ACTIVISM BY SHAH
MARCH 20110 – 31 MAY 2012
ASSOCIATED WITH THE INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, PAKISTAN
Political, Democratic and Constitutional Rights
Engaged with the Sindh, Balochistan and rest of Pakistan civil society and media as well as USA, UK, Hong Kong, Nepal and India based forums on the civil political, economic, land and IDPs rights.
Filled Petition along with other civil society organization in the Supreme Court of Pakistan regarding the Parliament’s supremacy over constitution making in June 2010
Conference on Residential Land Rights in Balochistan, Pakistan: June 30, 2011 Quetta, Balochistan. Attended by the activists, journalists, researchers and legal experts from across the Balochistan, Pakistan
15 MAY 2006 – FEBRUARY 28, 2010
ASSOCIATED WITH SOUTH ASIA PARTNERSHIP PAKISTAN
Political and democratic rights
Organized discussions, consultations and conferences over the constitutional amendments concerning provincial autonomy 2008 – 2009
Organized civil society’s activism against enforced disappearances in Sindh province
Organized civil society’s support for the jailed political activists for the medical and other basic necessities support
Peasants and land rights
Video Clips of the Long March
News Links
Organized peasants’ movement in Sindh Daily Dawn, Karachi, March 5, 2008
Supported victimized rights activists Daily Dawn Karachi, October 7, 2012
Other major events / initiatives
Peace in South Asia – A Discussion by Indian and Pakistani Peace Activists, July 2009, Sindh Language Authority Hall, by Forum for Peace and Harmony.
Services Management Strategies for Rural Population by District Government Officials, September 2008, Civil Society Club, Hyderabad, Pakistan
Sindh Conference on National Question and Provincial Autonomy, July 2008, Hotel Indus, Hyderabad by South Asia Partnership Pakistan
Sindh Peasants Mass Conference, March 2007, Bhitt Shah, by South Asia Partnership Pakistan
Peasants and Land Rights in Sindh, July 2007, Hyderabad Press Club by South Asia Partnership Pakistan
2003-2004, 2005 -2006
ASSOCIATED WITH PAKISTAN FISHERFOLK FORUM
Supported in the organizing and mobilizing fishing communities’ livelihood rights movement in Sindh, Pakistan
Daily The News, Karachi, October 21, 2005
Daily The News, Karachi, October 21, 2005
Other major events / initiatives
Indus Delta Eco-Region International Conference, Hotel Regent Plaza, Karachi on Oct 7 – 8, 2004 by Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum
1995 – 2000 - WORKING JOURNALIST
2002 – 2014 CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST / FREELANCE REPORTER
Written articles, reports and columns on the various rights issue. Articles in Sindhi are beyond 200 and can be found in the archives of:
Monthly Sallar (Sindhi), Karchi, Editor, 2001
Monthly News & Opinion (English & Sindhi), Editor, 2002
Freelance / Contributing Columnist
Weekly The Friday Times, Lahore (2004-2005)
Daily The News, Karachi (2007-2010)
Daily Dawn, Karachi (random contribution) (2008-2009)
Daily Republica, Nepal (2012)
Daily The Kathmandu Post (2012-continue)
Asia Times, Hong Kong (occasional) (2012)
Atlantic Community, Germany, (occasional) (2012)
Truthout, USA, (2013-continue)
Russia Direct, Moscow (occasional) 2013-continue
Merinews, India (2012 – continue)
The Descrier, UK (2013- continue)
Daily Afghanistan Times (random) 2014 - continue
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Selected Published News / Reports
Suspicious details emerge after three men burned alive in Pakistan
Numbers can be affecting. It is shocking indeed to learn through the reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that at least 861 persons were disappeared by security agencies in Pakistan during 2012; around 325 Shia minority persons were killed on sectarian grounds; and around 100 were extra-judicially killed by the military officials. These numbers do not include the thousands who lost their lives in Balochistan and Sindh in military actions during the past decade.
What pierces through the deepest core of a human heart about the rights violations are the stories, which unfold, as numbers cannot, the real level and nature of brutalities. A single instance is enough to portray the truth about the so-called internal national security and sovereignty notions of a federation like Pakistan, where the terms “security” and “sovereignty” apply to geography only – not to the people.
On the sunny Thursday of April 21, 2011, Pakistani electronic media carried breaking news of the burning alive of three Sindhi nationalist leaders – Qurban Khuhawar, Ruplo Cholyani and Nadir Bugti – in Sindh’s Shanghar district by unknown assailants. The victims were associated with Jeay Sindh Mutahida Mahaz (JSMM) – a political organization advocating Sindh independence recently banned by Pakistan authorities. All of the victims, the report said, were sitting in the car, which was torched on a country road.
After a few days, we formed a fact-finding mission of rights activists, journalists, and academicians to inquire into the incident on the behalf of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. It was a drive of 117 kilometers of curvy road from Hyderabad, the second-largest city of Sindh, amid the mixed texture of green pastures and sand dunes on the roadsides. The place where the incident occurred was 7.5 kilometers from Sanghar town on the Sanghar-Khipro road and was between Bakhoro Bridge and Mithrau Canal Bridge – historical sites where, during early 1940s, a Sindhi Hur guerrilla army was stationed fighting British troops for the freedom of Sindh. A small bazaar runs between both bridges with a couple of dozen shops and tea vendors. The distance between the bridges is 1 kilometer.
We started mingling with the people regarding the incident. Eyewitnesses told us that the incident took place by 1:30 PM. According to them, a couple of hours before arrival of the ambushed, extraordinary movement by a black car and a military green jeep was observed.
Both vehicles, the onlookers said, were positioned near Mithrau Bridge earlier and started blocking and diverting the vehicular traffic. Furthermore, people were asked to stay in the bazaar until told otherwise. As soon as the victims’ car (ARW 028), hailing from Sanghar, crossed the Bakhoro Bridge, a white car was already chasing them. It blinked the front lights near Bakhoro Bridge and turned away. Swiftly thereafter, a red double cabin Jeep already positioned at the bridge moved toward the victims’ car. A car from the Bakhoro Bridge side also reached there. According to the peasants in the nearby fields, both vehicles opened fire from automatic guns on the victims’ car from two directions.
The victims’ car lost the track and fell in the ditch near cultivated fields. According to the peasants working in nearby fields, the assailants, in military camouflage as well as in plainclothes, disembarked from the vehicles and opened fire over the car again. They also threw small plastic bags on the car. Witnesses said the car caught fire from various directions immediately after the bags were thrown.
Fifteen men remained at the site for around ten minutes after torching the car, said Juman Leghari – a peasant from nearby village Maulvi Kher Mohammad Ahmedani. Six or seven were in commando camouflage, and the others were in plainclothes, he added. Once the assailants left, bystanders rushed to the car.
Shortly thereafter, a black car reached the scene from the direction of Sanghar; people in the car fired shots into the air, and the car drove away. Police reached the scene afterward. Bystanders wanted to fight the fire, but the police did not allow them to. In the meantime, a person cried from the torched car that he was alive and begged for his rescue, Muharram said with tears in eyes. “As we rushed to him, police officials stopped us by shouting that the ambushed persons were terrorists.” At this point, the victim later identified as Noorullah Tunio said they were Sindhi nationalists and that the Punjabi (Pakistani) Army had attacked them. Thereafter, the people pushed the police officials back and rescued him. According to the person who rescued him, Tunio crawled out of the car, put mud on the burnt lower part of body and chanted slogans for the freedom of Sindh. The villagers escorted Tunio on a motorcycle rickshaw to the hospital in Sanghar.
We met constable Bachal Dars and others at the police post. They told us that no one was at the police post at the time of incident because they had been sent by higher-ups to a nearby school where examinations were being held. According to them, as soon as they learned about the incident, they informed the station house police officer; however, he instructed them to stay in the school.
The shopkeepers of the bazaar said no arms were found in the vehicle. They said it was an assault, not an encounter, because only the armed forces opened fire.
The people told us that they contacted the Edhi Foundation for an ambulance, but it reached the scene after 90 minutes. The Edhi Foundation representative in Sanghar, Ashraf Hussain, showed us the record carrying invoice number 837737, which said an ambulance (PA 3355) was sent to the location at 3 PM. Area residents also kept calling the police helpline, but police who reached the scene tried to stop the people from rescuing the only survivor.
On the way back to Sanghar, we examined the torched car in the local police station and found at least 24 bullet holes in it; however, the vehicle’s compressed natural gas-petroleum cylinder and petrol tank were intact. The police registered case FIR 96/2011 of April 25 after five days of incidents. The deputy superintendent of police, Sanghar Ghulam Shabir, said the victims were against Pakistan and therefore very bad persons. While asked about the police action for identification and detention of the culprits, he said that they had managed to flee.
Dr. Abdul Razzaq Leghari of the Sanghar civil hospital said 60 percent of Tunio’s body was burned. He also said the arms and leg bones of the persons sitting in the front seats could not be found from their ashes. This created doubts regarding the use of chemicals in the bags thrown upon the victims’ car. Medico Legal Officer Dr. Shabir Cheema said the way security agencies were pressuring him was indicative of their involvement in the assault.
Local journalists told us that the news they released was not carried by the country’s mainstream English print and electronic media; however, a distorted news story released from the city of Mirpurkhas, some 40 kilometers away, was carried by those outlets.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister took the notice of the carnage and asked Chief Minister Sindh to order an inquiry. All other political parties demanded a judicial inquiry. No official inquiry has taken place since 2011.
Finally, Tunio was shifted to Civil Hospital Karachi on the same day and later on to the Patel Hospital, where he died May 1, 2011. Before his death, he said the ISI and Pakistan Army’s commandos ambushed him and his comrades.
The details of the incident portray Pakistan’s government’s approach toward political dissent. It also is indicative of unnecessary and unlawful use of militarization in Sindh and Balochistan. Worst of all was the silence of Pakistan’s human rights ministry.
This was not an isolated incident. Hundreds of such incidents have taken place mostly in Sindh and Balochistan in the past three decades. While discussing Pakistan, it is important to note that human rights violations there have an exclusive peculiarity: state organs and their proxy non-state elements jointly plan and effectheinous crimes against humanity. It is not the legal framework alone that must be changed; it is the nature of statehood and its ethnic chemistry that needs to be altered.
No other state like Pakistan has shared its statehood characteristics of legitimacy over the use of violence with non-state actors. Such non-state actors have been known to kidnap and forcibly convert Hindu and Christian minority girls as well as to harass these communities through Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law. The trigger-happy state security outfits disappear and extra-judicially kill activist citizens and use the virtual means of ethnic cleansing that have been adopted in Sindh and Balochistan. This is the time when humanity on globe should think seriously about the 70 million Sindhi and Balochistani of Pakistan.
(by Zulfiqar Shah) The author is a Pakistan-born activist, analyst and researcher living in exile. Twitter: @shahzulf . Published on: Truth-out, USA http://www.truth-out.org/article/item/17609-suspicious-details-emerge-as-three-men-burned-alive-in-pakistan
(by Zulfiqar Shah) The author is a Pakistan-born activist, analyst and researcher living in exile. Twitter: @shahzulf . Published on: Truth-out, USA http://www.truth-out.org/article/item/17609-suspicious-details-emerge-as-three-men-burned-alive-in-pakistan
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Concern over degradation of Indus Delta
September 18, 2005, Daily Dawn
BADIN, Sept 17: The non-release of water below Kotri has destroyed land, livestock and fisheries on which millions of people depended for their livelihood. This was stated by speakers at a seminar held at the Government Islamia Degree College on Thursday.
The seminar “Discharge of water downstream Kotri: Waste or need” was organized by the Natural Resource Protection Programme, Sindh, in collaboration with the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum.
NRPP president Mashkoor Ali said following the fast drying of the Indus River about 1.3 million acre land had been damaged by sea and forests, which were sixth number in the world, had been ruined.
Zulfiqar Shah said non-release of water downstream Kotri had devastated ecology and environment and increased human sufferings.
He claimed 2.2 million acre land of Badin and Thatta districts had been swallowed by sea water.
He said mangrove forest had been reduced from 261,000 acres to 71,000 acres in a decade.
Prof Abdullah Mallah said more than 400,000 fishermen and their families, residing within 100 kilometres of the coastal line, were under threat.
He said the Indus River ranked 18th among the world’s biggest rivers but its delta was diminishing day by day while other rivers were developing 10 to 4,000 acre delta every year, he said.
Mohammad Rahimoo said diverting water from the Indus River was an international crime and the matter be brought to the International Court of Justice.
The other speakers said in case situation remained unchanged in the Indus delta it would aid poverty and would vanish the culture.
They said degradation had been mainly caused by reduction of fresh water in Indus into delta due to wrong policies of the government which had over exploited the Indus River by constructing several storage dams and barrages on it.
PFF president Mohammad Ali Shah, Mithan Mallah, Roshan Ali and Mohammad Khan Samoo also spoke on the occasion.
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Sindh urged to emulate Punjab’s new law on peasants’ rights
January 15. 2012, Daily Dawn
HYDERABAD, Jan 14: Leaders of peasants’ bodies, labour forums and civil society organisations welcomed the Punjab Assembly’s legislation for conferment of proprietary rights on occupancy tenants and urged Sindh Assembly to emulate Punjab and distribute state land among tenants.
Addressing a joint news conference here, Roshan Birhamani of Sindhi Hari Tehrik, Karamat Ali of Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, Saleem G. Abro of Sindh Agricultural and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organisation, Jabbar Bhatti of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Ghulam Mustafa Khoso of Sami Foundation, Taj Mari of Sindh Hari Porhiyat Council, Zulfiqar Shah of Institute for Social Movement and others said the Punjab Assembly’s legislation was an important step towards meeting longstanding demand of farm workers of Pakistan for redistribution of land.
Karamat Ali said the law provided legal framework for distribution of around 400,000 acres of state land among 200,000 peasants. It was great success of the Punjab peasantry, he said.
He said that peasants in Sindh had also been struggling for a long time to bring about amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act which had become completely redundant and obsolete.
A group of civil society organisations had prepared a set of amendments to the Act, which were presented to Sindh government at the end of a 12-day long march from Hyderabad to Karachi, which was attended by 30,000 peasants.
He said the memorandum was presented to Deputy Speaker Ms Shehla Raza and other legislators on Feb 26, 2009. Later, a bill was tabled in the assembly and a committee was appointed which refused to incorporate the peasants’ demands in the bill.
He demanded that on the pattern of Punjab government, Sindh government should also grant land entitlements to those who had been cultivating it since generations. The state land should also include the land which was presently in possession of irrigation, agriculture, railways and other departments, he said.
Mr Karamat said that records of all land in possession of state and private sector should be made public, all human settlements situated on state land should be registered and land entitlements should be extended to the shelterless people.
He pointed out that landless peasantry of Sindh had become virtual subjects of powerful landlords and the Sindh Tenancy Act in its current shape was unable to protect their rights.
He said the Act should be amended in light of written charter of demands handed over to the deputy speaker of Sindh Assembly on Feb 26, 2009.
South Asia Social Forum (SASF) was held from November 18th to 22nd at Dhaka University, Bangladesh. South Asia Peace Alliance (SAPA) and Ekta Parishad organized a seminar during this event on November 21st on “Mainstreaming Land & Livelihood Rights in South Asia”. The seminar was attended by 26 participants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. The seminar had three speakers: Mr. Shamsul Huda from ALRD, Bangladesh Mr. Ran Singh Parmar, Ekta Parishad, India and Zulfiqar Shah, The Institute For Social Movements, Pakistan.
This seminar was an occasion to present the situation of land Rights in different countries of South Asia, and to share experience. Ran Singh Parmar (Ekta Parishad) spoke about the Jan Samwad Yatra and the March Jan Satyagraha 2012. Mr. Zulfikar Shah (Institute For Social Movements, Pakistan) made presentation on the situation of land rights in Pakistan and he also shared the experience of organizing Land rights march in Pakistan taking inspiration from the March Janadesh 2007. Mr. Shamsul Huda (Association for Land Reform and Development ALRD, Bangladesh) also gave his views on the land rights issue and highlighted the need to forge unity from the struggle groups in South Asia.
This idea that unity was needed was shared by the participants and it has been proposed to form a network to create a platform for joint action. Soon after the seminar, 20 participants met to work out how to work together. The decision has been taken to form the South Asia Alliance for Land rights (SAAL) to carry forward the struggle for land rights as collectively.
Following resolution was passed by all present people,and hasbeen endorsed later by other organizations who were not present in the meeting but showed their solidarity.
We the participants of “Mainstreaming Land & Livelihood Rights in South Asia” held on Nov 21, 2011 deliberated on the land issue in South Asia. We express our deep concern over apathy and non-implementation of the land reform agenda in South Asia as promised from time to time.
Land is the most important natural resource for livelihood of the majority people in South Asia. We express our concern over increased conflict over this as well as other natural resources. Peace in South Asia can only come through justice.
Since the issue of Land is a common issue in South Asia, we consider that talking of Land and Livelihood Rights now is important. There is thus a need to mainstream this agenda by mobilizing people and mounting pressure on the Government to carry out the unfinished task of land Reforms, We unanimously express solidarity with the non-violent direct action Jansatyagraha 2012” Global movement for land rights by Ekta Parishad, India and extend full support to it.
Further, to take forward Land Rights agenda in all South Asia to its logical end we all undersigned have taken decision to form “South Asia Alliance for Land Rights” (SAAL).
We call upon on the groups, organizations working on the land and livelihood rights in South Asia to come together and join this movement.
Published in: Ekta Parishad Newsletter, India
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Media urged to promote awareness about mistreatment of children
August 3, 2011, Daily Dawn
HYDERABAD, Aug 2: Speakers at a seminar stressed on establishing a violence-free society where rights and well-being of children are taken care of, and called upon the media to highlight their issues`Violence against children and the role of media’ was the theme of the seminar which was jointly organised by the Society for Protection of Rights of a Child (Sparc) and local journalists.
It’s amazing that media never reports on the abuse of tribal children who are offered guns instead of pens. This grave problem hasn’t attracted any of the TV channels, said Zulfiqar Shah of Institute of Social Movements.
Inattention of civil society and media can be fathomed from the fact that never cause of the death of a child in a shelter house has been reported by the media, he said. Another important factor of violence against children is migration. He called for providing protection to them by revising laws against child abuse and violence.
Media have not even reported about the new laws relating to children issues and proper reporting is ought to bring about positive results in this regard, he said.
A senior journalist Sohail Sangi advised the journalists to remain cautious while reporting children’s issues because media is reckoned as a powerful tool in highlighting issues. It is always approached by the victim, hence multiplying the role and responsibilities of media manifold.
NGOs working on children issues should thoroughly abreast themselves of laws which then would help them in their drives, said Sangi.
National Manager Mohammed Imtiaz Ahmed of Sparc said that violence not only corrupts the inner-man of a child but plays havoc on the whole of the society. A child learns what he lives said Faiz Ahmed Faiz which is true in all senses because a child lived in violence is apt to pass it down to his youngsters.
Mr Ahmed denounced corporal punishment in educational institutions because it debases self-confidence and self-esteem, growth and development of full capabilities of children. It further aggravates when society condones it.
He called for condemning and discouraging violence at every level such as work place, community and homes. Media should bring it to the notice of policy makers by highlighting such issues.
Provincial Manager of Sparc Sohial Abro said that homes are considered as the safest places but many a times it is not the case.
Quoting an NGO’s report, Mr Abro said that 2,012 cases of sexual abuse were reported in 2009 which increased by 11.9 per cent in 2010.
He demanded strict laws and its implementation and asked the media to report such cases. A senior journalist Jaffar Memon and Sparc’s Kashif Bajeer also spoke on the occasion.
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PAKISTAN: NGOs call for stronger laws to control child labour, trafficking
[17 April 2012] – A group of non-governmental organisations has launched a week-long campaign to press for the passage of new laws and implementation of existing ones to control violence against children. The advocacy groups organised a press conference on Monday and said that children, who constitute more than one-third of the population, do not have adequate protection under the law.
