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Pakistani police have arrested more than 100 protesters, heightening tensions at the start of a march against the government.
Riot police turned back a convoy of about 300 activists as they tried to leave Karachi to march on the capital, Islamabad.
Buses were confiscated, and protesters beaten and manhandled into prison vans during the banned rally on Thursday.
Lawyers, opposition supporters and civil activists had planned to travel 1,500km from Karachi to Islamabad, demanding that Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, reinstate judges sacked by his predecessor Pervez Musharraf.
Anwar Ahmed, a police officer, said: "We have instructions not to allow any political activists to cross the barrier."
Banning protests
The government has banned protests in Punjab, the country's most important political constituency, and Sindh, where Karachi is located.
One lawyer, Rashid Razvi, said: "Our struggle will continue. If we are stopped from joining the long march, then other people will reach Islamabad secretly." Police then pushed him into a prison van.
Some Karachi protesters set light to a minibus, firing off volleys of gunfire and throwing stones, police said.
In Lahore, the capital of Punjab, about 2,000 lawyers, political workers and civil activists also rallied.
The Lahore and Karachi demonstrators are due to arrive in Islamabad, the federal capital, on Monday, where they hope to be joined by thousands of other protesters outside parliament.
Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said: "It is a test for the new government, as to whether it will be in a position to give people their democratic rights.
"Across the country there has been a heavy clampdown by the security agencies in spite of the fact that the prime minister said that there would be no problem with the march as long as it is peaceful."
Arrests made
Ghafoor Ahmed, vice-president of Pakistan's biggest religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, was among those detained in Karachi on Thursday.
A day earlier, police had rounded up about 300 people, including members of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan's main opposition party, in an attempt to stall the rally.
Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the PML-N and a former prime minister, had called for people to "change the destiny of Pakistan" by attending.
The PML-N quit the cabinet last year to protest over the new civilian government's failure to honor a deadline to reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry, the former supreme court justice, and other judges sacked by Musharraf.
In February, Pakistan's supreme court disqualified Sharif from contesting elections, triggering a power struggle between him and Zardari, two politicians who had briefly come together in the campaign to force Musharraf out.
Federal rule
The ruling forced Sharif's party out of power in Punjab, placing the province under central government control.
But in an apparent concession to Sharif, Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, said on Wednesday that the government wanted federal rule over the province to end.
Whichever party has the sufficient mandate to form the provincial government should take over, he said.
The PML-N has the most support in Punjab, although it does not have a clear majority to run the provincial government alone.
Raja Assad Hameed, of the Nation newspaper, said that many of the protesters are looking for the central government to relinquish its control over the province.
"They are coming to Islamabad to tell Zardari that the mandate in Punjab, the powerhouse of Pakistani politics, should be given back to the legitimate representatives of the people and that the governor's rule should be lifted from Punjab," he said.
"The situation could go anywhere from here; the government has lost its credibility and popularity very prematurely."
PHOTO CAPTION
Pakistani police arrest a lawyer during an anti-government protest rally in Karachi
Al-Jazeera
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