ISLAMABAD, May 13: Social movement activists and farmers leaders while narrating the ordeal of military farms tenants in southern Punjab said that the law enforcement agencies in Okara district are “acting like occupational forces, killing poor tenants”.

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, an eminent social activist and physicist and his daughter Asha Amirali, a People’s Rights Movement activist, shared their experiences with mediapersons after visiting the military farms in Chak 5-4/L here on Monday.

“I was shocked to see how the entire village had been sprayed with bullets, including the mosque,” the physicist-turned social activist said.

“It seems as if these poor farmers who are tilling small pockets of land for the last one century are illegal occupants and the state has ordered its security forces to use every possible means to evict them”, he said.

Narrating the incident in which Mohammad Amir, a resident of the village has died he said every family in the chak had a different but tragic story to tell about the high-handedness of law enforcement agencies.

Every second resident of these villages has a bullet mark on his/her body which speaks volumes of the atrocities committed against these poor farmers,” he said.

“When I met the officers who are allegedly responsible for the firing incident, in which the tenant was killed and scores were injured, they refused to take the responsibility and blamed the villagers for the situation”.

Condemning the ongoing repression unleashed on the tenants in Okara military farms, Anjuman Mazarain Punjab (AMP) chairman Liaquat Ali said the Rangers and local authorities refused to let the tenants accompany the body of Mohammad Amir for postmortem.

There are already reports that the local administration will lodge an FIR against the local AMP leadership under section 302, even though it is clear that Mohammad Amir was shot by the Rangers, he added.

Mr Ali said that these incidents were confirmed by a fact-finding team of the People’s Rights Movement (PRM), which visited Okara.

The team remained in Chak 5-4/L for the whole day and visited the military farm headquarters, local police officials and Sarwar Mujahid, a reporter from an Urdu daily who had been jailed and charged with murder and treason for supporting the struggle of the tenants.

He said the PRM team verified the events which led to Mohammad Amir’s death and the shooting of two other tenants. The police officials, including the SSP, assured the team that an impartial postmortem would be conducted to confirm the cause of the tenant’s death.

The AMP chief said, the body of Amir remained in Chak 5-4/L with the authorities blocking entry points into all 19 chaks of Okara military farms to prevent AMP from transporting the body to a hospital where a postmortem could be conducted and a police report processed.

Ms Asha, who was also present on the occasion, said the AMP and PRM were appalled at the blatant manner in which all established norms and laws were being violated and state functionaries were trying to intimidate tenants.

The PRM and AMP leaders demanded immediate and independent investigation into the event and registration of a case against the Rangers’ commanding officer for ordering the shooting which led to Amir’s death.

They also demanded that the tenants be allowed to accompany the body for postmortem.

If such steps are not taken around one million tenants will observe a hunger strike which will continue till justice is done, they vowed.

The PRM chief Asim Sajad was also present on the occasion.