HYDERABAD, Sept 9: Leftist leaders, rights activists and victims of feudal system on Sunday called for the appointment of a commission tasked with taking suo motu notice of peasants’ complaints and getting about 1.7 million bonded labourers freed from feudal lords’ private jails in Sindh.

The speakers, who were delivering speeches at a seminar on “Rehabilitation of Bonded Labourers after Liberation” organised by Shakeel Pathan Memorial Society at the press club to mark late Pathan’s 9th death anniversary, urged the government to make arrangements for rehabilitating peasants on a war footing after their release and providing them basic facilities.

The freed peasants should be issued National Identity Cards, they should be enrolled as voters and women organisations should establish vocational centres near the liberated peasants’ camps, they demanded.

Veteran leftist leader Mairaj Mohammad Khan emphasised the need for land reforms in the country because he argued the feudal system and the democracy could not co-exist. Pakistan needed to be a religiously tolerant state among the comity of nations, he said.

The government should grant full autonomy to the federating units over their resources and keep only a few subjects, he said, adding, that India introduced land reforms when Jawahar Lal Nehru was the prime minister.

This land, too, had produced great leaders but thanks to tyrannical social system prevalent here genuine leaders were never acknowledged and Shakeel Pathan was one of them, who struggled against religious and sectarian bigotry and all types of discrimination, Mr Khan said.

People had themselves demeaned the country but “we need a society where the tiller of the land enjoys maximum rights and feudal lords have only secondary right over their land,” he said.

He said that people today needed a state where one’s labour was respected and which did not make discrimination among the children of the rich and the poor in schools.

Today Pakistan lagged far behind in the fields of health and education but one could never find even a shadow of remorse on the rulers’ faces. “Medicines are getting out of the reach of common man. A cancer patient has to beg for being able to purchase drugs. We need a Pakistan of labourers and we need our own party which elects Mannu Bheel as its leader,” he said.

Mr Khan condemned religious intolerance and said that the presence of the United States, the United Kingdom and Nato forces on their land had given rise to religious intolerance in Iraq and Afghanistan. The moment they left the countries there would be complete peace, he said.

He said that state should consider every citizen equal and the federating units should be granted full autonomy. All the forms of exploitation must be done away with, every type of exploitation should be stopped and people should be offered work according to their abilities, he remarked.

Mr Khan said that the rich-poor gap was widening in the country as the rulers had given nothing to their people. The judiciary had been in bondage since 1954 and had been giving verdicts in support of civil and military bureaucracy, Mr Khan said.

“But now comes a rejuvenated judiciary headed by Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Bar and bench staged revolt and it reminds me of Shakeel Pathan’s words that there will be a revolt in the judiciary,” he said.

He said that it was time that Gen Pervez Musharraf followed in the footsteps of his predecessor Ayub Khan and announced that he would not be a candidate in presidential elections. Fair elections were not possible under Musharraf, he added.

The seminar a adopted resolution calling for giving the peasant’s children admission to educational institutions of Workers Welfare Board and registering them under EOBI. The seminar paid rich tributes to the Chief Justice for taking suo motu notice of Mannu Bheel’s case requested him to ensure early recovery of his family members and missing persons.