Describing the protests as a "mutiny against Pakistan", the government today turned to Parliament for support as demonstrators continued to put pressure on a defiant Nawaz Sharif to quit as Prime Minister.
"This Parliament should remove the misconception that this is a democratic process. This is not a protest, not a dharna or a political gathering. This is mutiny against Pakistan," Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said at an emergency joint session of the Parliament convened to support the Prime Minister and discuss the current political crisis.
"They reached the gates of the Supreme Court, of Parliament... Yesterday they entered another state building and chanted slogans of 'Tahir-ul-Qadri Zindabad'," he said, referring to the storming of the PTV Islamabad office.
Nisar said the protesters had pistols, cutters, hammers, catapults, slingshots and sticks with nails fixed to the end.
"The men in this crowd are from a militant organisation," he said of those who stormed the PTV building.