So far this year, 90 children have been killed, 68 kidnapped and 200 molested across the country, according to data collected by Society for Protection of Rights of Children (SPARC), which is leading the group.
Awareness programs, engagement with civil society, teachers and students will also be a part of it.
“The violators take heart when they notice that they don’t get punished,” remarked Mustafa Baloch, Strengthening Participatory Organisation’s chief executive.
“We have separate ministries for women, minorities and human rights, but none for children. A majority of children are denied their rights, suffer violence and work as labourers,” said Kashif Bajeer, SPARC’s national manager.
Bajeer pointed out some shortcomings in the “outmoded” Childrens Act 1955. The law does not deal with the issue of children involved in domestic, agricultural and industrial labour. “It should be amended to regulate labour being exacted from children.” He also stressed on the need for separate laws to deal with murder, kidnapping, rape and trafficking of children, and harsher punishments for the perpetrators.
Institute of Social Movements’ Zulfiqar Shah drew attention towards non-implementation of the Children Protection Authority Bill, which the Sindh Assembly passed in May, 2011. According to Shah, the law was supposed to be a precursor to further legislation to deal with street children, forced labour and child beggars, but no further developments have taken place so far.
“The government hasn’t even notified about the instruments through which it will enforce the law,” said Shah.
Representatives of NGOs estimated that more than 1.2 million children live on streets, without any proper shelter and family support in Pakistan.
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s Ashuthama Lohano said that the government-run orphanages are ill-equipped to nurture children. Humanitarian organisations should be allowed to provide healthcare, education, sports, clothing, food and other facilities to children at these orphanages.
Bajeer said that the NGOs will lobby lawmakers to legislate and enforcement laws to stop abuses of children’s rights. “We expect that by the end of the week, we will be able to at least win assurance from them that certain laws will be passed and those that exist will be enforced.”
Representatives of Sindh Agriculture and Forestry Workers Coordination Organisation, Women Action Forum and Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, among others, were also present on the occasion. http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?id=28164
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Pakistan – Marching for Freedom by Daphne Liddle
March 25, 2009
HUNDREDS of thousands of Pakistanis: workers, peasants, lawyers, trade unionists, communists, socialists and all manner of progressives have been marching in the last two months. And they have already achieved one big goal – the restoration of Iftikhar Chaudhry, the country’s Chief of Justice and the rule of law.
This may go a long way to achieving the full restoration and implementation of the country’s 1973 constitution – in line with the United Nations Human Rights Charter – which demands an end to bonded labour and wide-ranging land reforms that would give liberated bonded labourers their own land to support themselves.
The military feudal clique that has ruled Pakistan since 1947 – set in place by the departing British colonial regime – is now beginning to crumble and mass demands for civil rights are surging forward.
All existing and former heads of state in Pakistan have been drawn from that military feudal clique and the marchers want them all out, including existing Prime Minister Zardari (husband of assassinated Benazir Bhutto) and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif.
Sharif two weeks ago decided to lend his support to the ‘long march’ organised by lawyers and other civil rights activists demanding the full restoration of Iftikhar Chaudhry as Chief of Justice, along with all the other judges and lawyers who were summarily and illegally removed from office two years ago by the American-backed military dictator Pervez Musharraf.
At the time General Musharraf had been trying to regularise his position by preparing a presidential election in which he would be returned as a “democratically elected” leader. Traditionally Pakistani presidents are elected from within the parliament. To achieve his end he would have to breach all manner of constitutional laws and Chaudhry was not prepared to stand aside and let him get away with this, so Chaudhry had to go.
In the autumn of 2007 Musharraf engineered his “election” as president but it was a short lived victory. It provoked mass protests and he declared martial law. Popular outrage grew and he was forced to concede new parliamentary elections early in 2008 – and to allow former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto – candidate for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) – to return from exile and begin election campaigning.
Nawaz Sharif, the former president kicked out by Musharraf, was living in forced exile in Saudi Arabia. But he slipped back into the country to join the campaign for free elections.
In the final days of 2007 Bhutto was assassinated while campaigning and the whole country was convinced that Musharraf’s intelligence thugs were either behind it or had deliberately allowed it to happen.
Popular anger rose to a crescendo; Sharif temporarily allied himself to the PPP in a joint effort aimed at getting rid of Musharraf. The delayed elections went ahead and Bhutto’s widowed husband, Ali Asif Zardari, won a landslide. Shortly after Musharraf was forced to stand down and the whole country celebrated.
But Zardari failed to fulfil the PPP promise to reinstate Chaudhry and the rule of law. He himself had old corruption charges hanging over him. All the leaders: Musharraf, Bhutto Sharif and Zardari were from the rich landowner class and all had “legal irregularities” and reason to fear the full implementation of the law. They had all failed to implement the 1973 constitution.
Furthermore they had all acted as willing tools of United States imperialism in the area, allowing Pakistan to be used as a base for Muslim fundamentalist terrorists undermining People’s Afghanistan in the 1980s and as a base to invade Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 2001. Musharraf also supplied Pakistani troops to back the US invasion of Somalia in the 1990s. Nevertheless Sharif continued to call for the restoration of Chaudhry; it was a very popular demand and he knew that Zardari’s rule was becoming less and less popular. The people would soon be looking for a new leader.
When Sharif declared his support for the lawyers’ civil rights long march and urged the protesters to occupy the area around the parliament building, Zardari had him put under house arrest. But he defied this to join the demonstrators.
Officials from his Muslim League (PML-N) party said that Sharif had been detained in his home town of Lahore. Hundreds of police surrounded his residence before dawn and detained him along with scores of his supporters.
Speaking to Al Jazeera before he was allowed by the police to head for the protest rally, Sharif said: “The police and the administration have sealed this house totally and there are a lot of very heavy police contingents standing outside my house.
“They say that I am under house arrest, but so far I haven’t been served any arrest warrant.” Sharif’s brother, Shahbaz, who is a senior member of the Muslim League, was also thought to have been placed under house arrest.
Scuffles broke out in Lahore shortly after Sharif’s detention was declared, with riot police firing tear gas at stone-throwing demonstrators.
Lawyers and opposition party supporters had planned to gather near Lahore’s main court complex before heading toward Islamabad to stage a mass sit-in front of parliament, in defiance of a government ban.
Sharif’s supporters denied he was a destabilising influence and insisted that all Zardari had to do was to reinstate Chaudhry and “he can enjoy uninterrupted government for four years,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We are not demanding an overthrow of the government, nor are we asking for mid-term elections. All we are asking is for Mr Zardari to fulfil the promises he made to restore the judges.”
Sharif was claiming to speak on behalf of the protesters, but he did not organise or lead the demonstration and most of the protesters wanted a lot more.
Ishtiaq Ahmad, a professor of international relations at Islamabad’s Qaid-e-Azam university, said that Zardari was resisting reinstating the judges for fear they might revoke his protection from corruption charges.
“The return of Benazir Bhutto and Zardari to Pakistan took place under a deal with Musharraf in 2007. As part of the deal all the corruption charges, through a special presidential ordinance called NRO [National Reconciliation Ordinance], were removed, against Zardari especially.
“The NRO remains, but the fear of the Zardari-led regime is, if they restore chief justice Chaudhry – given his assertive background – the NRO might be revoked and then obviously all those charges will come back to haunt Zardari and other party leaders.” Zardari relented and reinstated Chaudhry and the rest of the judges – and the mass sit-in in parliament square was averted.
It was greeted as a major step forward by the vast majority of people: trade unionists peasants, civil rights activists and many more. In London veteran civil rights activist Mukhtar Rana told the New Worker: “This has been a big demand of the people of Pakistan; it’s a return to the rule of law. The reinstatement of Chaudhry and all the judges and lawyers is a big achievement of the people of Pakistan.
“Lawyers in Britain and the US supported their cause.”
In Pakistan Baz Mohammed Kakar, a leader of the lawyers’ movement said: “This is a victory for the people of this country. Chaudhry is the first chief justice in the history of Pakistan who has proved himself to be a judge for the people, as a chief justice for the people.”
For now, calm has settled after the big demonstration. The army is supporting the chief justice and say they will obey him.
The People’s Party is opposing Nawaz Sharif for his record of bad government and violating constitution by declaring martial law.
Trade unions are growing in strength and confidence and many new civil rights and progressive groups are growing up.
Another giant protest long march has happened just a few weeks before, in the Sindh province, demanding the implementation of land reforms. It was mainly a march of the haris – landless peasants and recently liberated bonded labourers, demanding land to grow food to support themselves.
Article 38(a) of the Constitution of Pakistan says: “The State shall secure the well-being of the people… by preventing the concentration of wealth and means of production and distribution in the hands of a few to the detriment of general interest and by ensuring equitable adjustment of rights between employers and employees, and landlords and tenants.”
United Nations declarations specifically acknowledge this need. The Declaration on Social Progress, adopted by the General Assembly back in 1969, recognises the social function of property, including land, and calls for forms of land ownership that ensure equal rights to property for all..
Syed Mohammed Ali, writing in the Pakistani Daily Times, says: “Despite international conventions and our own constitutional imperatives, not much has been done to address the profound violations facing a multitude of small landless farmers across our country. A highly skewed distribution of land in our country continues to prevail, although there is growing evidence pointing to the need for security of land tenure to promote more investment in land to ensure higher yields.
“When agricultural land is owned in smaller parcels, production practices are also seen to become less extractive. Nonetheless, landed politicians continue to deny the poorer rural workforce access to not only land, but also other productive resources, such as seeds, fertilisers and water.
“According to the International Labour Organisation’s World Labour Report, there are approximately 1.7 million bonded labourers in Pakistan, and a majority of them are in the agricultural sector.
“The introduction of canal-irrigated agriculture by the British and the migrations associated with the development of the so-called canal colonies’ created serious rural disparities in our part of the world, which enabled an increasingly incontestable dominance of the landed elite on sharecroppers/tenant farmers and landless agricultural labourers. “Even after Partition, the lack of effective land reforms and the continuation of archaic laws meant to regulate the legal relationship between landowners and tenant farmers who occupy rural land in major agricultural areas in Punjab and Sindh have severely undermined the interests of the rural poor.”
Landlord and tenant farmer relations are guided by the Sindh Tenancy Act of 1950, which is said to be a result of the long struggle by the peasant organisations of the 1940s.
This Act articulated the rights, obligations and remedies available to the haris (tenant farmers/land-tillers) as well as to the Zamindars (landlords). The law recommended that borrowing and lending related be regulated strictly to avoid exploitation on either side. The law thus fixed a time limit of such lending or borrowing and further required written documents as proof for financial transactions. And a court was supposed to be formed to settle disputes between haris and the zamindars.
In practice, however, proper land records are not being maintained under the Sindh Tenancy Act. Despite trying to regulate loaning arrangement, landlords still apportion a large quantity of harvests, claiming these to be repayments of interest on loans given to their haris. The ease with which landlords circumvent the existing provisions of the law has impelled calls for a complete overhaul of this legislation.
There was even a Sindh High Court’s Hyderabad branch decision to amend the Sindh Tenancy Act according to needs of the peasants back in 2002. In 2007, the speaker of the Sindh Assembly finally formed a committee to amend the Sindh Tenancy Act. But, the prevalent political party lent its support to the landed politicians in order to remain in power, and once again not much was done to address the on-ground exploitation of the rural masses.
Furthermore the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1992 has never been properly implemented. Although the Asian Development Bank also provided a loan to the Sindh government aiming to end bonded labour, seven years after getting this loan, little groundwork has been done to achieve this objective.
In mid-February thousands of haris and their supporters set off on a two-week march to demand amendments to the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act, which will be tabled at the next Sindh Assembly session, according to deputy speaker Shehla Raza. The march was organised by South Asia Partnership, Pakistan (SAP-Pakistan), Sindh Haari Porhiat Council (SHPC) and Bhandar Hari Sangat (BHS).
On the last day of the march, the procession of the peasants from Sindh and the leadership of SAP-Pakistan, SHPC and BHS, were joined by thousands of peasants from Punjab, Balochistan and NWFP, as well as members of organisations working for the rights of peasants, workers and women.
The march was delayed as some groups were by police and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz workers.
Regardless, when the rally did start off, all one could see was a mass of people interspersed with thousands of flags, including those of the SHPC, Awami Party, and the historic Haider Bux Jatoi’s Sindh Haari Committee.
Various slogans reverberated through the air as the sea of people wove their way along main roads, by-lanes and footpaths. Several volunteers kept order, and many shopkeepers, residents and passers-by came up to the marchers with encouragement.
Many even joined the procession, or at least responded to slogans while flashing victory signs. The rally, which had covered almost all of M A Jinnah Road, finally reached the Sindh Assembly around 6:30pm, where it was surrounded by massive trucks and hordes of police.
The leadership of the movement went into the Sindh Assembly building to speak with the ministers. After a while, Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza came out and addressed the rally. She said she was proud of the fact that the peasants and workers of the country were now aware of their rights and were also aware of how to get them.
She also promised that the amendments in the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act would be tabled at the next Sindh Assembly session. “If these promises are not fulfilled, we will march again on 15th August and stage another sit-in here. That sit-in will be an absolute re-enactment of the peasants’ sit-in led by Haider Bux Jatoi more than 50 years ago. It had resulted in the passing of the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act,” SAP-Pakistan provincial coordinator Syed Zulfiqar Shah said in his speech.
He made the participants promise not to give up the fight, and to continue “till the rule of the workers and peasants was set up in the country”.
SHPC head Punhal Sario lambasted past and present rulers and systems of the government in the country for doing nothing substantial for the rights of peasants, workers and women, and for not ensuring the implementation of laws in letter and spirit.
Speakers at the sit-in took pride in the fact that not a single window was broken during the march. “Our peaceful struggle is our strength. It should, however, not be taken as a sign of weakness,” they said. The long march started in Hyderabad on 15th February from the tomb of “Baba-e-Sindh” (father of Sindh) Haider Bux Jatoi and culminated on 26th February in Karachi with a sit-in in front of the Sindh Assembly building to demand the establishment of Haari courts, amendments in the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act and rights for landless peasants in the province.
In London Mukhtar Rana told the New Worker:
“Our movement has been supporting this. So many bonded labourers marching for their freedom! This is the task we have been fighting for years and years. It’s why I visited Karachi last year. “But even when people got their freedom their was no work for them to support themselves. “Now they are demanding land reforms so they can become landowners and have somewhere to grow their crops and support themselves. “That’s the most important thing. Now things are going forward and we are playing an active role in supporting this struggle.” http://newworkerfeatures.blogspot.in/2009/03/pakistan-marching-to-freedom.html
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Peasants’ march to arrive in city today
Thousands of peasants from all over Sindh initiated a long march from Hyderabad last week for proposed amendments in the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950, refreshing the memories of the famous peasant leader Baba-e-Sindh Comrade Hyder Bux Jatoi.
About 200 peasants, along with thousands of haris, started the long march from Hyderabad on February 15, marching for about 250 kilometers from district Hyderabad. Passing from Tando Muhammad Khan, they paid tribute to the legendary peasant leader Sufi Shah Inayat Shaheed in Jhokshrif and visited different cities and towns of Thatta District. Today, the marchers enter Karachi after a long journey.
The peasants have prepared a draft of amendments in the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950. The demand draft comprises of demands of land reforms, land for landless haris, eradication of bonded labour and exploitative labour, as well as the establishment of hari courts, along with the implementation of laws in the Bonded Labour System (abolition) Act 1992. The peasants will stage a sit-in at the Sindh Assembly and present their demands to the Sindh assembly speaker and members.
On February 25 at 5 pm, the ‘Hari Conference’ will be held at the City Sports Complex, Kashmir Road, where a book on Mai Bakhtawar will be launched. Prominent Hari, Mazdoor and Mahigir leaders and civil society representatives will address the conference. Personalities from other walks of life including showbiz, literature and business have also been invited to address the conference and express solidarity with the peasants.
The Sindh Hari Long March is being taken out by South Asia Partnership Pakistan, a civil society organisation working for peasant rights and Sindh Agrarian Reforms Committee, a network of 20 civil society organisations working in Sindh on the issues of land rights, peasants and labour rights.
Addressing a joint press conference at Karachi Press Club, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Co Chairperson Syed Iqbal Hyder, PILER Executive Director Karamat Ali, Sharafat Ali and Zulfqar Shah, along with the Network for Working Women’s Saleha Athar and ActionAid Pakistan’s Adam Malik, said that the people of Karachi should join hands with the struggling peasants for their rights.
News by Amar Guriro, Daily Times, Karachi, February 23, 2009
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Peasant courts must be established and the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 to be amended to end bonded labour February 24, 2009, By Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
Thousands of peasants from different parts of the Sindh province are on a long march demanding amendments in the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950. The demand is to obtain equal status for the peasants while they share the harvest with the landlords, irrespective of the loan they have availed from the landlords for agriculture. The practice as of now is that the landlord apportions large quantity of the harvest, claiming interest and repayment of the original loan, thereby retaining the peasants in a state of perpetual debt.
The peasants’ protest in the form of a long march started on 15, February. It is scheduled to finish on 26 February. The march will terminate outside the Sindh Assembly building at Karachi, the capital of Sind province. The march will cover an estimated 250 kilometers. The peasants are demanding the establishment of Hari Courts (peasants’ courts) to resolve their issues, particularly concerning the loans, which keep them indebted to the landlords for generations. They have suggested amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 and have demanded several important and necessary changes to the 58-year-old law. The amendments are expected to protect the peasants from exploitation by the landlords. The peasants are also demanding the implementation of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1992, in its letter and spirit. Please find the recommendations made by the peasants and civil society here:http://material.ahrchk.net/pakistan/AHRC-STM-040-2009.pdf
The Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 is the result of the long struggle by the peasant organisations of the forties. The law is the result of continuous protest and processions, the peasants and the civil society held, outside the Sindh Assembly. The Act provides for the rights, obligations and remedies that are available to the Haris (tillers/peasants) as well as to the Zamindar (landlord).
One of the main issues that led to the enactment was the controversy stemming out from disputes related to the loans taken by the Haris from the Zamindars. Often, the practice was, the Zamindars dictated the terms of these loans to the detriment of the peasants. The law therefore recommended that borrowing and lending and any dispute thereof, be regulated strictly under the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950. The law also fixed a time limit of such lending or borrowing and further required written documents as proof for financial transactions. The law as of now requires a complete overhaul owing to the drastic changes that have taken place in socio-economic structure, changes in the modes of production and the new modes of exploitation the landlords have invented to circumvent the existing provisions of the law. 62 percent population in the province is peasants.
The powerful feudal class, with the passing of time, converted loans, borrowing or lending to the peasants, into bonded labour. With the patronage of the army and the civil servants, who received fertile land along the rivers for their service to the country, the land lords openly defied the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950. With the help of the army and the civil bureaucracy, the landlords cum politicians prevented the establishment of Hari Courts.
From the early nineties, human rights organisations have taken up the issue of bonded labour and have helped in obtaining the release of the hundreds of bonded laborers including their families in the country. It was found that, since generations, not only the peasant families were bonded to the landlords for petty sums of loans, but even their cattle were bonded. The movement against the bonded labour gained strength and momentum with the support from the public and the media, whereas, on the other hand, the landlords and the politicians resisted the movement and prevented enactment of laws in favour of the peasants.
Seeing the strong movement against the practice of bonded labour, and the non compliance of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1992 by the landlords and politicians, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) made its entry by offering loans to the Sindh government. The ADB wanted advances from the ADB to be distributed among the landlords for settling peasant loans. They argued that through this process, the issue of bonded labour in Pakistan would be settled for ever. This loan however was never requested by any party under the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950. But the ADB allegedly took the advantage to enter into a dispute between the government and peasants, the purpose being to enmesh the government into the loan web, which will obviously be paid by the country’s tax payers in years to come.
In the year 2000, the ADB made a deal with the administration to provide loan to the Sindh government to settle the issue of bonded labour or that of the loan holders by providing loan to the landlords through the Sindh government. The ADB proposed a financial package of USD 62 million in which the loan from the ADB would be 83 percent of the total amount, which would amount to USD 51.85 million, whereas the Sindh government will provide USD 10.50 million.
