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Pakistan Peasants Dig in Against Army Offensive
Last week, hundreds of thousands of peasants in Okara in Pakistan's northern Punjab province, mourned the death of Amir Ali, 60 allegedly shot by the Pakistan Army, vowing to continue their movement for land-rights and fight Army repression. For the past three years, over a million peasants in Okara, 100 kilometers south of Punjab's capital Lahore, have been battling with the Army, which is attempting to grab the land they have been tilling since 1908. "The gory murder of Amir Ali can't frighten us. Such atrocities only boost our morale and strengthen our cause," declares the president of the peasants union, Anjuman Mazareen Pakistan (AMP), Liaquat Ali. It was a dust bowl when the land was given to their forefathers by the Punjab government, but they were promised ownership in six years if they made it fertile. But after the farmers toiled and the amber waves of grain started flowing, the government decided the land was too good to be given away. In 1947, after India was partitioned into India and Pakistan, the Army "colonized" the land. And without any legal authority, the generals let it to the peasants for tilling under the Punjab Tenancy Act and started receiving a share of the produce. Until recently, the Army continued to receive its cut, which was, in fact, never deposited with the national exchequer. According to an estimate by the Punjab Board of Revenue (BoR), a sum of US $8.3 billion was allegedly embezzled in this fashion by the Army brass. When the peasants got wind of the scam around three years ago, they raised the issue of ownership. But their claim to tenancy was challenged by the BoR since there were no entries in its records of the cut they had been giving the Army. The upshot: the farmers stopped paying the share and initiated a peaceful land-rights movement with the slogan, "Death or ownership." But high on paddy power, the generals were in no mood to give up their tax-free sinecure. They promptly sent in their troops, who have been besieging Okara for the past three years. For all practical purposes, the nearly one million people of Okara are currently under military occupation. Says renowned peace activist Pervez Hoodbhoy, "Roadblocks are everywhere, manned by soldiers with automatic weapons." Four-wheelers with mounted machine-guns prowl the dirt roads next to the irrigation canals, raising huge dust clouds as they move between villages. Apart from shooting at and killing protestors, the authorities have evolved other novel strategies to demoralize tenants.... The scale of torture can be gauged by the fact that almost every villager in Okara carries torture marks on his or her body. Says AMP's chief organizer Javed Dogar, "When it was pointed out to the Rangers, they said, 'These are self-inflicted wounds intended to defame the authorities, or were inflicted during factional clashes'." Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-06-05 |
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