Former Prime Minister and Chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto has condemned the aggression Monday against the tenants of military farmlands in Okara and demanded of the regime to immediately bring to an end the latest wave of repression and withdraw the uniformed personnel from the land.

Persistent use of brutal force against the farmers is damaging the image of the country, she said in a statement today.

The Anjuman Mazarain Punjab (AMP) Monday complained of yet another wave of harassment and intimidation of tenants. According to the AMP about two hundred armed personnel in battle fatigue attacked the fields Monday morning warning the tenants to either surrender their right to occupation or vacate the lands. When the tenants resisted they were thrashed with batons. A woman tenant belonging to chak 15-4/L was severely injured and a tenant taken into custody.

The Senate also recently took note of the lingering problem and made recommendations on how to address the issue. "It is an affront to the elected Parliament that the military personnel have so brazenly disregarded Parliament's recommendations and decided to settle the matter through brute force ".

The Senate report also said that since the land belonged to Punjab the provincial government should also be involved in resolving the dispute. It also called for an end to the victimization of tenants for refusing to agree to the contract system instead of the crop sharing system in vogue since ages.

The Senate report had also lamented the massive human rights violations of the tenants and the filing of false cases against them and recommended that the investigations into cases should be entrusted to agencies outside Okara.

The Anjuman Mazarain Punjab (AMP), the representative body of the tenants, has said that this action by the military will not go unchallenged. The AMP leaders also called upon the Punjab government to intervene, saying that the military had no right to treat the land as its private property.

Last year the Human Rights Watch also criticized the torture of Okara tenants. "Pakistan's military and paramilitary forces are brutalizing their own people in the Punjab instead of protecting them, " said the HRW report. "It's a dangerous moment in Pakistan when the military turns on its own core constituency. "

The report said that even children of the farmers were tortured to coerce them into signing tenancy agreements.

The former Prime Minister demanded that a judicial probe into the shameless and barbaric incidents of torture of tenants. She said that she was shocked beyond measure that the security forces continued with killing and torturing farmers in the Punjab with impunity because they refused to sign contracts to cede their land rights to the army.

The PPP Chairperson called upon the regime to stop the torture of poor peasants and punish those 'responsible for inflicting torture on the tenants and heaping shame on the nation'.

She also demanded that ownership rights to the tenants on the state lands in Okara before the situation turned even worse.

"The PPP calls upon the intellectuals, the youth and the political parties to raise their voice against these shameful actions which has stigmatize the whole nation. It also urges the Chief Justice to take suo moto notice of the continued harassment of the Okara tenants ".

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