ISLAMABAD - Pakistan People’s Party yesterday submitted an adjournment motion in the Senate to discuss “implications of the brute state force employed last month on the villagers in Okara Military Farms” with a view to forcing them to give up their demand for ownership rights and which is bringing bad name to the country globally.
The adjournment moved by Senator Farhatullah Babar says that the peasants had planned to highlight their grievance by observing the International Peasants Day on April 17, 2016 in an orderly and peaceful manner under the law and the Constitution.
However, the state fearing that it will expose its atrocities retaliated by using brute force against the villagers.
The unarmed villagers were beaten and dozens arrested by state agencies by misusing the legal instruments meant exclusively to fighting terrorism including the anti-terror laws and provisions of the National Action Plan, says the motion.
There are reports that the Anjuman Mazareen Punjab General Secretary who has been arrested has now been shifted from Sahiwal jail to a military cantonment.
The deafening silence and failure of the relevant institutions to protect the rights of peasants has lent great urgency for the House of Federation to take notice.
At the root lies the persistent refusal to give farmers their rights because of the state’s unquenchable thirst for land, more land and even more land, it says.