LAHORE: Scores of peasant leaders from various parts of Punjab gathered here on Monday and decided to re-launch their struggle for land rights despite arrests and state repression.

The meeting organised by the Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee was chaired by Mian Mohammad Ashraf, a peasant leader from Lahore.

Jamila Bibi, a tenant at Dera Sehghal, Muridke city in Sheikupura district, said that 23 male tenants of her village had been in jail for the last one year.

Police implicated them them in theft, robbery and other heinous crimes just to force them to vacate the land they had been cultivating since 1970, she alleged.

She told the meeting that the police dragged 80-year-old Sardar Mohammed while women resisted his arrest on Sunday night.

“There is no male tenant left at the farm right now. Only women and children are there in the village, without electricity for the last over one year,” Jamila said.

She said that her husband, son, sister’s husband and three cousins were in jail.

“They are neither thieves nor robbers. They are ordinary peasants trying to safeguard their only source of livelihood that is few acres they have been cultivating for long.”

Sughra Bibi, another peasant leader, said her daughter had been murdered the previous year just because she was supporting the resistance movement. No one was arrested while most of her relatives were in jail, including her son, she added.

Noor Nabi, general secretary of Anjuman Mazareen Punjab and union council chairman. said that Mehr Abdul Sattar, Nadeem Ashraf and Malik Salim Jakhar, all tenants of Okara Military Farms, and Nawa-i-Waqat’s district correspondent Hafiz Husnain Raza Hafiz Husnain Raza were facing “false” charges because they had consistently demanded land rights at the military farms.

“Sattar has now been at Sahiwal high security prison for the last one month and none is allowed to visit him. We fear he is tortured daily. The high security prison is meant for religious convicted terrorists while Sattar is an under-trial prisoner. He has been accused falsely as RAW agent having links with religious terrorists.”

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee and spokesperson for Awami Workers’ Party, demand an end to, what he said, state repression of tenants in different parts of Punjab.

He demanded that tenants be granted land rights and Military Farms administration leave the agriculture business to peasants honorably withdrawing from the land that tenants have been cultivating for over 100 years.

Mr Tariq said that the worst sort of feudal culture was being imposed on the tenants at Dera Sehghal as police have been used to register “false” cases against ordinary tenants.

He asked the chief minister to visit the village and see for himself the worst sort of feudal practices in a place just 20 kilometres from Lahore.

The meeting was also addressed by Mehr Ghulam Abbas, Liaqat Ali, Nasir Iqbal and others.

The participants decided to celebrate the International Day of Peasants on April 17 in Lahore. A seminar will be organised to express solidarity with the arrested peasant leaders.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2017