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| March, 23 2005 | Wednesday | 12 Safar 1426 |
Delegations arrive for kissan moot
TOBA TEK SINGH, March 22: A number of delegations reached Pakistan on Tuesday to attend an International Kissan Conference being held here on March 23 under the joint auspices of National Workers Party (NWP) and the Pakistan Kissan Committee (PKC). NWP’s British chapter leader Engineer Pervez Fateh, who reached here on Monday, told newsmen on Tuesday that South Asian Solidarity (SAS) Chinese leader Johnson Wong, American Anti-Globalisation Movement and ‘Stop War in Iraq’ activist Saundra Sattelee, Indian Communist Party (Marxist) leaders Mrs Darshan Singh and Diyal Singh Bhagri, Indian Workers Association of UK president Autar Singh Sadiq and British SAS president Mushtaq Lashari have also arrived Pakistan.
Special bogies with a passenger train brought delegates here from Lahore on Tuesday afternoon while activists of kissan and hari organizations from Karachi and interior Sindh would reach on Wednesday morning, he said.
Conference organizing committee head Rana Azam told newsmen that Okara Military Farm and Khanewal Seed Farm tenants would also reach here in processions of buses while Bhatta Mazdoor Union workers from various nearby districts were also coming here.
Chief organizer Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad said the conference was being held to commemorate the historic Maulana Hameed Bhashani Kissan Conference of 1970. One of the former organizers of Bhashani Conference, Ghiasuddin Janbaz (former member of central executive committee of PPP), said the conference had given awareness to the oppressed classes of society which benefited the PPP which won general election with overwhelming majority in Sindh and Punjab.
He said former late deputy prime minister of Bangladesh Maseehur Rehman had termed Gen Yahya Khan a traitor in his speech. He was arrested and a Faisalabad military court had awarded him five years imprisonment.
He said after the conference he (Janbaz) and Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad were also arrested and lodged in the Faisalabad District Jail along with Maseehur Rehman. He said talks were held in the Faisalabad jail with former prime minister Z. A. Bhutto and Mr Rehman was sent to East Pakistan where he was released after the fall of Dhaka and he became deputy prime minister.
To counter the left wing conference, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan held a conference the same year in June at the same place. The PPP had held a two-day Mazdoor Kissan Rally in 1986 here on his proposal after the return of Benazir Bhutto from exile, Mr Janbaz added.
He said on the opening day, Balochistan National Party chief Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch, Awami Tehrik chief Rasool Bakhsh Paleejo, Labour Party secretary general Farooq Tariq, Karachi labour leader Begum Kaneez Fatima, Mazdoor Kissan Party president Afzal Khamosh, Meraj Muhammad Khan and HRCP director I. A. Rehman would address the participants while NWP chief Abid Hasan Minto would preside over the conference.
Earlier, activists of trade unions and political parties were received at the railway station by Mr Fateh and other local leaders. They were taken to the venue of the conference in a procession. Processionists were raising slogans against price hike and feudalism while marching on the Railway Road, Shorkot Road, Saddar Bazaar and Jhang Road.
Meanwhile, Adil Afghani, the president of Afghanistan Labour Revolutionary Organization, and noted poet Saeen Akhtar arrived here to participate in the conference.
PLAY STAGED: Ajoka Theatre staged play Toba Tek Singh, written by Saadat Hasan Manto, on Tuesday night.
Noted TV actor Sarfraz Insari performed role of Bishan Singh who dies on India-Pakistan border.
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