September 18, 2002	Wednesday	Rajab 10, 1423

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LAHORE, Sept 17: Rangers authorities manning check posts around villages on Okara military farms are detaining visiting relatives of the tenants to force them to sign lease agreement.

This was alleged by representatives of the tenants at an all-party conference convened by the Labour Party Pakistan here on Tuesday.

Representatives of the People’s Party, the National Workers Party, the PML-Qasim, the PPP-SB, the Qaumi Jamhoori Party, the People’s Lawyers Forum, the Professors and Lecturers Association, the Social Democratic Party and the Anjuman-i-Mazareen Punjab, besides various NGOs, including Shirkatgah and ASR, attended the APC. However, the PML-QA, the PML-N and the Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal were missing from the moot.

The representatives told the participants that hundreds of Rangers and policemen had besieged Chak 5/4-L, Okara, since Tuesday morning. They were checking national identity cards of every visitor and if he/she was found a relative of any tenant, he/she was detained there. His/her relatives were contacted and asked to sign the lease deal to secure the release of their kin, they alleged. They said the state authorities could forcibly occupy the lands but they would never sign the deal.

Ishaq Masih, a cousin of Salman Masih who was killed reportedly in firing by the Rangers on Aug 24, said the autopsy report given to them on court’s direction did not mention the kind of gun whose bullet killed Salman. Moreover, he claimed that the report had mentioned the age of the dead man as 40 years while Salman was just 23.

The APC demanded through a unanimous resolution that the government should end the siege of tenants’ villages and withdraw all ‘false’ cases registered against them.

It also demanded that the Rangers should refrain from forcing tenants to sign lease agreement and instead hold parleys with their representatives to solve the issue amicably. It also urged the government to distribute state land among the poor landless peasants.

The APC announced its support for tenants’ movement for ownership of state land they had been cultivating for the last three generations.