk on the call of its founding chairman, Imran Khan. The protest, codenamed the ‘Final Call’ started on November 24, which reached D-Chowk on 26th November where it was dispersed after a massive crackdown by the security personnel.
Political and Constitutional provisions vis-à-vis right to assembly and protest apart, the residents of the localities near D-Chowk complain that these protests bring their daily lives to a grinding halt. “I am a student.
Whenever [political forces attempt to besiege Islamabad] I go out with my family for shopping, I have to wait for hours on the roads, which not only wastes my time but also significantly increases my fuel expenses,” says Ahad Ahmed, a resident of Islamabad.
He suggests designating a space for the people where they can mark their protest without disturbing the daily life of the capital city dwellers.
Masood Zaman, 53, a government servant lives in F-6/4 sector of Islamabad. He feels traumatised due to the ‘clean-up operation’ carried out on the protestors on the 26th of November. “There was already a sense of fear among the residents [of Islamabad] who witnessed a wave of terrorism. The terrorist attack on Marriott Hotel in 2008 was the bloodiest of them all,” he says, adding that the recent ‘cleanup’ operation caused a similar sense of fear.
Likewise, the business community is also at the receiving end. Traders in Islamabad have voiced significant concerns, with many stating that their businesses are on the verge of collapse due to the challenges and disruptions caused by protests at D-Chowk.
We are on the brink of bankruptcy, complains Hashir Khan, a retailer in the Blue Area. “Our operations badly suffer [due to these demonstrations], and we cannot even afford to pay the salaries of our employees. We request the protesters to hold their demonstrations outside the city, most preferably, at the Parade Avenue in I-8.”
Mannan, an employee at a mobile store in Islamabad, agrees with Hashir. “We are struggling to make ends meet. During the protests, the constant presence of containers severely restricts the mobility of citizens. The government must ban all forms of protests within Islamabad, especially at the D-Chowk.”
