LAHORE, Aug 25: Pakistan People’s Party has condemned the killing of tenants at the hands of Rangers in Okara.

In a statement, Ch Munawar Anjum, a party spokesman, said the PPP wanted the regime to come out clean on the Saturday ‘blood bath’ and punish those who, claiming immunity behind uniform, vandalized and killed villagers only because the poor were demanding their rights.

“The party stands by these poor tenants and condemns the use of brute might of state to dislodge them.”

Anjum said it was intriguing that the incident occurred at a time when a US based online newspaper had carried a list of over 100 armed forces men each of whom had been allotted over 400 acres of prime agricultural land in Okara, Renala Khurd, Lahore, Sargodha, Khanewal and other districts of the Punjab and Sindh creating a new breed of landlords flaunting the uniform they wore.

“These fertile lands have been given to the serving and retired generals at a throw-away price of Rs380 per acre on the pretext that these army generals will prove a frontline against the invading army,” he quoted the report as saying. “On the day of the publication of the report the Rangers encircled tenants’ villages in Okara and shot dead five people.”

He said The party is seriously concerned and denounces that state lands have been treated as bounty and apportioned among the generals. Why the generals allotting themselves prime agricultural lands of the size of over 200 football grounds should claim to be honest while the civilian prime ministers who had given residential plots to the people under the law are dubbed and hauled as corrupt?

The PPP demands full facts be made public. It also demands evenhanded accountability and condemns excluding the military men from the net of accountability.