According to the agreement between the Sindh government and the ADB, a project with the name Sindh Rural Development Project (SRDP) was established, which was expected to be complete its objective of eliminating bonded labour or clearing outstanding loans from the peasants until 2004. The areas or districts which came under this project are Sanghar, Mirpukhas, Thatta and Badin districts and its municipal towns. The peasants and human rights organisations rejected the offer made by the ADB and termed it as an act to strengthen the feudal class and the government officials. The ADB loan was also viewed as additional trap to burden the peasants in the province. The civil society was of the opinion that the loan will be wasted by the government officials and a part of the ADB loan will be spent on the landlords who will distribute the amount to their henchmen, whereas, the peasants will remain in bonded labour.
In the meantime, the Sindh High Court, Hyderabad Circuit on 17, July 2002, came out with a decision to amend the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 and directed to amend it according to needs of the peasants who are also share holders of the crop. In his observation, Honourable Justice Qurban Ali, observed that it is significant that the peasant share holders are bare footed and with nothing to wear, whereas the landlords drive Pajeros and live in palaces. From the provisions of the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 it is abundantly clear that a special forum is to be provided to regulate the relationship between the Haris and Zamindars.
In the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 a Mukhtiarkar (government officer) is to maintain the record of tenants and the tenancies. In practice however, no proper records are maintained, which generates much controversy. Therefore, the Hyderabad Bench of the Sindh High Court held that it is obligatory on the part of the Mukhtiarkar to make such entries periodically and to update the records regularly. The Court also suggested remedies to be provided against defaulting Mukhtiarkars who fail to perform their job.
Hardly 26 percent of the rural households have land ownership in Sindh, which is the lowest in Pakistan. Sindh has the highest percentage of single land holdings exceeding 100 acres and such farms form 15 percent of the total farming area.
Seven years after availing the loan from the ADB and the formation of the SRDP, it was proved that the apprehensions of the peasant organisations and the civil society concerning the ADB proposal were true. The report of the ADB itself says that no field work was done during the planned period and only some roads were made. Whereas, the peasant organisations and the civil society organisations claim that the SRDP also was a failure.
Ironically, some streets were constructed after demolishing peasant houses with the false promise that those affected by the construction would be provided alternative houses. In fact the roads, for which the houses were demolished are yet to be constructed and the evictees thrown to the street.
An alarming share of the ADB loan was used to construct luxurious office buildings, to purchase caravans of vehicles spending millions of rupees and the rest was siphoned into salaries and allowances of the government staff. Some amounts were also given to the landlords. But these sums were never audited or subjected to any transparent accounting. The main purpose of the SRDP was to provide training to the government officials involved in the project and to provide the basic needs of health. This was never met.
The criminal negligence on the part of the politicians who were the members of the assembly in Sindh province helped corruption to flourish in the ABD/SRDP deal. A political group, the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), who claims to represent the urban middle class, supported the landlords in not implementing the SRD project. The MQM is known for working out political arrangements to remain in power, irrespective of the government that rule Pakistan. It was part of the dictatorship led by General Musharraf and is also a part of the current administration that came to power after ending the dictatorship.
During 2007, the then Speaker of the Sindh Assembly formed a 12 member Special Committee following the directives of Sindh High Court to amend the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 in favor of the peasants. The suggestions from the peasants were also presented to Committee through its Chairman Mr. Anwar Ali Mahar of the Pakistan People’s Party. Most of the suggestions were endorsed by the Sindh Abadgar Board, an organisation of the landlords.
The middle class political leadership of the province supported the landlords and did nothing for ending the feudal system. The urban middle class party¡¦s main purpose was not to save the peasants but to recruit its cadres into the SRDP. This committee has still not done any work on the issue of bonded labour and the misuse of millions of dollars from the ADB
The ADB is happy that it was successful in providing a huge loan to the Sindh government and expresses no concern about the wastage of the loan. It is now the duty of the provincial government to pay off the debt with huge interest accumulated thereon to the ADB.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) supports the long march of the peasants seeking amendments as recommended by several peasant organisations and other civil society groups to the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950. The AHRC urges the Sindh provincial government to establish Hari Courts without any delay to resolve the peasant disputes with regard to their loans which never come to an end, even after many generations. The government should make it compulsory for every landlord or the tenancies to document their income and expenses.
The AHRC expects restraint from the Sindh government on 26 February, when the peasants observe a sit-in outside the Sindh Assembly building.
The government should also bring the corrupt officials and politicians who misappropriated the huge amounts of funds which were taken as loan by the Sindh government in the name of elimination of bonded labour before the court of law. Courtesy: Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
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PPP MPs vow to amend Sindh Tenancy Act
January 23, 2009, Daily Dawn
Jan 22: The Pakistan People’s Party leaders have given an assurance to make amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act through passage of resolution in the Sindh Assembly.
This was claimed by the South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP) in a press release issued here on Wednesday. This would go a long way in protecting the rights of haris, it said.
A delegation comprising members of Sindh Agrarian Reforms Committee, Karamat Ali of Piler, Zulfiqar Shah of SAP and Zulfiqar Halepoto of SDF met with the Sindh Assembly Speaker Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, Deputy Speaker Ms Shehla Raza and some PPP MPAs in the Speaker’s Chamber in Karachi on Tuesday.
It further claimed that the PPP leaders assured the delegation of moving a resolution for the amendment of the Sindh Tenancy Act soon.
Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said that he will facilitate in arranging a meeting of the delegation with the special committee appointed by the previous government on Tenancy Act.
Zulfiqar Shah of SAP said that efforts were under way for the success of the scheduled long march on Feb 15. The MQM he said has offered full support with the Karachi city government ready to provide all facilities to the participants of long march. http://archives.dawn.com/2009/01/23/nat30.htm
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Nirmala Deshpande’s ashes immersed in Indus
5/18/2008, INAS
Karachi, May 18 (IANS) The ashes of Indian peace and human rights activist Nirmala Deshpande were immersed in the Indus River at the steps of the Sadhu Bela temple at Sukkur in Sindh on Saturday. Deshpande, a widely respected Gandhian and nominated member of the Rajya Sabha upper house of the Indian parliament, had said in her will that her ashes should be immersed in all the rivers of South Asia. Deshpande, 79, died in New Delhi May 1.
A 250-member India-Pakistan peace committee, whose members arrived at Sukkur from different parts of Pakistan, participated in the ceremony to pay homage to Deshpande’s efforts for making South Asia a peaceful region for all nations, Dawn reported Sunday.
Respected internationally, Nirmala Deshpande played a leading role in various peace movements in South Asia over the last six decades.
It was her desire to make South Asia a region free of nuclear weapons. She also played a key role towards bringing people of different religions closer to each other.
The committee was led by its secretary Karamat Ali and included its member Anoosha Alam and her nine-year-old daughter Nisa Alam.
Deshpande had desired in her will that a young girl perform the immersion ceremony. In accordance with this, Nisa Alam led the ceremony.
Similar immersion ceremonies have already been performed in the Ganges and Yamuna rives in India, and in other rivers in South Asian countries.
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Opinion-makers of Sindh call for new constitution
Daily Dawn, Friday, 14 Aug, 2009
HYDERABAD: Validity of 1973 Constitution has come to an end due to continuous undemocratic interventions, extra-constitutional amendments and its inherent flaws.
The current constitution could not resolve the intra-state political and economic conflicts, Sindh political and civil society activists said here on Wednesday while initiating an effective discussion to design what they said a comprehensive list of demands acceptable to all.
The 1973 Constitution should work for an interim period leading to a new constitution based on 1940 resolution through a new elected constituent assembly.
That constitution would work as a new social contract among the federating units of Pakistan, they said.
In a consultative workshop jointly organised by the South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP-PK), Centre for Peace and Civil Society (CPCS) and We Journalists, they introduced a draft of demands to have a consensus by people representing sections of society.
According to them, time is ripe now to form a list of national demands, acceptable to political parties, civil society groups and other segments of society.
Veteran politician Rasool Bux Palijo, Taraqi Passand Party chairman Dr Qadir Magsi, Save Sindh Movement chief Shah Mohammad Shah, senior Marxist Jam Saqi, Abdul Khaliq Junejo of the Jeay Sindh Mahaz (JSM), Dr Dodo Maheri of the Sindh United Party, Abrar Qazi of the Sindh Democratic Forum, CPCS Executive Director Jami Chandio, We Journalist head Jaffar Memon, SAP Pakistan Sindh coordinator Zulfiqar Shah and a large number of intellectuals, civil society representatives, writers and activists took active part in the discussion.
They emphasized the need to bring constitutional reforms to avoid further uncertainty among the provinces. They also discussed the National Finance Commission (NFC) award, local people’s rights to natural resources and provincial autonomy.
They were of the view that Pakistan had become a structurally imbalanced federation after the separation of East Pakistan (Bangladesh). One province dominated all the state institutions and enjoyed an absolute majority in parliament over the other three provinces.
Military should have no role and stake in politics and public life, they said and suggested that armed forces should be downsized and should have equal representation from all the provinces.
Some of the speakers said that if a province called for centre’s help to maintain the law and order, like Pakistan Rangers functioning in Sindh for the purpose, it should be clarified as to who would bear the expenses. The centre should bear the cost.
They said Sindh spent a major chunk of its budget on Rangers for maintaining the law and order, which affected the development work in the province.
They said illegal immigrants should have no right to purchase and get land on lease in Sindh and cast vote. GST and Excise taxes were provincial subjects and they should be given to provinces, instead of the centre, they urged.
Mr Rasool Bux Palijo said the elected representatives, instead of launching welfare projects, were working against Sindh and its people. They were the enemies of the people, he said, adding that the prime minister, representing the PPP, says the government wanted to build Kalabagh dam which would devastate Sindh.
Shah Mohammad Shah said the stakeholders should have an accurate charter of demands.
Mohammad Ali Shah said it was a good start regarding the new social contract and it should be extended to other provinces.
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Changes in ‘outdated’ tenancy act sought
December 6, 2008, Daily Dawn
HYDERABAD, Dec 5: Hari leaders and agriculture experts have stressed the need for comprehensive amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950 as according to them it has become irrelevant and outdated.
The made these observations at the Sindh Hari Convention held here under the aegis of the South Asia Partnership Pakistan.
The convention decided to organize a long march up to the Sindh assembly in support of their demands
Rights activists Rochi Ram Advocate stressed the need for massive changes in the tenancy act. He called for formulation of a new Hari policy to protect the rights of the tillers.
He was of the view that the act in question could no longer meet the requirements of the 21st century.
Karamat Ali said that it was high time the government considered the problems of the workers and the haris seriously.
He pointed out that the rulers had made many promises with the peasants and the workers and added that the present government was now in a position to improve the lot of peasants and workers who were living in abject poverty.
The deputy director of the South Asia Partnership, Irfan Mufti, said that the feudal system had entrenched itself for centuries and it was high time for the present government to do away with this outdated system.
He recalled that since the inception of Pakistan three land commissions had been constituted but nothing came out of their recommendations as a result of which the feudal system had further strengthened. He said even in this 21st century, tillers of the land had been deprived of their due rights.
PPP MPA Farheen Mughal said that her party was quite sincere in ameliorating the lot of the peasants and workers and it would certainly make laws to protect their rights.
The president of the Hari Porhiyat Council, Punhal Sario, said that the Sindh Tenancy Act, which was passed in 1950, had become totally outdated and needed massive amendments.
He said that the peasantry was performing a leading role in the development of the national economy but it was not receiving anything in return.
He demanded that the rights of the working class should be safeguarded through fresh legislation.
Comrade Hussain Bux Thebo Advocate said that tillers of the land were the true owners of the country but no government had ever recognized the fact. The peasants and workers had never been included in any government development programme, he said.
Jami Chandio said that the peasantry and the workers were living below the poverty line but the government had totally remained indifferent to their plight.
He said it should not be forgotten that the working class was the real producer of goods and services. He urged the government to honour its election promises and stressed the need for abolishing the feudal system.
The chairman of the Fisherfolk Forum Pakistan, Syed Mohammad Ali Shah, said that since the inception of Pakistan, feudal class had ruled the country and that was the main reason that the peasants and the workers had not only been denied their human rights but they had also been subjected to inhuman atrocities.
He was sceptical that the present government would take any tangible steps to improve the lot of the working class because this government also comprised of feudal lords.
He said that the working class and the peasants would have to unite on a single platform to protect their rights.
SAP leader Zulfiqar Shah announced that a long march would be organized soon to pressurize the government for bringing about peasant friendly amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act.
A large number of haris from all across the province attended the convention.
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Long walk to freedom
By Urooj Zia
Thursday, February 19, 2009, Daily The News
JHOK SHARIF: Twenty-five-year-old Shambu Kohli and 50 other people from his tribe beg for a living.
For twenty years, they were bonded to their feudal lord (Wadera) Ali Nawaz Leghari in their village Bolarchi, 25 kilometres from Jhok Sharif, district Thatta.
Two years ago, the Kohlis of Bolarchi were mobilised against their landlord. The latter, afraid of legal action, said they were “free to go.”
The Kohlis, however, made history. Instead of fleeing to a refugee camp like other “freed” agriculture labourers had done before them, they stayed put and demanded that they be paid for the labour they had put in for 20 years on Leghari’s lands.
Eighty year old Leghari tried to scare them by allegedly lodging false FIRs at the local police station against many of the Kolhi men.
Lowest caste Hindus, at the lowest possible rung of the social ladder, the Kolhis cut a helpless figure, but decided to fight back. They have now sought the services of a lawyer and plan to sue Leghari in court for violation of the Abolition of Bonded Labour Act.
On Wednesday, around 25 people from the clan, including 15 women, walked to Jhok Sharif to be part of the fourth day of the Sindhi peasants’ long march for land reforms. The march started on February 15 in Hyderabad, and will culminate on February 26 in Karachi in a sit-in outside the Sindh Assembly building.
Jhok Sharif marked a highlight in the march, for this is where the shrine of Sufi Shah Inayat Shaheed is located. Shah Inayat led a peasants’ movement in the mid-1700s, and the “Jhok communes” were established as a result long before the French communes were even an idea.
“Jo Kherey, So Hee Khaey” (loose translation: the tiller has the right to the produce) was the slogan that mobilised Shah Inayat’s movement. Such is his stature in rural Sindh, that it is often difficult to separate facts from folklore.
The Jhok communes, according to legend, were attacked on the orders of the Mughal emperor, who was assisted by the feudal leadership of the area, as well as extremist religious leaders.
Shah Inayat was arrested, and ordered to be crushed to death in a Chakki. Many of his followers laid down their lives too. All the martyrs, irrespective of their religion, are buried at the Jhok Sharif shrine.
Shah Inayat may have been killed, but his message and movement have endured. “Jo Kherey, So Hee Khaey” was translated into Punjabi (“Jhera Vaahvey, Ohi Khaavey”) centuries later, and used as a slogan by Anjuman Mazareen Pakistan (AMP), the second largest peasant movement in Pakistan in the past three decades.
The largest peasant movement in the history of Pakistan was that of Hashtnagar (Charsadda, NWFP), where the peasants overthrew feudals in the 1970s. The AMP currently, however, is all but decimated primarily on account of religious differences between Muslim and Christian Mazaaras (landless peasants).
Their counterparts in Sindh, the Haaris, however, are in no such danger. Sindhi Sufis preached the lesson of religious harmony, as is evident in much of their poetry.
A lot of it was performed on Wednesday evening at Shah Inayat’s shrine, where many sat in rapt attention, as the spirits of Shah Inayat and his martyred followers watched over the contemporary form of the movement that they had initiated almost 300 years ago.
The pleasant aspect of the march is that women lead the sloganeering. Women in Jhok Sharif even pulled their men folk out of their houses, coaxing them to join the marchers as they walked through the village, vowing to continue the struggle until land reforms are implemented in Sindh.
On Thursday morning, the marchers will move forward again, and will camp at Sajawal.
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Marchers bring traffic on highway to halt
THATTA, Feb 20: Traffic came to a halt as participants of peasants’ long march, which started from Hyderabad on Feb 15, staged a sit-in on the Sujawal section of the Badin-Karachi highway on Friday, demanding amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950 and protection to legitimate rights of peasants.
The march organised by the Sindh chapter of the South Asia Partnership Pakistan entered the tiny town of Jhoke Sharif in Thatta district on Wednesday evening, where the marchers laid a floral wreath on the grave of great warrior saint Shah Inayat Shaheed, who fought a war for peasants’ rights in 18th century. The peasant leaders, including Zulfiqar Shah, Maryam Majidi, Punhal Sario, Comrade Ramzan Memon, Dr Pyar Ali Alana, Liaquat Jamari, Abdul Rashid, Taju Bheel and Zulfiqar Sarwech said that peasants had awakened and with the support of workers they would no longer allow feudal lords to rule over them.
They stressed the need for massive changes in the Tenancy Act and called for formulation of a new Hari policy to protect tillers’ rights. The act could no longer meet the requirements of the 21st century and it was high time the elected government took problems of workers and peasants seriously, they stressed.
They said that the act had become outdated and needed large-scale changes. The peasantry was performing a leading role in the development of national economy but it received almost nothing in return, they said.
They said that the rulers had made many promises with peasants and workers but they fulfilled none. The present government was now in a position to improve the lot of peasants and workers who were living in abject poverty, they said.
Three land commissions had been constituted since the inception of Pakistan but nothing came out of their recommendations, which as a result only strengthened the feudal system, they said.
They were highly critical of non-release of water downstream Kotri Barrage since last couple of years, making agricultural lands barren, spreading hyper salinity and ruining deltaic region of Thatta and Badin districts.
Later, the marchers resumed their march towards Thatta town.
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Sunday, February 22, 2009, Daily The News
GUJJO: Saturday brought a welcome respite from the slowness of Friday in the course of the Sindhi peasants’ long march for land reforms.
It was day seven of the march which started on February 15 at Hyderabad at the tomb of Baba-e-Sindh (father of Sindh) Haider Bux Jatoi. The procession, comprising hundreds of Haaris (landless peasants) and leaders and members of the Bhandar Hari Sangat (BHS), Sindh Hari Porhiat Council (SHPC) and South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP-Pakistan), is expected to reach Karachi on February 26, where a sit-in has been planned in front of the Sindh Assembly.
Friday, day six of the march, was a tad slow. After a massive public gathering at Sujawal city, the only other public gathering was at Pathan Colony, a small truck stop around 15 kilometres from Thatta city. At Sujawal city, apart from the usual Jiyay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) and Jiyay Sindh Mahaz (JSM) convoys, the marchers were also welcomed by the Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party (STPP) and members of the Thatta District Bar Association.
On Friday night, after walking almost continuously for more than 11 hours, the marchers were hosted for the night by a local JSQM leader at a village near Thatta city. Saturday morning started with breakfast and tea at a nearby Dhaaba (roadside restaurant), after which the procession danced and marched to Thatta city. To say that the reception at Thatta was grand would be an understatement. The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) had come over to receive the procession in Thatta city. There was a mad jostling for the positioning of banners as the crowd swelled to thrice its usual size as fisherfolk and members of other local NGOs joined in. Finally, it was decided that the Haaris’ banners would lead the way and the rest would follow close behind.
After this, chaos ensued for a couple of minutes as Haaris and Sindhi peasant culture merged with the fisherfolk’s amalgamation of Sindhi and Baloch culture. What followed cannot be described as anything but a ‘celebration of the oppressed’. Ethnic music filled the air with Dhols and Beens playing enthusiastically, interspersed with nationalist and revolutionary songs and slogans. Equally wholehearted was the way in which the participants of the march danced together to the music and responded to the slogans. The massive rally wove its way through the narrow lanes of Thatta city’s markets and finally culminated in an open square at the edge of the city, where it converted into a public meeting.
“The war for the rights of the oppressed workers, landless peasants and fisherfolk will continue if our demands are not met now. If we can take to the road now, we can do this again too,” speakers warned amidst more enthusiastic sloganeering. After the rally, the marchers walked and danced through Makli, the largest necropolis of the world.
After the lunch on Saturday as the procession slowly repaired to the last stop for the day, Gujjo (Kateyar village). On Sunday, the marchers will move closer to Karachi and will cross Gharo and camp at Dhabeji.
