Special Report on the struggle for land ownership in Punjab - Continued

CURRENT SITUATION The latest round of trouble began in May with the death of 60-year-old Mohammad Amir, shot dead in the doorway of a house he had gone to visit in the nearby settlement of Chak five by four L, villagers said. "It was the Rangers, firing at us. They did that a lot," the AMP's chairman, Liaqat Ali told IRIN. "The state of siege is very intense - forget going in, you can't even get out." Dr Pervez Hoodhboy, an Islamabad-based physics professor and outspoken human rights advocate, who visited Okara with several others on a fact-finding mission the same day as Amir's death, later published an article entitled "Terror in Okara" in a leading English-language daily in Pakistan, describing houses which "had bricks broken or chipped by the impact of heavy bullets". "The siege of Okara is a blot on Pakistan's collective conscience and must be lifted immediately and unconditionally," he wrote, after describing scenes of "roadblocks everywhere, manned by soldiers with automatic weapons". However, Khan of the Rangers dismissed the report. "You've been around the area," he told IRIN at military farm headquarters. "Tell me, have you seen any roadblocks?" In Chak four by four L, the mass of people surrounding the visitors to their village reacted angrily when the absence of roadblocks was referred to. "The administration removes the roadblocks when they find out someone is coming to assess what is happening," said Abdul Sattar. "They go back up when the visitors are gone." More and more people milled around in the fading sunlight, most coming up with stories of physical hurt and humiliation they had suffered at the hands of the Rangers. Khan denied any such wrongdoing on the Ranger's part, saying the paramilitary's mandate was to provide the local law-enforcement authorities with assistance at the request of the civil administration. "We are here to help maintain the peace," he said. "We are here to deal with the lawbreakers, not people who respect the law." District Police Officer Aslam Tareen said it had been at his request that the Rangers were called in. "I told the district nazim [administrator] that it was important the police force had the support of the paramilitaries," he told IRIN at Okara police headquarters. "We know that there are all sorts of miscreants, proclaimed offenders and other criminals hiding in villages like four by four L who could take advantage of the confusion and create a law-and-order situation we might not be able to control on our own." But Shagufta, a female office-bearer of the AMP, said her people had unfairly been accused of being criminals. "We are called terrorists," she said. "They have filed different cases against people, sometimes as many as 10 different cases against one individual, accusing us of indulging in anti-state activities." Asim Akhtar of the PRM dismissed the government's claims against the villagers as "propaganda". "They are getting more and more ludicrous," he said. "They know they're up against it, and so they don't quite know how to handle it." The former navy commander, Adml (retd) Fasih Bokhari, who had tried to visit the military farms with another PRM representative in May, was denied access to the villages at a roadblock, he later told OneWorld.net, an online features service. "The Okara issue has historical significance, because it is a warning that oppressive governance may not be tolerated much longer," Bokhari said. "The disadvantaged will organise themselves politically and will arm themselves," Asha Amirali, the PRM representative who accompanied Bokhari, told IRIN and he and she had been made to sit and wait until they were told to go back. MASS MOVEMENT In August 2002, shortly after clashes between villagers and authorities left at least five dead, the secretary-general of the Pakistan Labour Party, Farooq Tariq, told IRIN this was not merely a dispute between the farmers of the Okara military farms and the authorities. "It is a mass movement of the peasantry," he said. Tariq said he was convinced that the farmer's rejection of the new terms was tantamount to a rebellion. "It's a revolt, what else is a revolt?" he asked, adding that the government was afraid that by yielding to the farmers a wrong precedent could be set, and that the movement could snowball into tenant farmers on private land throughout Pakistan demanding ownership rights as well. But the top civilian administrator of Okara, Syed Sajjad Haider, told IRIN in the nazim's headquarters that he thought the farmer's push to be allotted land rights was "ridiculous". "It is a totally ridiculous and malicious agitation inspired by certain frustrated political elements, some NGOs and human rights groups," he said, stressing that the Okara lands were the property of the province and would not be transferred to the farmers. "I will not transfer proprietary rights to these people, even if the army succumbs to their pressure," he said firmly. "The whole edifice will crumble if the provincial government gives the land to these people. That's why it will not." Bokhari disagreed. "If bloodshed is to be avoided, the mind-set of the privileged must change, and serving people must become the focus of the servants of the state," he said. "We have only one agenda - ownership or death," said Liaqat Ali, the AMP chairman. "It is dangerous, but this is our land - our ancestors came and cultivated it. We demand full ownership." Ali said even incidents such as the gory aftermath of Mohammad Amir's death - when the local administration allegedly blocked requests by human rights advocates to transport the dead body to a bigger city for a postmortem, instead forcing locals to bury him in the courtyard of the house he had gone to visit - could not deter his people. "That is a complete fabrication," Shad said at military farm headquarters. "Another lie. It is his own family that denied our request to take the corpse for a postmortem." Shad said the issue of the postmortem was a case in point against the villagers' claims that 18 people had been killed since the unrest first started three years ago. "There have been four deaths," he said. "Not one was a cold-blooded killing as these people allege. One person died when someone from a group of demonstrators fired a gun at the authorities, forcing immediate retaliation in self-defence. The others were killed in local disputes, or by their own people." Meanwhile, back in the village square of four by four L, the crowd surrounding the visitors parted suddenly to allow passage to an old woman, who pointed gently at her right hand - the fingers wouldn't close. Shahnaz Bibi told IRIN she sustained the injury when a procession heading for the main highway to stage a peaceful protest was "set upon by a group of policemen who wielded sticks and beat up women and children". "Even our children are not spared," said Mohammad Yusuf, pulling a small boy closer to him. "This boy is only nine and he was kept in custody. Even he wasn't spared the beatings." Rizwana, a teenaged student, said she and her school friends on their way to school were habitually stopped by the Rangers and made to endure their insults. "We will not take any more of this nonsense," said Yusuf vehemently. "We have had enough. We want ownership or death!" But Reyhana Mansur, a woman from Chak 25 by four L, a small hamlet not far from the slogan-shouting villagers, said her community had had no problems accepting the new contracts. "It's the people in Chak four by four L and Chak 12 by four L who are creating problems," she said. "We refuse to support them. We are prepared to sign any contract, because the land belongs to the government." [ENDS]