Bilawal asks parliamentarians to help farmers get their rights
ISLAMABAD: Scores of peasants gathered outside National Press Club (NPC) on Friday to press their demand for immediate release of their fellows and grant of ownership rights for those who have worked at Okara Farms for last many decades.
The protesters including around 25 affected farmers — men and women — who traveled all the way from different villages in Okara to the federal capital, along with dozens of activists, students and working-class residents of Islamabad said the current stand-off arose when Anjuman Muzaaren Punjab (AMP) planned to hold a Peasants Convention in Okara to mark the International Day of Peasants.
They said over 4,000 villagers have been charged under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance and Anti-Terrorism Act for trying to hold the Peasants Convention.
According to the written material provided by Anjuman Mazaaren Punjab (AMP), the land of the Okara Farms comprising 17,013 acres was first leased to the British Indian Army by the Punjab government in 1913 for 20 years for ‘military requirements’.
It said, “This lease was renewed in 1933 only for a period of five years. However, the Ministry of Defence (under British rule) continued to pay rent for these lands till 1943.The possession of these lands was automatically transferred to the Pakistan Ministry of Defence after partition of the sub-continent.”
“In 2000, the farms administration began a process of shifting the peasants status from tenants to contract farmers, which was not accepted by the peasants who tried to resist this process. They formed Anjuman Mazaaren Punjab (AMP) in an attempt to organise themselves and assert ownership rights over the lands they have tilled for generations.”
Speaking on the occasion, social activist Farzana Bari said it is incredible that the state is using such excessive force to deter the peasants from struggling for their fundamental rights.
Mian Khushi Mohammad, a peasant from Okara, said, “We have traveled all the way from our homes in Okara to demand that the government end siege of our villages and address our grievances.”
Shehnaz Bibi, who was among the AMP delegation, said “Our families settled in what is now the Okara Farms over a century ago, and we have turned the land into a fertile farmland, yet we are still landless.”
Asim Yasin adds: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari hailed the “heroic struggle” waged by the tenants on the farmlands in Okara and said that the PPP was with them and would not abandon them.
“I was shocked to learn about the atrocities committed against the tenants and how their lands were being grabbed that had damaged the image of the country,” he said in a meeting with a delegation of Anjuman Mazareen Punjab who called on him here at Zardari House.
Zardari condemned the registration of terrorism cases against the tenants for refusing to give up their proprietary rights and demanded withdrawal of the cases. “The National Action Plan and anti-terror laws are meant to crush militants and not for grabbing land that belongs to the tenants who have been tilling it for ages and it has never belonged to security forces,” he said.
He said that the proprietary rights of tenants was an old issue and recalled that over a decade ago the PPP took up the issue in the Human Rights Committee of the Senate which called for an end to the victimisation of tenants and the Senate committee also said that since the land belonged to Punjab it was the responsibility of the provincial government to step in forcefully and effectively in resolving the land ownership dispute and protecting the rights of tenants.
The Senate report had also lamented the massive human rights violations of the tenants and the filing of false cases against them and recommended that the investigations into cases should be entrusted to agencies outside Okara. “But within days of the Senate body’s recommendations another offensive was launched against the tenants,” he said.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said it was an affront to the elected Parliament that the Parliament's recommendations were so brazenly disregarded and brute force used against tenants at that time also ".
He said that he will ask the PPP parliamentarians to raise the issue of implementation of the Parliament’s recommendations regarding Okara farmlands as well as the issue of propriety rights to the tenants.
Talking to the delegation Bilawal Bhutto also recalled that in the past the Human Rights Watch had also criticized the torture of Okara tenants. "Pakistan's forces are brutalizing their own people in the Punjab instead of protecting them," the HRW report had said at the time.
The PPP deplores and condemns that even children of the farmers were tortured to coerce them into signing tenancy agreements. The chairman PPP demanded that a bipartisan parliamentary probe into the barbaric incidents of torture of tenants.
He said that he was shocked beyond measure that the security forces continued with atrocities against farmers in the Punjab with impunity because they refused to sign contracts to cede their land rights against the law.
The PPP Chairman called upon the authorities to stop torturing poor peasants, restore them their rights and punish those 'responsible for inflicting torture on the tenants, their women and children and heaping shame on the nation'. It will be a disaster if greed for land resulted in pitting the poor and the dispossessed against,” he added.
The delegation included Chairman Okara tenants Chaudhry Liaqat Ali, President Okara tenants Mian Khushi Mohammad, vice president Okara tenants Haji Ghulam Hussain, Shahzad Shafi and Iftikhar Shakir. Former Member National Assembly from Okara Sajjadul Hasan and political secretary to Chairman PPP Jamil Soomro was also present on the occasion.