Haris demand rights, not just freedom
Tuesday, February 24, 2009, Daily The News
DEH JORIGI: The peasants who are part of the long march for land reforms are demanding their “due rights, and not just freedom.”
“There’s a difference between the two terms,” they explained. “When a Wadera (feudal lord) fears legal repurcussions, he sets Haaris free, but he does not give them what is due to them. He hopes that they will be so happy to not be bonded to him any more, they will simply get up and go to a camp, like they usually do. We don’t want just freedom. We want our rights too, we want to own the land, we want our due share in the produce, we want to be treated with dignity.”
The participants of the march are primarily demanding amendments in the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act, which will give them much of what they are asking for. They are also asking for the establishment of Haari courts where anyone should be allowed to represent them, instead of just licensed lawyers.
The march was organised by South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP Pakistan), Sindh Hari Porhiat Council (SHPC) and Bhandar Hari Sangat (BHS). A majority of the participants of the march are landless peasants from Sindh. The procession started from Hyderabad on February 15 from the tomb of Baba-e-Sindh (father of Sindh) Haider Bux Jatoi and will culminate on February 26 in Karachi with a sit-in in front of the Sindh Assembly building.
On Sunday night, the marchers were hosted in Dhabeji by the local leadership of the Jiyay Sindh Qaumi Mahaaz (JSQM). On Monday, day nine of the march, the procession left Dhabeji around 10:30 am, and finally entered the outskirts of Karachi.
At various stops along the way, they were received grandly by JSQM leaders and members. The first major stop of the day was after lunch at the Textile Institute of Pakistan (TIP), where they were warmly welcomed by TIP heads, faculty and students. Many of the latter seemed like they wanted to sit down and speak with the Haaris, but were too shy to do so, and not knowing any Sindhi, thought the Haaris would not understand Urdu, much to the amusement of many participants of the march. The most memorable stop for the day was near Deh Joregi, a couple of kilometres from TIP.
At this stop, the procession was given a grand reception by JSQM (Basheer Khan group) head, Basheer Khan Qureshi. JSQM members turned out in large numbers, so much so that the procession swelled to twice its usual size. After a round of speeches denouncing the tribal system in Sindh, capitalism and the oppression of landless peasants and demanding rights for the latter, the marchers moved on. Along the way, they were given a two-car escort by TIP faculty, and an eight-bike escort by local JSQM members. The massive rally was en route towards Ghaggar Phattak, the final stop for the night, till the time this report was filed.
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Sindh peasants’ long march
By Urooj Zia
Wednesday, February 25, 2009, Daily The News
The Sindh peasants’ long march for land reforms entered Karachi on Monday evening and is now en route to the Sindh Assembly.
The procession started from Hyderabad on February 15 from the tomb of Baba-e-Sindh (father of Sindh) Haider Bux Jatoi and will culminate on February 26 in Karachi with a sit-in in front of the Sindh Assembly building.
On Monday evening, the procession was given a massive reception in Bin Qasim Town Union Council (UC) 6 by the Jiyay Sindh Qaumi Mahaaz (JSQM), Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI), Awami Party (AP), the Pakistan Steel workers union, and others.
JSQM Basheer Khan group President Basheer Khan Qureshi also addressed the public rally in Gulshan-e-Hadeed. Later, the participants were hosted at the local NADRA office, where Bin Qasim Town UC-6 Nazim, belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), addressed the rally.
On Tuesday, day 10 of the march, the procession left Gulshan-e-Hadeed around 11:30 a.m. after breakfast which was hosted by the local JSQM leadership, and marched to Bhains Colony (Yusuf Goth). On the way, they were also given a police escort. En route, they were also joined by workers from Anjuman Mazareen Punjab (AMP). The main slogan, “Hulo Hulo, Assembly Hulo” (let’s go to the Sindh assembly), revolved around and even passersby responded to the Haaris’ indomitable spirit. The rally was en route to Bhains Colony, the final stop for the night. http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=164378&Cat=3&dt=2/25/2009
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Thursday, February 26, 2009, Daily The News Karachi
The solution to the problems of the peasantry, industrial workers and women lies in a movement led by “the people,” Sindh Hari Porhiat Council (SHPC) head Punhal Sario said on Wednesday. He was speaking at the Hari Conference organised by the Sindh Zar’ai Sudhar Committee as part of the haris’ (landless peasants) long march for land reforms.
The long march started in Hyderabad on February 15 from the tomb of “Baba-e-Sindh” (father of Sindh) Haider Bux Jatoi and will culminate on February 26 (tomorrow) in Karachi with a sit-in in front of the Sindh Assembly building to demand the establishment of Haari courts, amendments in the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act and rights for landless peasants in the province. The march was organised by South Asia Partnership ñ Pakistan (SAP-Pakistan), SHPC and Bhandar Hari Sangat (BHS). An overwhelming majority of the participants of the march are peasants from Sindh.
On Tuesday, day 10 of the march, the procession had marched 22 kilometres from Gulshan-e-Hadeed to Malir-15, where they had camped for the night.
En route, Karachi had lived up to its reputation as the industrial hub of the country, and participants of march were welcomed at various points by leaders and members of a number of local trade unions. Notable among these was the reception at Quaidabad by workers’ unions from General Tyres and Farooq Textile Mills.
Tuesday, however, was a tad slow — there were no public gatherings. Wajid Leghari deserves a special mention though, for speaking continuously for four hours, informing residents and workers in areas that the procession passed, about the aims of the march, and exhorting them to support the cause of the landless peasants of Sindh.
The procession reached Malir-15 around 5:30 p.m., where local Pukhtoon hosts from the Mazdoor Mahaaz-e-Amal had made arrangements for their Sindhi brethren to spend the night in the area. The marchers were also joined Jiyay Sindh Mahaz (JSM) leader, Nawaz Khan Zaor, who had also hosted the procession last Wednesday at his village near Mirpur Bathoro.
Zaor was recently bailed out of jail after spending four years in confinement. Prior to these four years, Zaor was a “missing person” for two and a half years. He had finally resurfaced at the Central Prison Karachi, telling horrendous tales of torture. He was then charged for a number of bomb blasts in Pakistan, and “officially” imprisoned. Zaor, however, is far from scared. He claims that no amount of political confinement will prevent him from fighting for the rights of the people of his province.
On Wednesday, day 11 of the march, the procession left Malir-15 in the morning, and marched through Drig Road, Sharea Faisal and Kashmir Road to reach the KMC Sports Complex, where the Hari Conference was hosted. Along the way, they were joined by peasants organisations from Balochistan, Pakhtoonkhwa and Punjab. The latter were represented by the Anjuman Mazareen Punjab (AMP) and their full-throated slogans.
Speakers at the conference, including AMP leader Aqeela Naz, Aurat Foundation Resident Director Anis Haroon, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Co-Chairperson Iqbal Haider, PILER head Karamat Ali, and the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) general secretary lashed out against the tribal system in Sindh, as well as capitalism, imperialism, religious extremism, “Talibanisation,” and the Pakistan Army, and demanded that the working class be given its due rights.
A book about legendary Sindhi peasant leader Mai Bakhtawer Shaheed was also launched on the occassion. The book has been researched and authored by Khadim Ali Shah, who said that the entire effort took around seven years.
SAP-Pakistan Sindh Coordinator Zulfiqar Shah’s speech was uncharestically subdued, while SHPC head Punhal Sario’s was even more aggressive than usual, as he lashed out at the ideas presented by several speakers before him. “We voted the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) into power four times. It gave us nothing. Workers in Karachi were shot at during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s tenure. The Communist Party did nothing. Nationalist parties have failed too. What we need is not the leadership of any of these parties — we need a movement carved and led by the people — by peasants and industrial workers,” he said. “We need a united Left. We need to get rid of our ‘political chauvinism,’ sit with other people, and learn to listen to their point of view even if we don’t agree with them.”
His speech elicited much sloganeering from the audience, including the main slogan of the movement: Sufi Shah Inayat Shaheed’s “Jekho Kherey, So Hee Khaey” (the tiller has the right to the produce).
Iqbal Haider echoed Sario’s sentiments as he quoted the example of the lawyers movement, along with quotes from Habib Jalib. “Look at the lawyers’ movement. It made itself strong enough to have political parties running behind it in order to be associated with it. That is precisely what the working class movement should do too,” he said.
On a separate note, Haider condemned the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s decision against Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif. He referred to it as the “political murder” of the Sharif brothers.
On Thursday, the final day of the march, the procession will gather at Numaish Chowrangi at 2 p.m. From here they will march to the Sindh Assembly building, where they will stage a sit-in and present their demands in the form of a memorandum to Sindh Assembly Speaker Nisar Khuhro.
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Sindh Land and Tenancy Act
By Urooj ZiaFriday, February 27, 2009, Daily The News
KARACHI: Amendments to the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act which have been proposed by haris (landless peasants) who have been marching since last 12 days will be tabled at the next Sindh Assembly session, Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza said on Thursday.
The last day of the march, the procession of the peasants from Sindh and the leadership of SAP-Pakistan, SHPC and BHS, were joined by thousands of peasants from Punjab, Balochistan and NWFP, as well as members of organisations working for the rights of peasants, workers and women.
Around 4 p.m. on Thursday, the procession started off from the KMC Sports Complex where everyone had camped for the night, and walked through Kashmir Road, MA Jinnah Road and Zebunnisa Street to reach the Sindh Assembly.
The procession was scheduled to start off at 2 p.m. but several groups who were coming to join them from rural Sindh were delayed along the way by the police and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz workers. Regardless, when the rally did start off, all one could see was a mass of people interspersed with thousands of flags, including those of the SHPC, Awami Party, and Haider Bux Jatoi’s Sindh Haari Committee.
Various slogans reverberated through the air as the sea of people wove their way along main roads, by-lanes and footpaths. Several volunteers kept order, and many shopkeepers, residents and passersby came up to the marchers with encouragement. Many even joined the procession, or at least responded to slogans while flashing victory signs. The rally, which had covered almost all of M A Jinnah Road, finally reached the Sindh Assembly around 6:30 p.m., where, surrounded by massive trucks and hordes of police.
The leadership of the movement went into the Sindh Assembly building to speak with the ministers. After a while, Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza came out and addressed the rally. She said she was proud of the fact that the peasants and workers of the country were now aware of their rights and were also aware of how to get them.
She also promised that the amendments in the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act would be tabled at the next Sindh Assembly session.
“If these promises are not fulfilled, we will march again on August 15 and stage another sit-in here. That sit-in will be an absolute re-enactment of the peasants’ sit-in led by Haider Bux Jatoi more than 50 years ago. It had resulted in the passing of the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act,” SAP-Pakistan provincial coordinator Syed Zulfiqar Shah said in his speech. He made the participants promise not to give up the fight, and to continue “till the rule of the workers and peasants was set up in the country.”
SHPC head Punhal Sario lambasted past and present rulers and systems of the government in the country for doing nothing substantial for the rights of peasants, workers and women, and for not ensuring the implementation of laws in letter and spirit.
Speakers at the sit-in took pride in the fact that not a single window was broken during the march. “Our peaceful struggle is our strength. It should, however, not be taken as a sign of weakness,” they said.
The long march started in Hyderabad on February 15 from the tomb of “Baba-e-Sindh” (father of Sindh) Haider Bux Jatoi and culminated on February 26 (Thursday) in Karachi with a sit-in in front of the Sindh Assembly building to demand the establishment of Haari courts, amendments in the Sindh Land and Tenancy Act and rights for landless peasants in the province.
The march was organised by South Asia Partnership, Pakistan (SAP-Pakistan), Sindh Haari Porhiat Council (SHPC) and Bhandar Hari Sangat (BHS).
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Peasants hold long march, seek changes in tenancy act
February 16, 2009, Daily Dawn
HYDERABAD, Feb 15: Hundreds of peasants, including women, began a long march from the grave of peasant leader Haider Bux Jatoi here on Sunday to pressurise the Sindh Assembly to introduce amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act.
After marching through various city thoroughfares the peasants held a sit-in at Haider chowk.
The speakers urged the assembly to amend the Sindh Tenancy Act to protect the rights of the peasants. The participants of the long march—jointly sponsored by South Asia Partnership, Agricultural Reforms Committee and the Sindh Porhiyat Sangat— will reach Karachi on Feb 26.
Speaking on the occasion, SAP executive director Mohammad Tahseen said that even today many Benazirs of the country were barefooted and many Bilawals were hungry. He warned the rulers that their (peasants’) decency should not be construed as their weakness.
He said that the situation had radically changed and if any excesses were committed against any peasant in Sindh, the Punjab province would be the first to raise its voice.
Karamat Ali of the Piler said that the long march would prove to be a milestone for the unity of the peasants and the workers. He urged the oppressed sections of society to unite against repression.
The Sindh coordinator of the SAP, Zulfiqar Shah, said that peasants of the province had become conscious of their rights and with the support of the workers they would no longer allow feudal elements to rule over the tillers of the land. He specifically warned a landlord of Sanghar district of dire consequences if he did not stop excesses against his peasants.
He appealed to the members of the provincial assembly to introduce the proposed amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act and warned that if their demands were not accepted, the rulers would not be able to withstand the second protest of the peasants.
Sindh Hari Committee chief Azhar Jatoi demanded that the lands in Sindh should be handed over to the peasants.
Punhal Sario in his speech said that it was misfortune of the haris that after the construction of Sukkur, Guddu and Kotri barrages, the lands were distributed among the feudal lords instead of the haris.
He said that the workers had always been exploited. Even in this modern age, only feudal elements were sitting in the assemblies, he added.
He appealed to the people from all walks of life to participate in the long march at Karachi on Feb 26. http://archives.dawn.com/2009/text/nat21.htm
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SC urged to take action against disappearances
August 10, 2006, Daily Dawn
HYDERABAD, Aug 9: The leaders of various civil and political organizations and lawyers on Tuesday appealed to the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of mysterious disappearance of political activists and extrajudicial violence.
They were speaking at a seminar on “Mysterious Disappea-rances and Extrajudicial Vio-lence” organized by Sindh Development Society and Actio-naid Pakistan at a local hotel.
Prominent lawyer, Ayaz Latif Palijo, said that the state must take notice of the disappearance of political activists and extrajudicial violence.
MPA Ms Farheen Mughal said that the state had failed to protect the lives of people who were paying it back-breaking taxes. Political activists were disappearing after they refused to toe government’s line, she said adding that there was a deliberate attempt to make issues of non-issues to distract peoples’ attention from real problems.
An NGO leader, Zulfiqar Shah, slammed the kidnapping and disappearance of political activists and said that such extrajudicial methods were not only flagrant violation of human rights but they also tarnished the country’s image.
Ghaffar Malik of Sindh Development Society said that the lawyers could play a positive role in helping stop the extrajudicial methods used by the government to harass and intimidate its opponents.
Fateh Mari of Actionaid Pakistan said that the difference of opinion was the constitutional right of every citizen and urged the enlightened members of the society and political parties to play their role in protecting the right to disagree.
The member of Sindh National Council, Punhal Sario, said that kidnapping of political activists was aimed at spreading anarchy in the country.
The seminar adopted a resolution calling upon the government to reveal the whereabouts of all the political activists who had disappeared over the years.
It appointed a ten-member committee headed by senior lawyer, Yousuf Leghari, to take steps for the recovery of political activists.
The family members of disappeared political activists, Asif Baladi, Manjhi Chandio, Akash Mallah and Chetan Kumar reportedly picked up by law enforcement agencies also attended the seminar.
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Call for initiating dialogue to save institutions
July 26, 2010, Daily Dawn
HYDERABAD, July 25 Leaders of public opinion have stressed the need for strengthening parliament and other institutions by initiating dialogue to avert any possibility of another takeover by generals.
They said that the 18th Amendment was introduced by the government in a haphazard manner and another amendment needed to be introduced to protect the basic rights of people.
They said the fact that parliament had amended the constitution should be respected because military dictators had mutilated the basic document.
They were speaking at a dialogue, `Consultation on Implementation of 18th Amendment and Citizens Concerns`, organised by the Institute for Social Movements Pakistan and `We Journalists` in collaboration with NGOs at a local hotel on Saturday. Sindh Advocate-General Yousuf Laghari presided over the dialogue.
The speakers pointed out that in the neighbouring country, the judiciary and democratic institutions were more powerful than in Pakistan and attributed the weakness to frequent subversion by undemocratic forces.
A number of speakers criticised the government for ignoring small provinces and depriving them of the right to own resources. They were of the opinion that the domination of Punjab was creating problems for other provinces.
In his presidential remarks, Yousuf Laghari said that although the 18th Amendment had not provided full provincial autonomy, it had to a great extent protected the political and economic rights of the smaller provinces.
The credit for this must go to the PPP-led government, the advocate-general said. He, however, advised civil society leaders to formulate their recommendations on different issues and forward them to the government, legislators and political parties.
He said that if there was any lacuna in the 18th Amendment, the civil society had every right to demand improvement.
He said the constitution guaranteed equal rights to each citizen, but conceded that ground realities were different.
Mr Laghari stressed the need for the development and promotion of professional education and said that unless Sindh could produce brilliant professionals, affairs of the province could not be run in a smooth manner and the provincial autonomy would become meaningless.
He said that although enforcement of the constitution was the responsibility of the government, civil society groups could play a constructive role by initiating dialogues and raising their voice through media for corrective measures.
He made it clear that the royalty on oil, gas and other natural resources was the right of the provinces.
Director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) Karamat Ali said this was not the time to oppose the 18th amendment because it was the only time that parliament had taken the initiative of bringing about positive changes in the constitution.
He said people should strive to strengthen democratic institutions and their supremacy.
He regretted that more than 20 civil society organisations and some individuals had filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the 18th Amendment.
But he conceded that the amendment had been introduced in a haphazard manner and that there was scope for improvement.
MQM`s MNA Salahuddin, Abrar Kazi, Mustafa Baloch, journalist Jaffar Memon, Punhal Sario and Iqbal Mallah also spoke on the occasion.
They said people paid taxes and it was the responsibility of the government to provide bread, shelter and jobs to them and proper healthcare and education.
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Revival of research activities urged to educate youth about social movements
April 10, 2011, Daily The News
There was a need to revive the culture of study circles and research activities and promote reading habit among the youth so that they may play a positive role on their part. These views were expressed by the speakers at a function organised jointly by the Institute for Social Movements (ISM) and Sami Foundation Pakistan in Hyderabad on Saturday.
The event was held to launch a short course on Social Movements Studies, Research and Analytical Journal, The Social Movements.
The participants said that since there was no concept of teaching indigenous social movements, majority of the youth was unaware about the history. They do not know about the major events occurred in the recent past, which impacted more on the society.
General Yousuf Leghari, Mohammed Tehseen of (SAP) Pakistan, Mustafa Baloch of Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), Asif Baladi, General Secretary Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, Dr Dodo Maheri of Sindu United Party, Jami Chandio of Centre for Peace and Civil Society (CPCS), Amar Sindhu of Women Action Forum (WAF), Fatima Naqvi, Oxfam Country Head, Zulfiqar Shah of ISM, senior journalist Mahesh Kumar, Mustafa Khoso and others spoke on the occasion.
Mustafa Khoso, the organiser of the short course, said that the 10-day residential course for the first batch had been started at Umerkot, where teachers would deliver lectures and learners would have access to the internet, library and modern research centre. The course includes the history of social movements in Pakistan and South Asian region. After that the participants of the course will be facilitated to visit Pakistan to discuss topics on history with people, who were struggling for long. In the last phase, these participants will be assigned a task to conduct research to know the achievements and challenges faced by the social movements.
Former Sindh Advocate Yousuf Leghari appreciated the new move and assured the two organisations on behalf of the Mirpurkhas Law College that he would support them if they needed authentic certification through a professional institute. He said that a short course and a journal are being launched at an appropriate time as Sindh needs talented analysts to portray the real picture of society and guide politicians.
