Special Report on the struggle for land ownership in Punjab

In this special report IRIN looks at the situation on the military farms in the district of Okara, about 100 km south of Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province. Here a movement by landless peasants to lay ownership claims to the lands they - and their ancestors - have tilled for nearly a century has entered its third year without a solution in sight. The dispute between the peasants and the Pakistani government has already led to the loss of several lives, the result, civil and human rights groups allege, of repression by the military administration - a charge staunchly denied by the government. In one of the most recent incidents, several dozen people assembled in the village square of a settlement known as Chak four by four L to greet the first visitors they said they had had in weeks with slogans of "ownership or death". They asserted that paramilitary forces had blocked entry and exit routes to their village and that basic utilities such as electricity and telephones had been disconnected because of their community's refusal to sign controversial new tenancy contracts. "Our people have been killed. Our children are dying of hunger and different illnesses," a local resident, Safia Bibi, told IRIN. "We have no food and no means of procuring any medical help. Even the Union Council is closed. Its employees can't go to work. What are we supposed to do?" Rights advocates fear that the new contracts will open an easy legal route for the ultimate eviction of the tenants, and that the land they are cultivating can then be distributed among senior army officers. The army denies any such intention, maintaining that the contracts will actually work to the benefit of local farmers, and that the entire dispute has arisen because of "vested interests" duping the peasants into believing that state-owned land is their property. Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan, the director-general of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad, that the new contracts, drawn up exactly three years ago, were designed to generate "more interest" in the minds of local farmers in boosting their produce. "Under the old battai [division] system, either the farmer or the army had to face losses. In most cases, it was the government, because, since a lessee knew the government would get less than 40 percent of the produce, he would be content with what he had produced with the minimum of effort," he said. Sultan said the decision to implement the new contracts was made once earnings had been seen to be in steady decline. "The new system stands the farmer in good stead, as well as ensuring that the state does not suffer any more losses," he added. PEACEFUL STRUGGLE Almost one million tenant farmers work about 70,000 acres of land owned by the provincial government in Punjab. Although these tenants - and their ancestors before them - have been cultivating these lands for almost a century, their claim for the elusive land titles they see as their birthright has led to the formation of Anjuman-e Mazare'in-e Punjab (AMP), a landless peasants' union formed in 2000 which has launched a movement to procure land-ownership rights throughout the province. The AMP says it has waged a peaceful struggle in Okara to assert their members' basic right to just over 17,000 acres of what is currently military farmland, cultivated by local farmers from 18 villages. The government accuses the organisation of "indulging in anti-state activities" and of "instigating and misleading the local population against the authorities". Authorities deny the AMP's charge that at least 18 people have been killed and several others injured since their protests drew the attention of the local administration just over a year ago, and the Punjab Rangers, an elite paramilitary outfit, were called in to maintain the peace. A government hand-out issued by the ISPR detailed an October 2000 attack on a police mission to retrieve government stores allegedly withheld by hostile tenants, and a January 2002 "armed assault" on the military farms in the neighbouring sub district of Renala, about 10 km from Okara town, in which a civilian was fatally injured and died in hospital - as examples of the AMP's non-peaceful motives.

Local people say access to their village has been cut off

"These people were attacking the farms and blocking the national highway," said Col Khalid Mahmood Shad, who heads the military farms administration in Okara. "The Rangers were detailed to assist the civil administration and to protect the vital installations of the army." AMP General Secretary Abdul Sattar told IRIN in Chak four by four L, not far from military farm headquarters, that his people were unarmed. "We don't have a single weapon," he said. "All we have done is demand our right to the lands. All we did was go and stage a peaceful, unarmed sit-in on the Grand Trunk Road. We were there for two whole days before the authorities moved in and shot at us when we refused to disperse." Abdul Sattar said the Rangers had subjected his village and two others in the neighbourhood to a virtual state of siege. "They had roadblocks up until just before dawn this morning," he said. "No one is allowed to come in or go out of the village. Our children couldn't go to school. Our men are detained for no reason and are beaten up in custody." Alarmed by reports of human rights abuses, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said it was monitoring the situation carefully. "The violence against these people is totally uncalled for," Joint-Director Kamila Hyat told IRIN by telephone from Lahore. The HRCP calls for immediate negotiations so that a formula can be worked out for a peaceful solution. LIMITED CONTRACTS Local farmers say the dispute arose because of the change in policy introduced in June 2000 by the management of the military-controlled farms. "Tenant ship provides these farmers certain rights which, according to the new contract, they lose," said Asim Akhtar of the People's Rights Movement (PRM), which has extended its steadfast support for the tenants' movement, lobbying human and civil rights groups to help draw attention to the plight of Okara's rural populace. Previously, different agencies that managed the disputed land, which actually belongs to the provincial government, would collect harvest shares from tenants - a hand-me-down, said Akhtar, from the colonial times early in the 20th century, when the British army first let out the land to the local peasantry for cultivation. According to the new contracts, the tenure agreements, presently regulated under various tenancy acts, would be replaced by a system offering the tenants only limited contracts of three to five years, said a 2002 report by the Institute for Food and Development Policy. "When these contracts expire, the tenants can be evicted from the land, an eventuality that is prohibited under the tenancy acts," the report said. But the authorities deny any intention to do any such thing, pointing to a still valid 1947 land law resolution, which gives the central government "the right to remain in undisturbed possession of any land in its occupation in any province", as proof of their decision to arrive at a peaceful compromise. "Do you think it would be difficult for us to occupy the land forcibly?" said Col Saleem Khan, the commander of the Punjab Rangers deployed in the area. "It would take no time, should we choose to do it, but we want to give them a chance to come around, to see the light." The administration says most of the villagers have been happy to sign the contracts once the significance of the change was explained to them. "They celebrated in their villages," said Shad. "It was only some people who were not happy, certain vested interests who are now instigating others to follow them." He said the AMP had forbidden people to sign the new contract through intimidation, blackening a man's face with soot - the ultimate rural insult - and parading him around a village when he insisted on accepting the contract. But villagers in Chak four by four L said some of them had been forced to acquiesce to the Rangers' will. "We were forced to sign at gunpoint," said Altaf Bibi, an elderly woman whose voice shook as she spoke. "Our men were locked up, our women threatened and told to divorce their husbands if they didn't sign." Continued