ISLAMABAD, June 1: The Anjuman-i-Mazarain Punjab (AMP) on Sunday challenged Maj-Gen Mehmood’s claim that the AMP was not a representative body of the Okara tenants and was instigating the tenants to revolt at the behest of foreign masters.

Speaking to a group of AMP activists who had been on hunger strike for the 17 consecutive days, on Murree Road, AMP President Khushi Dola rejected the general’s claim that tenants were being coerced into joining the AMP movement, a press release said.

“If it is true, then why the rangers have been terrorising the tenants in Okara as confirmed by impartial observers,” he maintained.

Gen Mehmood, director-general of military lands and cantonments, had reportedly said in a press briefing on Saturday that the military had legal rights over the Okara farms and AMP’s demand for ownership was untenable.

He had also held the AMP responsible for the death of tenants in Okara and other farms in the province.

Referring to the ownership rights as claimed by the military for itself, Mr Dola said, “there is a written proof of a correspondence between the Punjab Board of Revenue (BoR) and the ministry of defence, as late as of 2001, in which the BoR had repeatedly turned down the latter’s request for transfer of the military farms land in Okara, Multan and Lahore to the ministry of defence.”

Mr Dola said that the BoR had asked for evidence of the lease agreement, under which the land in Okara had been leased out for 20 years in 1913.

The disputed land is the property of the Punjab government and the Anjuman-i-Mazarain Punjab would hold talks only with a representative of the provincial government, he added.

He denied the reports that the tenants had paid cash rents, adding, “just recently, the tenants of Iqbalnagar maize farms in Sahiwal were victimized for not paying the rents.” He said none of the tenants, numbering almost a million, on 68,000 acres of land in the province were paying rents and they would continue to do so in the future regardless of the highhandedness of the government.

All the hunger strikers on the occasion vowed not to give up their struggle till the withdrawal of rangers from Okara military forms, registration of cases against the rangers allegedly responsible for the death of Mohammad Amir, release of AMP activists and withdrawal of cases against them.

Anwar Javed Dogar, chief organizer of the AMP, appreciated the Punjab Bar Council for passing a resolution on Saturday in support of the AMP and demanding an end to state terror in Okara.—Junaid Bahadur