Mohammed Tehseen of South Asia Partnership (SAP) Pakistan said that at a time when the entire society was under the grip of extremism and anarchy, the social studies course and journal would prove helpful in brainwashing the youth. Recalling the past, he said that during the sixties the political parties had started study circles in different towns and villages, taking regular classes to brainwash their cadre. “We all are the production of such traditional institutes. For this, we should not need modern buildings and huge infrastructure and should start from a small place. It needs a political will and commitment which I hope these organisations have to make the dream come true,” he added.
Mustafa Baloch of Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO) said that the youth in Sindh did not know about the Hur Movement, the campaign launched by Makhdoom Bilawal, Sufi Shah Inayat and in the recent past movements like Movement for Restoration of Democracy, Anti-One Unit Movement, students campaign, haris struggle and role of women in these struggles. He said that these movements should have been mentioned in the educational curriculum to teach the students. Due to the absence of such material, the youth was unaware about the past history.
Earlier, Zulfiqar Shah, Executive Director of ISM, told the audience that there were only four such institutions, which were teaching social movements in the world. He said that they had approached 32 renowned scholars from different countries to contribute to the unique journal and received positive response from them.
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Right to education: SHC issues notices to Sindh education dept
September 20, 2011, Daily Times
KARACHI: A division bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday issued notices to education department of Sindh government over a constitution petition filed by Faisal Siddqui advocate on behalf of civil society organisations, seeking the enforcement of the fundamental right to compulsory education.
The constitutional provision guarantees right to education for all children of age five to sixteen years.
The division bench, comprising Justice Maqbool Baqar and Justice Imam Bux Baloch, issued notices to the respondent Sindh government for the next date of the hearing on Jan 26, 2012.
Filed under the Article 25-A of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973, and on behalf of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education & Research (PILER), Aurat Publication and Information Service Foundation, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP-PK), the Institute of Social Movements Pakistan (ISM-PAK), the Bonded Labour Liberation Front(BLLF), the National Trade Union Federation and the Bright Educational Society, the petition has made the provincial government of Sindh, through the Secretary for Education, Ministry for Education, as respondent.
The Constitution of Pakistan, recently amended, under the consensus-backed process leading to the passage of the 18th Amendment, clearly binds the state under Article 25A, ‘Right to Education’, for providing free and compulsory education to all children of age five to sixteen.
Under the 18th Amendment, education has now become a right and no longer an arbitrary entitlement.
The petitioners have urged the SHC to declare that the respondent, the Government of Sindh, is under a constitutional obligation to provide free and compulsory mandatory education to all children of age of five to sixteen years, in Sindh.
For this, the petitioners have appealed the High Court to direct the provincial government of the province to ensure the implementation of this constitutional guarantee.
The petition has also sought a direction to the provincial government of Sindh to establish a commission, composed of well reputed members of civil society and government officials, to monitor the implementation of the concerned constitutional obligation of the respondent; to publish a detailed programme of measures to be taken by them to implement the Article 25A and direct the respondent to check and monitor the charging of exorbitant fees by private schools from the children of Sindh.
The petitioners have opined that it is obvious and apparent that the failure of the government to provide free and compulsory education to all children is unconstitutional and a fundamental failure of the respondent.
Since this right, under Article 25-A, of the Constitution, 1973, is a right to free education which applies to all children of age of five to sixteen years; it imposes a constitutional obligation on the respondent to take legislative, financial and administrative measures, to ensure no child remains denied of this fundamental right.
The petition points out that the respondent provincial government has enacted no legislation and taken no executive actions to implement the fundamental right constitutional obligation of Article 25-A, of the Constitution, 1973.
Quoting the UNESCO Institute of Statistics report in EdStats, 2011, the petition has referred the Pakistan Public Expenditure on education that is only 2.7 percent of the total gross domestic product and the total dropout rate of the primary education is at least 39.8 percent.
According to the said data, the number of out-of-school male children at the primary level in Pakistan is 3,108,413 while the number of female out-of-school children at the primary level is 4,191,384.
The International Development Association established by the World Bank has observed, in relation to Sindh, that an estimated 11 million children, ages five to 14, were still out of school in 2007. “Only 53 percent of individuals, ages 17 to 21, have completed secondary schooling.
Assessment data shows that average learning levels in key subjects such as mathematics and language are significantly below official curriculum standards.
These shortfalls are greater for girls, rural children, and, in particular, poor children.”
Moreover, the petition has also quoted the Pakistan Living Standard Measurement Survey 2007-2008, which says that the literacy rate among the children of age 10 plus for Pakistan is 56 percent of which in Sindh it is 56 percent and in Rural Sindh it is 44 percent.
According to the aforementioned Survey, the primary enrolment in private school is 35 percent in Pakistan, while in Sindh it is 27 percent and in Rural Sindh it is 5 percent.
The Petition links the right to education with the right to life, “as the right to life includes a right to a decent education.”
It also mentions the Principles of Policies for governance of the State of Pakistan as enshrined under Article 37 (b), of the Constitution 1973, that outlines removing “illiteracy and provide free and compulsory secondary education within a minimum possible period”, as duties of the state. Pointing to the abysmal and continuing declining rate of literacy in Pakistan, the petition calls for immediacy of action on the part of the respondent provincial government to ensure that no child is denied access to education.
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Govt initiates probe into Rohri canal breach
Thursday, May 17, 2012 Report by Jan Khaskheli
Daily The News
KARACHI: The Sindh government has initiated a probe into the beach in Rohri Canal in Matiari district to avert similar mishaps and resulting calamities in future.Haleem Adil Shaikh, Adviser to Sindh Chief Minister on Relief, told The News that he has submitted the report to the CM and suggested to form an investigation committee for the purpose.
”Because,” he said, “this incident must serve as eye opener for all of us to evolve such mechanism and policy to monitor on quarterly basis the conditions of river and canals embankments,” he said adding that it is being planned to formulating committees consisting of public representatives and high ranking government officials to stay watchful. The breach to a major canal had inundated 20 villages and displaced people of almost 30 villages in the neighbourhood.
The community people have plugged the damaged bank, but the displaced families are still living outside. Shaikh said during his visit to the affected area and discussions with the notables and local communities it was learned that the rain-flood affected people of the Union Council Bhaledino Kaka had returned to their homes few days ago.
The breach is another calamity the people are experiencing. There is an urgent need of initiating early recovery project and de-watering in these areas, so the people may live a safer life, he said.”I have requested the chief minister that the affected people should immediately be provided compensation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sindh Commission on Disaster Management and Prevention (SCDMP), a network of about 35 humanitarian organisations, working in different districts of the province have demanded the government to assess the losses to the property, infrastructure, agriculture and livestock and announce a package for the rehabilitation of the affected families.
Representatives of member organizations of the network, Naubahar Wasan of Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), Zulfiqar Shah of Institute of Social Movements (ISM), Jabbar Bhatti of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Abdul Razzaq Umrani of HANDS, Dr Ghulam Haider of Green Rural and Development Organisation (GRDO) and others in a joint statement expressed disappointment over the repair work on damaged embankments in the province. Focusing on the Rohri Canal breach incident, they said affected people need immediate help to return to their native areas.
In this regard, they said dewatering process should be initiated so the displaced families may return back and resume their livelihoods. SCDMP members said Sindh has already experienced devastated floods for two consecutive yearsó2010–2011 with displacement of hundreds of thousands people. There are also forecasts of more rains and flash floods in the future; hence it is the need of hour to take precautionary measures before the forthcoming monsoons.
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Thar peasants` murder: Fact-finding team casts doubt on investigation
July 2010, Daily Dawn
UMERKOT, July 7 Head of a fact-finding team who visited Thathrai village, 10km from here on Wednesday, to gather facts about murder of three scheduled caste peasants by a landlord`s son on Monday have expressed misgivings about police investigation.
According to police, Herchand accompanied by Loono went to meet his landlord Sain Bux Mangrio at his autaq (guest house) near his village and demanded his share in the harvest. Sain Bux flew into a rage and ordered his son Ali Ahmed alias Sadoro to kill them.
The peasants` relatives Ms Tulchhan, Ms Rajbai and Ms Phoolan rushed to the auatq on hearing gunshots and suffered injuries when they tried to save them. Herchand died on the spot and Loono and Ms Tulchhan died in hospitals.
Talking to journalists, the head of the team, Ashuthama of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said that a member of the police investigation team SPO Iqbal Mangrio who was relative of the accused, and some influential political figures of Mangrio community were protecting the accused.
The fact-finding team, which comprises representatives of the HRCP, National Coalition Against Bonded Labour and some NGOs, interviewed heirs of the deceased, police officers, local politicians, journalists, social activists and father of the accused.
Dr Ashuthama demanded rehabilitation and compensation for the bereaved families and proper treatment of the wounded women.
Jalal Bheel, father of late Loono, told the team that Sadoro was not happy with his son`s friendship with Herchand and he had issued threats of dire consequences to his son on many occasions.
He said that in the morning of that fateful day his son accompanied Herchand Oad to the landlord`s autaq. When Herchand asked him to pay his share in the harvest he flew into a rage and opened fire at them, he said.
Lalchand Oad, son of Herchand, expressed the fear that the accused was at large and might attempt to kill other members of his family. They had therefore left their village and came to Umerkot. His father was killed as a punishment for demanding his rightful share in the harvest, he said.
He said that elders of Oad and Bheel communities would meet on Thursday to decide future line of action and finalise decision to take out a big rally in protest against police failure to arrest the main accused.
The father of the accused Sain Bux Mangrio told the team that he was innocent. He was not present in the area that day and was attending a community meeting at that time, he claimed.
He said that he was informed by Herchand`s neighbours that Herchand had lured his son to his house under a conspiracy where Loono and other youths of Oad community tied him up, subjected him to torture and also sexual assault, which might have compelled him to take such an extreme step.
If he was guilty he must be hanged, he added.
SPO Iqbal Mangrio, member of the investigation team formed by Umerkot DPO, told the team that they could not arrest the main accused because they were busy maintaining law and order in the town for two days and on Wednesday they kept waiting for the team.
He said that police had arrested co-accused Sain Bux Mangrio, father of the main accused, and also impounded their tractor and livestock.
SP (investigation) Gul Hassan Larik heads the investigation team and SIO Arif Bhatti is investigating officer of the case. http://archives.dawn.com/archives/76139
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Mud huts and evictions: ‘Residential security is having housing, not land’
May 27, 2011, Daily Express Tribune
HYDERABAD: Have you ever wondered why people build mud houses instead of permanent ones in the rural areas? One of the main reasons is that they fear being evicted. At any time, a landlord can kick them out and they would have to rebuild all over again.
“A majority of our agriculture-related population does not own land. They live on the piece of land provided by the landowner who has discretionary powers to evict them on a whim,” explained Prof. Dr Pervez Pathan, who was presenting at a seminar on ‘Residential Land Rights in Sindh’ organised by the Institute for Social Movement and Oxfam GB on Thursday. “Residential security is seen as access to land rather than housing.”
Pathan, who is the director of the Sindh Development Studies Centre at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, explained that tribes, castes, ethnic and religious identities also stop people from acquiring land for housing.
Residential land is defined as an area predominantly used for housing. Residential rights, on the other hand, suggest the right of a dweller to the land they occupy for accommodation. Then why is it, asked Dr Pathan, that “housing policies and laws are not explicitly based on the human rights provisions in the Constitution”. Laws should define what the standards are of adequate housing, basic services and social security. The government should make it illegal to forcefully evict someone.
Oxfam GB’s Fatima Naqvi pointed out that civil society has time until the next general elections to press political parties to pursue this agenda and mobilise popular support.
According to the Constitution, housing should be provided to all citizens, including those “who are unable to earn a livelihood”.
Activist Zulfiqar Halepoto noted that the issue is as relevant to urban areas as it is to rural ones. “A few years ago, when we were fighting against the Left Bank Outfall Drainage (LBOD) project in rural Sindh, there was a protest movement against the Lyari Expressway in Karachi as people feared losing their houses.”
Halepoto maintained that during the past six to eight years, scores of villages that had inhabited Karachi for centuries were pulled down to construct plazas. “No one is against development but it should not be at the expense of making people homeless.” He believes that unlike Hyderabad, Karachi cannot expand horizontally.
Talking about the minority rights, advocate M Prakash said that Hindus, especially those belonging to the lower stratum of society, are the biggest sufferers. “Most of the gypsies are Bheels, Kolhis and Menghwadhs,” he said referring to landless Hindus.
Zulfiqar Shah of the Institute of Social Movement announced that his organisation in collaboration with other groups would lead a march to the Sindh Assembly in June to press for housing rights of the indigenous people of Sindh.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 27th, 2011.
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Land regularisation: ISM and Oxfam push for village registration
July 2011, Daily Express Tribune
HYDERABAD: The Institute of Social Movement (ISM) and the British-based charity Oxfam organised a rally on Monday to push the government for the regularisation of land in the province. The ISM and Oxfam are trying to register villages to monitor growth.
As the Sindh Gothabad scheme is still carrying out a survey to gather the official number of villages in the province, independent estimates claim that an overwhelming number of villages have no legal status. “Some villages are categorised as unregistered as they are built on state land such as forests, deserts, river beds and mountain ranges. Even land given by landlords to their peasants is categorised as unregistered,” said ISM director Zulfikar Shah at the rally.
Shah discussed property rights and explained that the residential right is defined as the house owners’ legal right to the property. “It suggests that the owner, by law has the authority of sole ownership. He can sell the property and in case of his death the property can be inherited by his family,” Shah said. “Inheritance is a serious issue and often creates conflicts within a family. Since no legal recourse is available, inheritance and other matters fall under the jirga or panchayat domains.”
Shah added that a majority of villages in the province face a difficulty selling and transferring property rights.
Addressing ownership concerns about peasants residing on land provided by a landlord, Shah said that it is very common. “There are villages in Thar and other parts of the province where this type of temporary accommodation is on the rise. However, considering that their jobs are not secured through a contract, how long can they live on land at the discretion of the landlord,” he said.
Activist Punhal Sariyo pointed out that villages in Kachcha areas, have been there for centuries. “The villagers there have government schools, hospitals, police stations, electricity and gas supplies. Yet, there are no embankments to protect them from the floods,” she said. Sariyo added that the villagers don’t have property rights either.
A large number of people participated joined in the rally from different villages near Hyderabad and called for the regularisation of villages and property ownership. They also complained about a lack of infrastructure facilities in the villages.
Regularisation of villages
In May 2010, provincial Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah claimed that the government had regularised 150 villages in Sindh.
According to Sindh Gothabad Scheme Project Director Syed Imtiaz Ali Shah, the scheme was established to conduct a survey in villages for registration. He declined to comment on the latest status of regularisation. “This is an official record which cannot be provided to the media,” he said.
Zulfiqar Shah claims that so far only villages in Jamshoro and Johi have been registered.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 12th, 2011. http://tribune.com.pk/story/207687/land-regularisation-ism-and-oxfam-push-for-village-registration/
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May 28, 2011, Daily Dawn
HYDERABAD, May 27: The leaders of civil society have urged the government to provide accommodation with proprietary rights to all citizens of state as enjoined in the Constitution and announce a comprehensive policy in this regard, especially for women, minorities and other under-privileged segments of society.
They were speaking at a seminar on “Residential Land Rights in Sindh” organised by the Institute of Social Movements (ISM) in collaboration with Oxfam-GB here on Thursday.
Dr Pervez Pathan of ISM said that in accordance with universal declaration of human rights, international law and the Constitution of Pakistan, the government was duty-bound to provide residential accommodation and other basic facilities to all citizens.
A large population of Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan, was deprived of this fundamental right, and if accommodation was provided to flood survivors, the situation would become alarming, he said.
Mustafa Baloch of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation said that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the first ruler who acknowledged this right and gave proprietary rights to people living in katchiabadis. He urged present rulers to emulate their great leader.
Ms Fatima Naqvi of Oxfam-GB advised the government that while distributing state land it should ensure that barren land was not allotted to the poor recipients. There was no comprehensive housing policy in Pakistan and the government must evolve a policy, she said.
Zulfiqar Halepoto of the Sindh Democratic Forum said that a large chunk of state lands had been occupied by land grabbers throughout Sindh and according to a report, accommodation had become a serious crisis in 200 talukas of the province.
Comrade Ramzan Memon of the Bhandar Hari Sangat said that one of the main causes behind perpetuation of forced labour in Sindh was that the poor peasant had no place to live.
He stressed the need for launching a political struggle to solve people`s residential problem.
A minority leader M. Parkash said that 40 to 50 per cent of haris in Sindh belonged to Hindu community out of whom 90 per cent did not have their own houses.
Zulfiqar Shah of the ISM said while summing up the discussion that residential accommodation and its proprietary rights was a political, social and economic problem. http://dawn.com/2011/05/28/govt-urged-to-provide-houses-to-all/
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Hundreds march in Hyderabad over Hindu killings, demand justice
November 16, 2011, Daily Times
HYDERABAD: Hundreds of protesters marched in Hyderabad city against the murder of three Hindus in Shikarpur on the call of Joint Action Committee for Peace and Justice. The protest march began from the Besant Hall, a 20th century Theosophical Society icon of Sindh under the slogan of “Fill the Besant Hall against Religious Intolerance,” and called for justice to the vicitim’s families
The march after passing through various roads of the down-town for a few hours, culminated into a congregation, in front of Hyderabad Press Club. The prominent participants were Punhal Sariyo of Sindh Harri Porhiyat Council, Zulfiqar Shah of Institute for Social Movements, Rasool Bux Palejo of Awami Tehreek, Amar Sindhu of Women Action Forum, Mustafa Baloch of Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Dr Ashothama of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Jabar Bhatti of Indus Institute for Research and Education, Mahesh Kumar of We Journalist, Pakistan, Jaffer Memon of Hyderabad Press Club, Iqbal Mallah, Shehnaz Shidi of South Asia Partnerships Pakistan, Akash Mallah of Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, Noor Nabi Rahoojo and Vishno Mal of Awami Jamhoori Party, Jan Mohammad Junejo of Sindh Tarraqi Pasand Party, Nawaz Khan Zaunr of Jeay Sindh Mahaz, Seher Rizvi of Sindh United Party, Hafeez Kumbhar and Noor Mohammad Bajeer of Civil Society Support Program, Parveen Magsi of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Kashif Bajeer of SPARC, Taj marri of Awami Party, Zahid Messo of Bhandar Sangat, Ikhtyar Tunio of SDPD Nawabsha, Rahmatullah Truk of VISWA – Matyari, Advocate Sajjad Chandio, Advocate Inderjit Luhano, Abass Khoso of IRADO and others.
A declaration was read out and was unanimously carried by the participants. The resolution is as under:
Sindh contains a peculiar status among the federating units of Pakistan due to its historic non-violent, mystic, brotherhood and democratic outlook. This peculiarity of Sindh which is known as Sindhyat (Sindhihood) in the indigenous inhabitants has been under attack socially and politically by the non-democratic elements. These warmonger elements have patronised and aired the lawlessness, fiefdom and tribalism in the northern parts of the province.
One of the most brutal attempts to destabilise Sindh through the feudal-mullha nexus was to create an environment of fear and harassment that compels the Hindu community towards exodus – the community forms the larger part of the middle class as well as business fraternity of the Sindh society.
The conscious people of Sindh are of the firm opinion that the Chak, Shikarpur carnage in which three innocent Hindus were brutally murdered is part of such an attempt, which has caused exodus of Sindh people on gun-point. This is an attack on the secular Sindhihood of the people of Sindh.
The conscious people of Sindh believe in the unity among the diversity of the religions and condemns this coward attempt and term it as an attack on the social and national unity as well as heterogeneous culture of Sindhi people.
The protesters presented following demands on behalf of people of India.
1. Nominated culprits of the Chak carnage be arrested immediately.
2. An investigation be carried out for the identification of planners and supporter-individuals, religious as well as political organisations and involved tribal leadership in order to bring justice to families of the victims.
3. The security of the honour, lives and properties of the minorities should be ensured by the State as guaranteed in the constitution of Pakistan.
4. An FIR by the state itself should be lodged with the consultation as well as satisfaction of the grieved families.
5. only the real culprits of the Chak carnage should be arrested. The detention of the innocents should absolutely be avoided.
6. The police, administration and elected representives must be made accountable for any attempt or act of damages to the lives and properties of the minorities.
7. The heinous crime of forced conversions through forced marriages in Madersah’s Sindh should be stopped immediately and a necessary legislation should be made in this regards.
8. The forced and illegal snorting of funds from minorities should be stopped
9. The kidnapping of Hindus should be checked by ensuring security to the communities.
10. The tribal chiefs and feudal lords should be treated with equity in the eyes of law if they support criminal elements in harassing the minorities.
11. A judicial inquiry should be conducted against the Pano Aqil and Chak carnages.
12. An environment of freedom of entertaining the religious ceremonies and traditions should be ensured to the Hindus as well as other minorities by providing appropriate security to the religious pilgrimages and other sacred places.
13. All discriminating articles and clauses of the Constitution of Pakistan should be repealed.
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Rally against Hindu killings on 14th
November 10, 2011, Daily Times
HYDERABAD: The civil society and human rights organisations condemned the brutal murder of three Hindus in Shikarpur and announced ‘Fill the Besant Hall Road against Religious Intolerance’ rally in front of 20th century Theosophical Society’s interior Sindh’s centre Besant Hall in Hyderabad on Monday, November 14.
Human rights organisations said in a statement that the killing seems to be a targeted action that is potent threat to the composite and harmonious environment of Sindh. They showed their concern over increasing intolerance in Sindh. They said that the victimisation and harassment of Hindus through kidnapping, murders and forced conversions since last decade in Sindh has left no other option to the minority community except that of migrating from Pakistan.
They demanded that provincial and federal government should ensure security to the minorities in Pakistan, particularly in Sindh, which houses a larger number of Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians, Bahais and others.
Representatives of the forums Punhal Sariyo from Sindh Harri Porihyat Council, Zulfiqar Shah from Institute for Social Movements (ISM), Jabbar Bhatti from Indus Institute for Education and Research, Amar Sindhu from WAF, Zahida Detho from PPC, Mohammad Ali Shah from Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Mustafa Baloch from Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Suleman G Abro from Sindh Agriculture and Forestry Workers Coordination Organisation, Shehnaz Shidi from South Asia Partnership Pakistan, Jami Chandio from Centre for Peace and Civil Society, Dr Ashothama from Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Shuja Qureshi from Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, Masood Mahesar from Research and Development Foundation, Sikandar Brohi from Participatory Village Development Program, Javed Soz from Sindh Community Foundation, Murad Pandhrani from Prbhat, Mahesh Kumar from ‘We Journalists’, Iqbal Mallah and Kashif Bajeer from SPARC, Ghaffar Malik from SDS, Asghar Leghari from Laar Human Development Program, Shaheena Ramzan from Bhandar Sangat, Dr Haider Malokani from Green Rural Development Organisation, Akbar Dars from Civil Society Support Program, Adam Malik from PPC, Shaukat Memon from Indus Rural Development Organisation, Mansoor Dahiri from Dharti Development Society and others demanded the government to take immediate actions for detention of the culprits and ensure security to the Hindus, Christians and other minorities in the province.
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Protests against Shahbaz Bhatti’s murder
Viewpoint Online
Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas protest rallies:
March 3, 2011: Protest marches were organized against the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti today in Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas on the call of Movement for Peace and Tolerance (MPT), a coalition of progressive forces in Sindh. Below, a report and photos from Zulfikar Shah in Hyderabad.
Hyderabad: A large number of civil society, women rights and political activists and writers attended the march. The marchers walked through Miran Mohammad Shah Road and sat-in at the gate of the Sindh High Court and demanded that the killers be immediately apprehended and prosecuted. The charged participants chanted slogans against fundamentalism and killing in the name of religion.
Prominent participants included Suleman G. Abro (SAFWCO), Mustafa Baloch (SPO), Ms. Amar Sindhu (WAF), Zulfiqar Shah (ISM), Punhal Sariyo (SHPC), Zulfiqar Halepoto (PPC), Jabbar Bhatti (IIRE), Dr, Ashothama (HRCP), Mr. Shams (Caritas), Dr. Dodo Maheri (Sindh United Party), Nisar Leghari (Labor party Pakistan / Left Unity), Zahid Meso (Awami party), Prof. Ejaz Qureshi (SDF), Hafeez Kumbhar (writer), Jaffer memon (We Journalists / Writers), Amir Memon (CPCS), Saleem Matti (JPCS) and others.
Mirpurkhas: Many members of the Muslim, Christian and Hindu communities, representatives of civil society organizations, lawyers, activists participated. They included Wajid Leghari (SNSS), Dominic Stephan (PVDP), Ashraf Mall (SEWA Pak), Obhayo Junejo, Dr. Jaccob, Khalid Babar, Sharwan Kumar, Shahmji and others. The protesters marched on the various roads of the city and chanted slogans against the religious extremism. http://www.viewpointonline.net/protests-against-shahbaz-bhattis-murder.html
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Need for drive to promote harmony stressed
February 14, 2011, Daily Dawn
HYDERABAD, Feb 13: Speakers at a meeting held here on Sunday called for a mass campaign to promote religious harmony and tolerance.
The meeting was attended by representatives of political parties, social forums and civil society organisations who discussed the challenge posed by increasing intolerance threatening the traditional values set by Sufi saints.
It decided to hold meetings at divisional headquarters of the province to be attended by representatives of political parties and civil society and human rights activists and writers. There will be equal participation of women activists in the meetings.
The meeting set up a `Movement for Peace and Tolerance` with a 15-member coordination committee to organise processions, meetings and other activities.
Zulfiqar Shah, executive director of the Institute of Social Movement, said similar meetings were being held in other provinces to mobilise people and work out an effective plan to raise awareness about the teachings of Sufi saints and those political leaders who gave the message of tolerance and peace.Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz general secretary Asif Baladi informed the meeting that his party had already reactivated Bazm Sufia-i-Sindh, formed by the late GM Syed, Shaikh Ayaz and Rasool Bux Palijo to promote peace and tolerance.
He said the JSQM believed in principles pointed out by its leaders. Other leaders called for organising activities in Sindh to mobilise people so play their role in promoting tolerance.
They proposed a march for peace and tolerance in Sindh and other parts of the country.
Activists of the Left Unity, a Hyderabad-based alliance of progressive parties and groups, and representatives of university students also attended the meeting and suggested a youth–led initiative to help the movement.
The meeting criticised the role of the government which it said had left the people at the mercy of elements which were creating uncertainty and destroying traditional values. It also suggested that smaller marches should be organised at the shrines of Sufi saints.
The meeting said the there was an urgent need to first raise people`s awareness through literature, speeches and pamphlets.
The meeting said Sindh was passing through a transitional phase and there was scope to work for unity, peace and tolerance.
Dr Dodo Maheri, general secretary of the Sindh United Party, Suleman G. Abro, executive director of Sawfco, Mustafa Baloch, regional manager Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Punhal Sario of Sindh Porhiyat Hari Council, Zulfiqar Halepoto of Sindh Democratic Forum, Javed Hussain of the Sindh Community Foundation and coordinator of HRCP Sindh task force Dr Ashothama addressed the meeting.
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Open letter to The President, Prime Minister, Interior Ministry, Chief Justice, Chief Ministers, and heads of all political parties, Pakistan
March 9, 2011, Citizens for Democracy, Pakistan
Over 300 prominent individuals – academics, columnists, writers, doctors, lawyers, businessmen and women, IT professionals, students, journalists and others – from Pakistan and elsewhere (including India, France, Italy, USA, UK, Canada) besides over 80 organisations from Pakistan and abroad have endorsed this Open letter to The President, Prime Minister, Interior Ministry, Chief Justice, Chief Ministers and heads of all political parties, Pakistan to protest the murder of Federal Minister for Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti and demand action against calls for violence and vigilante action. Please share with friends. We will continue to include endorsements (with NAME, PROFESSION & CITY) made through the comments section of this post, or via email to cfd.pak@gmail.com. If anyone wants to translate it and circulate, please feel free to do so. Thank you.
Open letter to The President, Prime Minister, Interior Ministry, Chief Justice, Chief Ministers, and heads of all political parties, Pakistan
Re: Murder of Shahbaz Bhatti and demand for action against calls for violence and vigilante action
The murder of Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Minority Affairs, again highlights the rampant lawlessness in Pakistan and the impunity with which the “forces of violence” act against “whoever stands against their radical philosophy,” to quote the late Mr Bhatti. These “forces” find fertile ground to operate in an atmosphere where calls to vigilante action are publically made and celebrated.
We urge the government and its functionaries to swiftly apprehend, charge, try and punish Mr Bhatti’s murderers, and also to take immediate measures to curb this trend.
We urge all political parties and parliamentarians to take a clear stand on this issue: No citizen has the right to cast aspersions at the faith and beliefs of any other citizen or to term someone else a ‘blasphemer’.
We urge the federal and provincial governments, the judiciary and the security and law enforcement agencies to ensure protection for those, like former information minister Sherry Rehman, who are publicly threatened by extremists
Some immediate steps that must immediately be taken include:
1. An urgent and meaningful shift in the long-standing policy of appeasing extremists, by the security establishment, the judiciary, the political class and much of the media, with a few honourable exceptions.
2. Hold accountable and charge under the law those who incite hatred and violence; zero tolerance for any public labeling of anyone as ‘blasphemer’, which in the current situation is an incitement to murder, even brazen declaration of criminal intent and commission of a crime. Some recent examples of such incitement are:
- Maulana Yousuf Qureshi, Imam of the Mohabbat Khan Mosque, Peshawar, announced a Rs 500,000 award for the murder of Asia Bibi if the Lahore High Court acquitted her of blasphemy (reported on December 3, 2010, a month prior to the murder of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer; some newspaperseven wrote editorials supporting this call for murder.)
- Banners placed at public places in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi-Islamabad by “Tehreek-e-Nifaz-Tableegh-e-Islam” terming Tehmina Durrani as Pakistan’s Taslima Nasreen and demanding that she be hanged. These must be removed forthwith and the organisation, and administrative officers who allowed these banners to be placed, proceeded against.
3. Prevent the rising number of ‘blasphemy’ cases being registered, by laying down and enforcing a law whereby no such cases may be registered without being inquired into by a judicial magistrate.
(endorsed)
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Don’t fall in the memo trap
Daily Pakistan Today, December 18, 2011
Thirty-four representatives of the civil society including nongovernmental organisations, labour organisations, the academia, women’s rights bodies and the media have expressed concern over the so-called “Memogate”, which they consider as “a crisis being manufactured on frivolous grounds”.
“This [crisis] has the potential of subverting the democratically-elected parliament and the constitution,” they added.
In a joint statement issued on Saturday, key civil society activists appealed to the people of Pakistan to stand united in support of democracy and resist all attempts aimed at its subversion.
They said people have made many sacrifices for the cause of democracy and they should not let those with vested interests trample their right to have an elected representative system run the country.
“We believe that any attack on the sovereignty of the people will be unjust. It will lead to conflict and must be resisted,” they said in the joint statement.
They further said: “It is time to hold accountable all those conspiring against democracy and the sovereignty of the people. Sovereignty belongs to the people who have agreed to exercise it through their representatives in a federal, parliamentary and a democratic system. Any attempt at arbitrarily altering this arrangement is tantamount to an attack on the sovereignty of the people,” they added.
They pointed out that various institutions of the state are supposed to function within their defined constitutional parameters and complement each other, but they seem to be working at cross-purposes.
“We emphasise that the role of political parties and political leaders is to represent their constituents’ interests and arrive at negotiated agreements to differences in agreed political forums.”
They said that the role of state’s security organisations is to serve the people through stipulated constitutional arrangements, under the command of the executive, and not to define what is or is not in the national interest.
The role of the judiciary is to protect the rights of the citizens from arbitrary abuse of executive power, and not to itself become a source of arbitrary executive power.
The role of the mass media is to help citizens hold powerful interests groups within and outside the state to promote their legitimate interests and hold violators of rights accountable and not to act as an unaccountable interest group.
They said in their opinion, the parliament is the appropriate forum to discuss and investigate this issue.
The signatories of the statement were: Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research Executive Director Karamat Ali, Pakistan Peace Coalition Secretary BM Kutty, senior economist Dr Kaisar Bengali, Pakistan Mental Health Association president Dr Haroon Ahmed, independent economist Haris Gazdar, senior development economist Dr Aly Ercelan, Saiban Chairman Tasneem Ahmed Siddiqui, architect and urban planner Arif Hassan, former president of the Pakistan Medical Association Dr Badar Siddiqui, Sindh University Teachers Association President Prof Arfana Mallah, industrialist Nazim F Haji, Dr Jaffar Ahmed of the Irtiqa Institute of Social Science, South Asia Partnership Pakistan Executive Director Mohammad Tahseen, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum Chairperson Mohammad Ali Shah, Sustainable Development Policy Institute Executive Director Dr Abid Qayoum Suleri, Strengthening Participatory Organisation Chief Executive Naseer Memon, Centre for Peace and Civil Society Executive Director Jami Chandio, Sungi Development Foundation Executive Director Samina Khan, Aurat Foundation Regional Director Mehnaz Rehman, Zulfiqar Halepoto of the Sindh Democratic Forum, Awami Jamhoori Party President Abrar Qazi, Zulfiqar Shah of the Institute for Social Movements Pakistan, Jaffar Memon of the We Journalists, independent journalist Ishaq Mangrio, BLLF Executive Member Ghulam Fatima, Sindh Hari Porhiat Council President Punhal Saryo, Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child Executive Director Arshad Mehmood, Sahara Development Foundation Executive Director Qamar Hayat, Sheema Kermani of the Tehreek-e-Niswa, Sheen Farukh of the Inter Press Communications, development consultant Haris Khaliq and Labour Party Pakistan spokesperson Farooq Tariq.
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Civil society slams ‘attempts to sabotage democracy’
Daily The News, January 18, 2013, Karachi
Representatives of civil society organisations have expressed serious reservations over the political crisis that has emerged after “the undemocratic agitation led by Dr Muhammad Tahirul Qadri, a pseudo-religious and political figure and a Canadian citizen.”
The people who expressed their concerns included human rights activists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, journalists, peasants, students and ordinary citizens.
They said matters were aggravated by the inappropriately timed judgement of the Supreme Court of Pakistan to arrest Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf in an old case related to rental power plants.
In a joint statement that was released during a press conference convened at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday, civil society activists deplored the state of political uncertainty and chaos that was created in the country by undemocratic forces.
“We condemn the undemocratic, unconstitutional and irrational manner in which Qadri is challenging the elected government,” they said.
Just when the democratically elected governments at the federal and provincial levels are about to complete their first five-year term ever, the undemocratic demand for the dissolution of the assemblies and for the removal of the government are uncalled for and condemnable, they added.
The press conference was addressed by Dr Kaiser Bengali, a former adviser to the Sindh chief minister on planning and development; Noor Mohammad of the Pakistan Workers Confederation; Dr Tipu Sultan of the Pakistan Medical Association; Mahnaz Rahman of the Aurat Foundation; and Saleha Ather of the Network for Women’s Rights.
They said the smear campaign launched against the constitutionally formed Election Commission of Pakistan and the character assassination and undermining of the members of the election commission were also condemnable.
“We wholeheartedly congratulate the popularly elected parliament for enacting the 20th Amendment, which clearly defines the methodology about the formation and role of the election commission and the formation and role of the caretaker government,” they added.
They said they fully supported the composition of the present election commission led by Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G Ebrahim, whom they called an impartial man of principles and a lifelong advocate of constitutionalism, rule of law and fundamental rights.
They also said, “The role of every state institution is clearly outlined in the Constitution of Pakistan. The role of the judiciary is also well-defined. It is to protect the rights of the citizens from any arbitrary abuse of executive power and act when there is an explicit violation of laws, the constitution or human rights. It has no authority to itself become a prosecutor or a source of arbitrary executive power.”
They stressed that the judiciary should be independent of the executive, but at the same time, it should also be free from individual and institutional biases.
They said the role of the state’s security agencies was to act under the stipulated constitutional provisions under the command of the executive.
No other agency has a right to directly or indirectly support undemocratic moves or long marches to undermine the elected representatives, they added.
“We assert that the parliament is the supreme authority in the country and its supremacy cannot be compromised under any circumstances. Those expressing their dissatisfaction with the performance of the government need to engage the state over issues of concern rather than support an unconstitutional overthrow of an elected parliament. The only route to change is election and active citizenship,” they said.
They added, “The current parliament has been elected by the people of Pakistan. As in a functioning democracy, members of the parliament represent the interests of their constituents and arrive at negotiated agreements to differences without pressure from any extra-parliamentary sources.”
The representatives of the civil society said they supported the constitutionally elected president, prime minister, federal government, chief ministers and provincial governments.
“We reassert that the right to install or remove a government rests solely with the people of Pakistan through elections. It is not the business of the courts or any agency or any private individual to dictate or decide on matters that are the sole prerogative of the parliament and the people. Any attempt to subvert the will of the people will be resisted at all fronts,” they added.
They urged the people of the country to stand united and firm in support of democracy and for resisting all attempts to subvert the system.
The statement was endorsed by Karamat Ali of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education & Research; Naseer Memon of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation; BM Kutty and Zulfiqar Halepoto of the Pakistan Peace Coalition; Mohammad Tahseen of the South Asia Partnership Pakistan; Zulfiqar Shah of the Institute for Social Movements; Suleman Abro of the Sindh Agricultural & Forestry Workers Coordinating Organisation; Jami Chandio of the Centre for Peace & Civil Society and other representatives of the civil society.
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Civil society to highlight Sindh in Social Forum
October 15, 2011, Daily Pakistan Today
KARACHI – Members of the Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) and civil society activists and have unanimously decided to stage two major events – ‘Federalism in Pakistan: A Post Bangladesh Perspective’ and ‘Landlessness, Poverty and Land Reforms in Sindh and Peasant Movement’ – in the South Asia Social Forum that would be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh on November 18 this year.
In a meeting held on Friday, civil society activists reviewed the current socio-economic and political issues of Pakistan, particularly Sindh, as well as the issues relating to the regional integrity of South Asian as a viable regional union. The participants of the meeting also discussed the detention of fisherfolk from both Pakistan and India and termed these steps as irritants in the path of sustainable peace and stability in the region from the people’s security perspective.
The participants also demanded the release of fisherfolk detained by both countries, particularly a large number of them held by Pakistan’s maritime personnel recently. The participants discussed the post-rain and -flood scenario in Sindh and demanded that the government as well as the global community, should provide timely emergency response support and initiatives for the calamity-stricken people.
They shared their concern about the Sindh Local Government Ordinance and demanded that a pro-people and ethnically harmonious local government framework should be devised after taking all stakeholders into consultation. The meeting was attended by Zulfiqar Shah of the Institute for Social Movements, Zulfiqar Halepoto of the PPC, Suleman G Abro of the Sindh Agricultural and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organisation, Mustafa Baloch of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Dr Ashothama of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Punhal Sariyo, Jabbar Bhatti, Shehnaz Shidi, Zahida Detho, Nisar Khokhar, Maqsood Daheri, Shokat Memon, Akbar Dars, Fatima Siyal, Abdullah Langha, Dr Haider and Ghaffar Malik. – See more at:
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Petition in the Supreme Court
October 22, 2010, Report by Farooq Tariq
We played an important part in todays Supreme Court decision on 18 constitutional amendment. 20 of us were also a party in this historic case where our lawyer Salman Akram Raja was the last one to be heard by the full bench for three days. I have enclosed the petition we filed at the Supreme Court and also some important part of the petition are pasted here below. The Supreme Court reliance on Hakim Ali case was raised in our petition and you can find the relevant in the end of this message.
The Supreme Court decision to ask the parliament to review the procedure of the appointment of the top judges is a victory of the progressive forces of Pakistan. The Courts did not touch any other part of the amendments and did not rest on the objective resolution, our main plea in the writ petition. It is a partial victory and we must celebrate it.
Labour Party Pakistan congratulate Salaman Akram Raja advocate for presenting a historic petition and arguing successfully in this case.
following are the 20 petitioners,
1. Senator Mir Hasil Bizenjo s/o Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo r/o Tehsil Nal, District Khuzdar, Baluchistan.
2. Abid Hasan Minto s/o Khawaja Ahmed Hasan r/o 4-A, Model Town, Lahore (President Workers’ Party Pakistan).
3. Khawar Mumtaz w/o of Kamil Khan Mumtaz r/o H. No. 18-A, Mian Mir Road, Upper Mall, Lahore.
4. Kamran Shafi s/o Iqbal Shafi r/o Wah Village, District Rawalpindi.
5. Cecil Chaudhry s/o F. E. Chaudhry, Principal, St. Mary’s Academy, Tulsa Road, Lalazar, Rawalpindi.
6. Dr. Abdul Hameed Nayyar s/o Ahmad Mohayuddin r/o 187-S, DHA, Phase-I, Lahore.
7. Syed Mukhtar Bacha s/o Mian Gul Jan, Gulabad Jamrud Road, Peshawar.
8. Muhammad Osama Siddique s/o Ch. Muhammad Siddique r/o 45-Canal Bank, Aziz Avenue, Gulberg-V, Lahore.
9. All Pakistan Trade Unions Federation (APTUF) with its registered office at 14-N, Industrial Area, Gulberg-II, Lahore through Ghulam Fareed Awan, General Secretary.
10. Omar Asghar Khan Foundation with its Office at 2-B, Parbat Road, F-7/3, Islamabad, through its Chairperson, Ali Asghar Khan.
11. Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, PILER Centre, St. 001, Sector X, Sub-sector V, Gulshan-e-Maymar, Karachi through its Program Manager, Sharafat Ali.
12. Simorgh Women’s Resource and Publication Centre with its office at 2/7, Fountain Corner, Canal Park, Gulberg-II, Lahore through Neelam Hussain, Executive Director.
13. Fisher Folk Association, Sachal Hall, Ibrahim Hyderi Bin Qasim Towers, Karachi through its Chairperson, M. Ali Shah.
14. Sungi Development Foundation through Sheikh Asad Rehman s/o Justice (Retd.) S. A. Rehman (Late) with its Head office at H. No. 1692, Civil Lines, Circular Road, Abbotabad.
15. Institute for Social Movements (ISM), through its Secretary General Zulfiqar Shah, with its registered office at B-9, Naseem Nagar, Phase-IV, Qasimabad, Hyderabad-71000.
16. South Asia Partnership (Pakistan) (SAP-PK) with its office at Haseeb Memorial Trust Building, Naseerabad, 2-KM, Raiwind Road, Thokar Niaz Beg, Lahore-53700, through its Executive Director, Mohammad Tahseen.
17. Awami Party through its Secretary General, Dr. Ayub Khan, with its Central Secretariat at Office # 4, 2nd Floor, Arshad Sharif Plaza, G-11 Markaz, Islamabad.
18. Labour Party Pakistan with its registered office at 40-Abbot Road, Lahore through its Spokesperson, Farooq Tariq.
19. Abdul Rehman s/o Jam Nawab Hussain Samoon r/o Paro, Talib ul Mola Street, Shah Mukhi Road, Hyderabad.
20. We Journalists through its Chairman, Mohammad Jafar Memon, address H. No. 21, Shalimar Bungalows, Hyderabad.
Some important parts of the petition
By way of example, are the following judgments of the superior courts of Pakistan, inclusive of the dissenting views expressed therein, not reflective of competing world views and visions between equally honourable and professionally competent members of the superior judiciary:
i) Hakim Khan v The State (PLD 1992 SC 595) and Kaneez Fatima vs. Wali Muhammad (PLD 1993 SC 901). The landmark judgments rendered by this Honourable Court in the aforesaid two cases restored the balance between the democratic aspirations of the people of Pakistan on the one hand and the proper role of the Objectives Resolution of 1949 in the constitutional scheme, on the other. By declaring that Article 2A and the Objectives Resolution of 1949 do not occupy a position higher than that enjoyed by other articles of the Constitution this Honourable Court put to rest the contention that the Objectives Resolution serves as the grundnorm of Pakistani constitutionalism. The judgments in the aforesaid two cases reflect a constitutional vision very different from the one that underpins the judgment of a Full Bench of the Lahore High Court in Sakina Bibi’s case (PLD 1992 Lah 99) wherein it was held that original provisions of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 found to be inconsistent with the intent of the Objectives Resolution regarding the primacy of the Injunctions of Islam could be declared void. It is respectfully submitted that the differences in the three judgments referred to reflect the ongoing debate and tension in Pakistani society and the intelligentsia regarding the import of the Objectives Resolution and Article 2A of the Constitution. The judgments by different judges of the superior judiciary have reflected different aspects of this debate. It is respectfully submitted that the people of Pakistan have a right to know where proposed candidates for high judicial office stand with respect to this and other issues of wide socio-political consequence. This is only possible if the process of judicial appointments is open to feed back from the people of Pakistan through their representatives.
ii) The opinion in Presidential Reference No. 2 of 2005 regarding the Hasba Bill (2005 SCMR 1601). The opinion rendered by this Honourable Court reflects a grand and salutary vision of democratic governance, tolerance for diversity and institutional limits. It is respectfully submitted that the composition and leadership of the Bench that rendered the opinion were critical to the articulation of the aforesaid opinion. It is a fact universally acknowledged that judges of equal legal acumen and personal probity can arrive at vastly divergent conclusions on matters of constitutional interpretation affecting the entire way of life of a people. Cases dealing with racial segregation in the United States such as Brown vs The Board of Education and those dealing with affirmative action such as Bakke vs The Regents of the University of Texas are abiding reminders of the critical importance of a judge’s extra judicial world view to the discharge of his or her judicial functions.
iii) Qazalbash Waqf vs The Federation (PLD 1990 SC 99). The majority judgment declared land reforms unlawful on the touch stone of the injunction of Islam. The minority, consisting of Justices Shafi ur Rehman and Nasim Hassan Shah, presented an alternative understanding of the Constitution of Pakistan and the political process. The majority judgment declared unlawful decades of political dialogue and a social vision that had animated millions, before as well as after the creation of our beloved Pakistan. The question of redistributive justice and the role of the state in providing such justice have remained at the forefront of national dialogue in countries as diverse as the Islamic Republic of Iran (where land reforms and redistribution were found lawful) and the present day socially resurgent nations of much of Latin America. One remarkable judgment has served to extinguish the legitimacy of aspirations of millions and has underscored the importance of societal stakes in the composition of the judiciary..
iv) Abdul Waheed v. Asma Jehangir (PLD 1997 Lah 301). The case concerned the right of an adult Muslim woman to enter into marriage out of her own freewill without requiring, as a matter of legal compulsion, the consent of a male wali. The majority judgment upheld the capacity of an adult Muslim woman to control her life and destiny. The minority, however, reflected a diametrically opposed vision of society and the relative capacity of genders based on an understanding of the constitutional order in place in Pakistan that remains the subject of intense debate and dialogue. The judgments of the majority and the minority highlight the importance of the vision rather than competence and probity of superior court judges.
The list of judgments that have profoundly influenced the lives of the people of Pakistan and have determined the contours of the political and social debate in Pakistan is extremely long. These judgments and the collective maturity that the people of Pakistan have always exhibited when allowed the opportunity to participate in matters of national importance testify to the fact that the people of Pakistan deserve a process of judicial appointments that is opened to them and is transparent.
D) Is Article 175A of the Constitution that has been impugned in the titled petition not an attempt by Parliament to put in place a process that is transparent and aimed at generating broad agreement between the various stakeholders with respect to successful candidates for appointment to the superior judiciary? In fact is the role of the Parliamentary Committee not subsidiary to that of the Judicial Commission in so far as the Parliamentary Committee may only disapprove a name forwarded by the Judicial Commission with a super majority six out of eight drawn from across the various political divides in Parliament. The fact that the Parliamentary Committee may not suggest any names of its own ensures that no person may be appointed to the superior judiciary of the country without enjoying the support of the Judicial Commission. Consequently, only those persons will be elevated to the Bench whose professional competence and character have passed the test of scrutiny by the Judicial Commission and were not unacceptable to an overwhelming majority of the members of the Parliamentary Committee.
In view of the foregoing, it is respectfully submitted that:
A) The Applicants may kindly be impleaded as Intervenors in the titled matter.
B) The titled petition may kindly be disposed off with the finding that no occasion for invoking the Basic Structure or Basic Features doctrine has arisen on account of the amendments to the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 made by the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, in particular Article 175A added by the said amendment.
Any other order deemed to be just and fair in the circumstances of the matter before this Hon’able Court may also kindly be made. http://safedafed.org/media_Governance%20SAFED.php
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Long March Announced for Amendments in Sindh Tenancy Act
Hyderabad: Thousands of peasants participated Sindh Harri Convention, organized by South Asia Partnership – Pakistan , Sindh Office on December 4 at Hyderabad . The participants of the event demanded the amendments in Sindh Tenancy Act and carrying out land reforms in the country.
Mr. Zulfiqar Shah, Provincial Coordinator, SAP-PK, Sindh Office announced in the event that SAP-PK [Sindh Office] and other civil society and peasants’ organizations will jointly carry out a Long March from February 15 to February 28, 2009 from Hyderabad to Karachi and will stage a sit in at Sindh Assembly Building for the amendments in Sindh Tenancy Act.
The speakers, discoursed about the peasants’ issues, included Karamat Ali, PILER, Irfan Mufti, SAP-PK, Zulfiqar Shah, SAP-PK Sindh, Rochiram, Ms. Farheen Mughul, MPA Sindh Assembly, Jami Chandio, CPCS, Mohammad Ali Shah, PFF, Punhal Saryo, SHPC, Hussain Bux Thebo, Ramzan Memon, BHS, Prof. Ejaz Qureshi, Ghaffar Malik, SDS, Ghulam Mustafa Chandio, SHT, Dr. Nazeer Memon and other.
Following resolutions were passed in the event:
1. Amendments should be made in Sindh Tenancy Act and it should be re-drafting according to current socio-economic situation of Sindh
2. Land reforms should be implemented in its originality. The land ceiling should be fixed to 50 acres irrigated land and 100 acres non-irrigated land.
3. All laws and regulations regarding land developed under colonial era should be abandoned and commercialization of land should not be promoted.
4. Under Haq-e-Shifa, the agriculture land of about 8 acres should be allotted to the landless agriculture workers and peasants’ families.
5. The agriculture land occupied by or allotted to military farms and government departments should be revoked and distributed among the landless peasants under the principle of Haq-e-Shifa.
6. Land allotted through auctions, awarded or given in claims should be revoked and distributed among the landless peasants except for the land actually cultivated by the landholders themselves.
7. The illegal occupation of the land distributed in land reforms should be abandoned and possession should be given to the allottees.
8. Land record (of agriculture and non-agriculture lands) should be computerized and made public through internet.
9. The International Financial Institution funded mega projects in the name of irrigation reforms should be stopped.
10. Privatization in the irrigation and agriculture sectors should be stopped.
11. Communities of Indus Delta, Taunsa and other mega project affectees should be rehabilitated.
12. Agriculture policy should be developed with the consultation of agriculture scientists, peasants, agriculture workers and growers.
13. Legislation should be made against the pollution of crops, on ground and underground land resources.
14. Legislation should be done to stop utility of chemicals, artificial fertilizers and pesticides, laboratories and research institutions should be set up for promoting the natural fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides.
15. State should be responsible to provide agriculture machinery and energy.
16. Adult literacy and necessary trainings should be planned for peasants and agriculture workers.
17. A quota for children of peasants and agriculture workers proportionate to their population should be managed for the institutions of technical or higher education. The educated boys and girls of peasants and workers should be given employment in the agriculture institutions.
18. Health and education should be ensured for peasants and agriculture workers and the rural settlements.
19. State should decide minimum wages for agriculture worker
20. Corporate farming should not be initiated in Sindh where rural poverty is highly associated with the in-equal distribution of land and highest ration of sharecropping and land less tenants.
21. Allotment of forest land to the influential persons should be revoked and re-allotted to the peasants as per agro-forestry policy.
22. The occupied surveyed or un-surveyed lands in Kacho, Kaacho, Kohistan, Kach, Bailpat, Thar, Thal and elsewhere, should be re-surveyed and distributed among the landless tenants and agricultural labor.
23. Support price of crops in line with the international market prices, should be declared before planting and/or harvesting. Sugarcane, rice and wheat crops of Sindh may not be discriminated in that process.
24. Role of middlemen in the crops sale and purchase should be abandoned.
25. Agriculture Markets / Centers and industries be set up and the facility and training of processing and modern packing be provided.
26. Sufficient number of go-downs and cold storage units should be developed so that crop produce could be stored and preserved.
27. Legislation should be done for the peasants rights to develop trade unions, attains social justice and old age benefits. (By : Mr.Herman Kumara)
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Peasants hold long march, seek changes in tenancy act
Bureau Report
HYDERABAD, Feb 15: Hundreds of peasants, including women, began a long march from the grave of peasant leader Haider Bux Jatoi here on Sunday to pressurise the Sindh Assembly to introduce amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act.
After marching through various city thoroughfares the peasants held a sit-in at Haider chowk.
The speakers urged the assembly to amend the Sindh Tenancy Act to protect the rights of the peasants. The participants of the long march—jointly sponsored by South Asia Partnership, Agricultural Reforms Committee and the Sindh Porhiyat Sangat— will reach Karachi on Feb 26.
Speaking on the occasion, SAP executive director Mohammad Tahseen said that even today many Benazirs of the country were barefooted and many Bilawals were hungry. He warned the rulers that their (peasants’) decency should not be construed as their weakness.
He said that the situation had radically changed and if any excesses were committed against any peasant in Sindh, the Punjab province would be the first to raise its voice.
Karamat Ali of the Piler said that the long march would prove to be a milestone for the unity of the peasants and the workers. He urged the oppressed sections of society to unite against repression.
The Sindh coordinator of the SAP, Zulfiqar Shah, said that peasants of the province had become conscious of their rights and with the support of the workers they would no longer allow feudal elements to rule over the tillers of the land. He specifically warned a landlord of Sanghar district of dire consequences if he did not stop excesses against his peasants.
He appealed to the members of the provincial assembly to introduce the proposed amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act and warned that if their demands were not accepted, the rulers would not be able to withstand the second protest of the peasants.
Sindh Hari Committee chief Azhar Jatoi demanded that the lands in Sindh should be handed over to the peasants.
Punhal Sario in his speech said that it was misfortune of the haris that after the construction of Sukkur, Guddu and Kotri barrages, the lands were distributed among the feudal lords instead of the haris.
He said that the workers had always been exploited. Even in this modern age, only feudal elements were sitting in the assemblies, he added.
He appealed to the people from all walks of life to participate in the long march at Karachi on Feb 26.
Courtesy: Daily Dawn, Karachi http://www.dawn.com/2009/text/nat21.htm
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Marchers bring traffic on highway to halt
By Our Correspondent
THATTA, Feb 20: Traffic came to a halt as participants of peasants’ long march, which started from Hyderabad on Feb 15, staged a sit-in on the Sujawal section of the Badin-Karachi highway on Friday, demanding amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950 and protection to legitimate rights of peasants.
The march organised by the Sindh chapter of the South Asia Partnership Pakistan entered the tiny town of Jhoke Sharif in Thatta district on Wednesday evening, where the marchers laid a floral wreath on the grave of great warrior saint Shah Inayat Shaheed, who fought a war for peasants’ rights in 18th century. The peasant leaders, including Zulfiqar Shah, Maryam Majidi, Punhal Sario, Comrade Ramzan Memon, Dr Pyar Ali Alana, Liaquat Jamari, Abdul Rashid, Taju Bheel and Zulfiqar Sarwech said that peasants had awakened and with the support of workers they would no longer allow feudal lords to rule over them.
They stressed the need for massive changes in the Tenancy Act and called for formulation of a new Hari policy to protect tillers’ rights. The act could no longer meet the requirements of the 21st century and it was high time the elected government took problems of workers and peasants seriously, they stressed.
They said that the act had become outdated and needed large-scale changes. The peasantry was performing a leading role in the development of national economy but it received almost nothing in return, they said.
They said that the rulers had made many promises with peasants and workers but they fulfilled none. The present government was now in a position to improve the lot of peasants and workers who were living in abject poverty, they said.
Three land commissions had been constituted since the inception of Pakistan but nothing came out of their recommendations, which as a result only strengthened the feudal system, they said.
They were highly critical of non-release of water downstream Kotri Barrage since last couple of years, making agricultural lands barren, spreading hyper salinity and ruining deltaic region of Thatta and Badin districts.
Later, the marchers resumed their march towards Thatta town.
DEVELOPMENT: The government had allocated Rs580.275 million for the ongoing and new development schemes for Thatta and Rs221.623 million had already been released, it was revealed at a meeting of Sindh People’s Development Committee at Darbar Hall, Makli here on Friday.
The meeting presided over by committee head Haji Mohammad Usman Jalbani and attended by heads of nation-building departments and DCO Manzoor Ali Shaikh was told that so far Rs140.585 million had been spent on 570 ongoing development schemes in the district whereas work would soon start on 54 new schemes.
The committee head informed the meeting that seven MPAs of the district had submitted 81 schemes and Rs33 million had been released.
Sindh chief minister had approved a water supply scheme for Jungshahi town, he said.
News: Daily Dawn
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ہاری لانگ مارچ کراچی میں داخل: بي بي سي
صوبہ سندھ میں اکثر غلامی جیسی صورتِ حال کا شکار ہونے والے ہاریوں یعنی کھیت مزدوروں کا لانگ مارچ کراچی میں داخل ہوگیا ہے جس میں درجنوں ہاری اور ان کے حقوق کے لیے کام کرنے والے سماجی اور سیاسی کارکن بھی شریک ہیں۔
حیدرآباد سے شروع ہونے والے اس لانگ مارچ کے شرکا پچھلے نو دن سے پیدل چلتے ہوئے کراچی پہنچے ہیں لیکن اب بھی انہیں اپنی منزل، سندھ اسمبلی پہنچنے تک مزید دو دن اور پیدل چلنا ہو گا۔
مارچ کے اختتام پر جمعرات کی شام شرکا اسمبلی کے سامنے دھرنا دیں گے اور اپنے مطالبات سپیکر کو پیش کریں گے۔
لانگ مارچ کے شرکا کا مطالبہ ہے کہ حکومت صوبے میں زرعی اصلاحات لائے، ہاریوں کے حقوق سے متعلق قانون سندھ ٹیننسی ایکٹ میں ضروری ترامیم کرے اور جبری مشقت کے خاتمے کے لیے اقدامات کرے۔
مارچ کے منتظمین میں شامل ذوالفقار شاہ نے بی بی سی کو بتایا کہ احتجاج کا بنیادی مقصد ہاریوں کے برسوں سے حل طلب مسائل کے حل کے لیے حکومت پر دباؤ ڈالنا ہے۔
انہوں نے کہا کہ سندھ ٹیننسی ایکٹ اٹھاون سال پرانا ہوچکا ہے اور موجودہ حالات سے مطابقت نہیں رکھتا۔
’سندھ ٹیننسی ایکٹ کی بہت ساری شقیں ایسی ہیں جو بنیادی انسانی حقوق کی خلاف ہیں۔ مثلاً اس میں یہ ہے کہ زمیندار، اپنے ہاریوں سے رواجی کام لے سکتا ہے اور اس رواجی کام میں یہ ہے کہ ہاری مفت میں زمیندار کے گھر اور زمینوں کے کام کریں‘۔
ان کے بقول ایک اور بنیادی مطالبہ یہ ہے کہ صنعتی مزدوروں کی طرح ہاریوں کے لیے بھی علحیدہ سے عدالتیں قائم کی جائیں۔
بھنڈار ہاری سنگت ہاریوں کے حقوق اور بہبود کے لیے کام کرنے والی غیرسرکاری تنظیم ہے۔ اس کے سربراہ رمضان میمن بھی لانگ مارچ میں شریک ہیں۔
انہوں نے بتایا کہ ٹیننسی ایکٹ اتنا کمزور ہوچکا ہے کہ وہ ہاریوں کے حقوق کا تحفظ نہیں کرسکتا۔
’1950 میں اس قانون کی خلاف ورزی کرنے کی صورت میں زمیندار پر 500 سو روپے جرمانہ مقرر کیا گیا تھا۔ اس وقت سونا 63 روپے تولہ تھا اور آج آپ سونے کی قیمت دیکھ لیں کہاں پہنچ گئی ہے اس حساب سے کم از کم جرمانہ دو لاکھ روپے بنتا ہے۔ اب اگر آج کا زمیندار ہاری کی دو لاکھ روپے کی فصل ہڑپ کرجاتا ہے تو اسے کوئی خوف نہیں ہوتا کیونکہ جرمانہ نہ ہونے کے برابر ہے‘۔
لانگ مارچ کے مقاصد
لانگ مارچ کے شرکا کا مطالبہ ہے کہ حکومت صوبے میں زرعی اصلاحات لائے، ہاریوں کے حقوق سے متعلق قانون سندھ ٹیننسی ایکٹ میں ضروری ترامیم کرے اور جبری مشقت کے خاتمے کے لیے اقدامات کرے
لانگ مارچ کے شرکا نے اپنا سفر نصف صدی پہلے سندھ میں ہاریوں کو متحد اور منظم کرنے والے سیاسی رہنما کامریڈ حیدر بخش جتوئی کے مزار سے کیا جو حیدرآباد سابق کلہوڑا حکمرانوں کے مزار میں واقع ہے۔
انہی کی قیادت میں کئی برس تک ہونے والی جدوجہد اور سندھ اسمبلی کے گھیراؤ کے بعد 1950ء میں سندھ ٹیننسی ایکٹ منظور ہوا تھا۔
مارچ میں شریک پچھتر سالہ ہاری قادر بخش سیلرو بھی پیدل چلنے والوں میں شامل تھے۔ وہ پچاس کی دہائی میں حیدر بخش جتوئی کی جماعت سندھ ہاری کمیٹی کے ممبر کے طور پر ہاریوں کے حقوق کی جدوجہد میں شامل رہے تھے۔
جب ان سے دریافت کیا کہ اٹھاون سالوں میں ہاری کی زندگی میں کوئی بہتری آئی تو ان کا جواب تھا ’ہماری زندگی اور بدتر ہوئی ہے۔ اٹھاون سال پہلے تیل، ٹریکٹر، کرایہ سستا ہوتا تھا، کھاد کی بوری بھی دو سو روپے کی ہوتی تھی اب تو تین چار ہزار میں ملتی ہے۔اب تو ہاری کو کھیتی باڑی سے کوئی اپت (آمدن) نہیں ہوتی اس لیے وہ شہروں میں جارہے ہیں‘۔
قادر بخش سیلرو نے خبردار کیا کہ اگر حکومت نے ہاریوں کی بہتری کے لیے اقدامات نہ کیے تو وہ اپنا آبائی پیشہ چھوڑنے پر مجبور ہوجائیں گے اور صوبے میں کھیتی باڑی کے لیے ہاری دستیاب نہیں ہوگا۔
لانگ مارچ میں سولہ سالہ ڈاڑھوں بھی ملے جو جلوس کے ساتھ چلنے والی ایدھی کی ایمبولینس میں سوار تھے۔ انہوں نے بتایا ’پیدل چل چل کر ٹانگوں میں زخم ہوگئے ہیں اور بخار بھی ہے۔ اس لیے ایمبولینس میں پڑا ہوں‘۔
ڈاڑھوں پانچویں جماعت میں پڑھتے ہیں اور لانگ مارچ میں شرکت کے لیے ضلع بدین سے آئے تھے۔ جب ان سے پوچھا کہ سکول چھوڑ کر مارچ میں کیوں شامل ہوئے تو ان کا جواب سادہ سا تھا۔ ’اس لیے کہ ہمارے آدمی غریب ہیں ان کے پاس زمینیں نہیں ہیں۔ اسی لیے ہم آئے ہیں کہ کچھ نہ کچھ ہمارے کو مل سکے‘۔
Courtesy: BBC URDU http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/story/2009/02/090224_hari_march_sen.shtml
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Celebration of the oppressed
By Urooj Zia
The landless peasants of Sindh unite for freedom, and most importantly, their rights
Karachi: Opinions regarding the outcome of the Sindh peasants’ long march for land reforms and amendments in the Sindh Tenancy Act (STA) of 1950 remain divided. Some are celebrating the promise made by Sindh Assembly Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza as a success who said that the suggested amendments would be tabled in the next Sindh Assembly session. Others hold a more pragmatic view, and have promised a second long march and a bigger sit-in in front of the Sindh Assembly building in August if the deputy speaker’s promises are not met.
The STA-1950 was the result of a massive movement launched at that time by Haider Bux Jatoi and his Sindh Hari (peasants) Committee. The latter also served as a model and an inspiration for other movements of landless peasants in the country. Arguably the most successful among these was the armed movement at Hashtnagar, Charsadda, led by the Mazdoor Kissan Party (MKP), which eventually liberated the peasantry there, and bolstered the middle peasantry by providing them with the land they had previously tilled for the feudal lords.
The current amendments in the STA are the result of months-long negotiations between local NGOs and landless peasants. These amendments hope to bring the original STA “at par with the times.” A major highlight of the march was the Third Hari Conference in Karachi on February 25. To put things in perspective, the Second Hari Conference was held in 1970 in Sukrund, near Nawabshah.
The spirit of the landless peasants who participated in the march was a sight to behold. For one, this was a proper march, on foot, not the march-cum-long-drive that our generation is aware of, courtesy the lawyers’ movement.
On Feb 15, thousands of activists and landless peasants, both men and women, had congregated at the mausoleum of Baba-e-Sindh (father of Sindh) Comrade Haider Bux Jatoi. From there, around 200 people, including 150 landless peasants, set out for Karachi on foot, via various stops in rural Sindh. Music and dance was a major part of the entire thing. The younger men did not walk as much as they danced all along the routes, as the procession covered an average of 25 to 28 kilometres every day.
The secular culture of Sindh was also wholly visible in the march, as monotheists, polytheists and atheists walked, danced, ate and celebrated their joint cause together for 12 days. Several attempts by some participants of the march to inject Islam into the event were overturned by the peasants and the leadership of the movement. “We appreciate your participation and support, but we do not appreciate the participation of your religion” was the common sentiment.
This is understandable, seeing as how around 60 to 70 percent of the landless peasants in Sindh are Bheels and Kohlis – lowest caste Hindus. The main slogan of the march was Sufi Shah Inayat Shaheed’s “Jekho Kherey, So Khaey” (loose translation: the tiller has the right to the produce).
Shah Inayat led a peasants’ movement in the mid-1700s, and the “Jhok communes” were established as a result long before the French communes were even conceived. The Jhok communes, according to legend, were attacked on the orders of the Mughal emperor, who was assisted in this by the feudal leadership of the area, as well as religious leaders. Shah Inayat was arrested and ordered to be crushed to death in a chakki. Many of his followers laid down their lives too. All the martyrs, irrespective of religion, are buried at a shrine in Jhok Sharif, which is dotted by around 25,000 graves, including two mass graves.
Much praise goes to the leadership of the current movement, including Zulfiqar Shah from South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP-PK), Punhal Sario from the Sindh Hari Porhiat Council (SHPC), and Shaheena Ramzan and Ramzan Memon from the Bhandar Hari Sangat (BHS), the parent organisation of the SHPC. Not only have they obviously educated landless peasants in several areas of Sindh about their rights, they have also indoctrinated them politically, and have, more importantly, taught them how to obtain what is rightfully theirs.
“We are not merely looking for freedom, we want our rights” was what everyone who was part of the march told TNS. There is a difference between the two terms, they explained. When a wadero (feudal lord) fears legal repercussions, he sets Haris free, but he does not give them what is rightfully theirs. “He hopes they will be happy enough to be free. He expects them to simply get up and go to a camp like they usually do. We don’t just want freedom. We want our rights too. We want to own the land that we till, we want our due share in the produce, we want to be treated with dignity,” the peasants said.
Stories of bonded peasants across the province corroborate this point of view. This is especially true in upper Sindh where the feudal lords own larger tracts of land and are therefore socially and politically more powerful than their counterparts in southern Sindh.
TNS met a group of 25 people, including 15 women, who had walked 25 km from Bolarchi to Jhok Sharif, district Thatta, to be part of the fourth day of the long march. 25-year-old Shambu Kohli narrated the tale of his tribe, the Kohlis from Bolarchi. He, and around 50 other people from his tribe, currently beg for a living. For 20 years they have been bonded to their Wadero, Ali Nawaz Leghari, in Bolarchi.
Two years ago, the Kohlis of Bolarchi were mobilised against their landlord by activists associated with the SHPC and the BHS. Afraid of legal action, Leghari said they were “free to go.” The Kohlis, however, made history. Instead of fleeing to a refugee camp like other ‘freed’ agriculture labourers had done before them, they stayed put and demanded that they be paid for the labour they had put in for 20 years on Leghari’s lands. 80-year-old Leghari tried to scare them by allegedly lodging false FIRs at the local police station against many of the Kolhi men. Lowest caste Hindus, at the lowest possible rung of the social ladder, the Kolhis cut a helpless figure, but decided to fight back. They have now sought the services of a lawyer and plan to sue Leghari in court for violation of the Abolition of Bonded Labour Act.
The peasants’ long march ended on February 26 with a sit-in at the Sindh Assembly building, and the ensuing promises from the deputy speaker. Does the movement end here, though? No, the haris maintain. Their sentiments were summed up most aptly in the speech which SHPC head Punhal Sario delivered at the Third Hari Convention. “We voted the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) into power four times. It gave us nothing. Workers in Karachi were shot at during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s tenure. The Communist Party did nothing. Nationalist parties have failed too. What we need is not the leadership of any of these parties. We need a movement carved and led by the people – by peasants and industrial workers,” he said. “We need a united Left. We need to get rid of our ‘organisational chauvinism,’ sit with other people and learn to listen to their point of view even if we don’t agree with them.”
Courtesy: The New Karachi http://jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2009-weekly/nos-15-03-2009/dia.htm#4
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Call for Papers: Social Movements in South Asia
The Institute for Social Movements, Pakistan (ISM PAK), engaged with the communities in various districts of Sindh regarding peoples movements around rights, peace and self reliance, has decided to publish a series of books and monographs covering the past and contemporary people’s movements around rights, peace, civil liberties and social justice in Southasia. These publications are part of ISM’s newly incepted Social Movements Studies Initiative that will house a database regarding the past and contemporary social movements in Sindh, Pakistan and Southasia. The first set of volumes will focus Sindh, Pakistan and South Asia.
The books will carry the scholarly written papers and article; however, keeping in mind the readability of a common reader especially of social movements in Southasia, the word limit of the papers has been limited to 3000.
The books will focus following thematic area:
- Economic and Political Rights
- Land and Peasants Rights
- Water, Ecology and Environment
- Language and Culture
- Sufism
- Peace, interfaith & Ethnic Harmony
- Women Rights and Liberation
- Literature, Music & Art
- Freedom of Expression
Social Movements – Volume I:
Abstract Submission Dateline: June 30, 2010
Paper Submission Deadline: August 30, 2010
This will focus on the several people’s movements that have been staged in Sindh since the creation of Pakistan in 1947. It will also include the scholarly details and analysis of the issues Sindh society faces today, which are potential to shape tomorrow’s people’s movements. This volume will cover the past and contemporary issues and movements focusing above themes.
Social Movements – Volume II:
Abstract Submission Dateline: July 10, 2010
Paper Submission Deadline: September 30, 2010
Volume II will focus on the various people’s movements that have been underway since the creation of Pakistan simultaneously in whole Pakistan with a collective outlook as well as exclusively in Punjab, Balochistan and Khebar Pakhtunkhawa provinces. It will also include the scholarly details and analysis of the issues Pakistan society as well as of three provinces, which are potential to gather a bigger mass giving birth to many new social movements. This volume will cover the past and contemporary issues and movements focusing above themes.
Social Movements – Volume III:
Abstract Submission Dateline: July 15, 2010
Paper Submission Deadline: October 30, 2010
Volume III will focus Southasia in the context of various people’s movements that have been underway since the end of colonialism in every specific country. It will focus the movements (if any) that have been underway simultaneously and collectively in the whole region as well as individually in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri lanka. It will also include the scholarly details and analysis of the issues of Southasian societies. This volume will cover the past and contemporary issues and movements focusing above themes.
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Apeal: Indus Flood Relief Fund
Himal Southasian have set up a fund in Kathmandu for those all over Southasia and elsewhere seeking to support the immediate, ongoing relief efforts in Pakistan. Please avail this facility to send money to the victims of flood along the Indus. See the link below for fund transfer details.
The recipient organisation is The Institute for Social Movements-Pakistan (ISM PAK) in Hyderabad (Sindh), working with the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) on emergency response and support. ISM PAK and OPP urgently need funds for rations, medicine, shelters, drinking water, infant diet support, livestock fodder and vaccination, hygiene kits, makeshift toilets and schooling camps.
No administrative charge will be applied to your support, every paise will be transferred to ISM PAK for benefit of the flood vicitms. Let us know if you would prefer to remain anonymous as a supporter.
Details: http://www.himalmag.com/Indus-Flood-Relief-Himal-Southasian-Fund-Collection-Drive_fnw73.html
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HRCP seeks judicial probe into Sanghar killings
Daily Dawn, May 6, 2011
LAHORE, May 5: Endorsing the observations of its fact-finding mission that probed the murder of four political activists in Sanghar district a fortnight ago, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan on Thursday expressed shock and disgust at police callousness and called upon the Sindh government to immediately hold a judicial probe into the murders.
On April 21, three activists of Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mahaz (JSMM) were killed when more than a dozen armed men ambushed their vehicle in Sanghar. The attackers, some of them in security agencies` uniform, later on set the JSMM activists` car on fire.
A fourth activist in the car suffered serious burn injuries and died in a hospital in Karachi on April 30.“The HRCP mission finds reason to believe that the four political activists were killed in a premeditated manner, either by security forces personnel or in collusion with them.” The mission received reports of the police failure to help the only JSMM activist who had survived the initial attack as he pleaded to be rescued from the burning car. In fact, policemen had allegedly tried to prevent the local people from rescuing the activist by telling them that he was a terrorist.
The fact-finding mission reported that at least some of the attackers were in official security agencies` uniforms, the police had taken their time to get to the attack site, little had been done to prevent the escape of the attackers and the half-hearted attempts at investigating the horrendous crime needed to be probed in a transparent judicial inquiry.
It noted that the assailants had attacked the activists` car without provocation and targeted them in such a manner as to ensure that none of them survived. The car was later torched to ensure that evidence of the grisly killings was destroyed.
The HRCP said the callous attitude of the police on the day of the attack and afterwards was nothing short of scandalous and merited closer scrutiny. It shared the mission`s concern that the Sanghar carnage had the potential and might well be an attempt to create tensions between the native Sindhi and settler population in the province.
It expressed serious alarm at the lack of urgency shown in holding a credible and thorough probe into the matter.
The Commission said serious measures were all the more crucial amid fears that this might be the beginning of Balochistan-style killings in Sindh. It said Pakistan must learn lessons from past experience about the price it had to pay for actions of trigger-happy security personnel and for countering political dissent with unlawful use of force.
It demanded that the provincial government must hold an independent and expeditious judicial inquiry into the brutal murders and make the findings public. It also called upon the government to bring the killers to justice to prevent recurrence of such brazen attacks on political activists.
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Call for initiating dialogue to save institutions
Daily Dawn, July 26
HYDERABAD, July 25 Leaders of public opinion have stressed the need for strengthening parliament and other institutions by initiating dialogue to avert any possibility of another takeover by generals.
They said that the 18th Amendment was introduced by the government in a haphazard manner and another amendment needed to be introduced to protect the basic rights of people.
They said the fact that parliament had amended the constitution should be respected because military dictators had mutilated the basic document.
They were speaking at a dialogue, `Consultation on Implementation of 18th Amendment and Citizens Concerns`, organised by the Institute for Social Movements Pakistan and `We Journalists` in collaboration with NGOs at a local hotel on Saturday. Sindh Advocate-General Yousuf Laghari presided over the dialogue.
The speakers pointed out that in the neighbouring country, the judiciary and democratic institutions were more powerful than in Pakistan and attributed the weakness to frequent subversion by undemocratic forces.
A number of speakers criticised the government for ignoring small provinces and depriving them of the right to own resources. They were of the opinion that the domination of Punjab was creating problems for other provinces.
In his presidential remarks, Yousuf Laghari said that although the 18th Amendment had not provided full provincial autonomy, it had to a great extent protected the political and economic rights of the smaller provinces.
The credit for this must go to the PPP-led government, the advocate-general said. He, however, advised civil society leaders to formulate their recommendations on different issues and forward them to the government, legislators and political parties.
He said that if there was any lacuna in the 18th Amendment, the civil society had every right to demand improvement.
He said the constitution guaranteed equal rights to each citizen, but conceded that ground realities were different.
Mr Laghari stressed the need for the development and promotion of professional education and said that unless Sindh could produce brilliant professionals, affairs of the province could not be run in a smooth manner and the provincial autonomy would become meaningless.
He said that although enforcement of the constitution was the responsibility of the government, civil society groups could play a constructive role by initiating dialogues and raising their voice through media for corrective measures.
He made it clear that the royalty on oil, gas and other natural resources was the right of the provinces.
Director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) Karamat Ali said this was not the time to oppose the 18th amendment because it was the only time that parliament had taken the initiative of bringing about positive changes in the constitution.
He said people should strive to strengthen democratic institutions and their supremacy.
He regretted that more than 20 civil society organisations and some individuals had filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the 18th Amendment.
But he conceded that the amendment had been introduced in a haphazard manner and that there was scope for improvement.
MQM`s MNA Salahuddin, Abrar Kazi, Mustafa Baloch, journalist Jaffar Memon, Punhal Sario and Iqbal Mallah also spoke on the occasion.
They said people paid taxes and it was the responsibility of the government to provide bread, shelter and jobs to them and proper healthcare and education. http://archives.dawn.com/archives/137660
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Civil society to highlight Sindh in Social Forum
October 15, 2011, Daily Pakistan Today
KARACHI – Members of the Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) and civil society activists and have unanimously decided to stage two major events – ‘Federalism in Pakistan: A Post Bangladesh Perspective’ and ‘Landlessness, Poverty and Land Reforms in Sindh and Peasant Movement’ – in the South Asia Social Forum that would be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh on November 18 this year.
In a meeting held on Friday, civil society activists reviewed the current socio-economic and political issues of Pakistan, particularly Sindh, as well as the issues relating to the regional integrity of South Asian as a viable regional union. The participants of the meeting also discussed the detention of fisherfolk from both Pakistan and India and termed these steps as irritants in the path of sustainable peace and stability in the region from the people’s security perspective.
The participants also demanded the release of fisherfolk detained by both countries, particularly a large number of them held by Pakistan’s maritime personnel recently. The participants discussed the post-rain and -flood scenario in Sindh and demanded that the government as well as the global community, should provide timely emergency response support and initiatives for the calamity-stricken people.
They shared their concern about the Sindh Local Government Ordinance and demanded that a pro-people and ethnically harmonious local government framework should be devised after taking all stakeholders into consultation. The meeting was attended by Zulfiqar Shah of the Institute for Social Movements, Zulfiqar Halepoto of the PPC, Suleman G Abro of the Sindh Agricultural and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organisation, Mustafa Baloch of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Dr Ashothama of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Punhal Sariyo, Jabbar Bhatti, Shehnaz Shidi, Zahida Detho, Nisar Khokhar, Maqsood Daheri, Shokat Memon, Akbar Dars, Fatima Siyal, Abdullah Langha, Dr Haider and Ghaffar Malik. – http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/10/15/city/karachi/civil-society-to-highlight-sindh-issues-in-south-asia-social-forum/#sthash.gmwmQztM.dpuf