Siraj for accepting farmers’ demands

LAHORE
Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) ameer Senator Sirajul Haq Monday launched a movement for peasants’ rights in a rally at Machi Goth, Sadiqabad, demanding the rulers accept their genuine demands lest they should besiege the federal capital.
Addressing the public meeting, Siraj demanded that the farmers should be given the same rights/ facilities as were available to the farmers in India. “Kissans should be given farm machinery by the state to bring the barren lands under plough, free fertilizer to cultivate lands affected by water-logging and salinity, interest-free loans to install tube wells and for the purchase of seeds and other inputs, and ownership rights for the tillers who had been cultivating Cholistan lands,” he said.
Siraj also demanded that sugarcane price for the next year be fixed at Rs 250 per maund and the cotton at Rs 4,000 per maund. He said Kissans and workers constituted 70 per cent of the country’s population but they had been ruled by feudal lords, ‘vaderas’ and capitalists for decades. The ruling elite had been eating fruit of the workers’ hard work while the poor workers lived from hand to mouth. As such, it was high time that the exploitation of the farmers and workers was stopped and they were enabled to lead respectable lives, he added. He called the sugar mills’ owners to clear the arrears of the sugar cane growers.
Thousands of farmers had reached the spot after traveling on trolleys and carts. Great enthusiasm was witnessed among the participants of the rally.
“I am demanding the right of the poor Kissans living in huts from the elite living in palaces of Islamabad,” he said. He said the country’s politics and governance had been made the game of the feudal lords and capitalists and said in prevailing so-called democracy, there was no body to speak of the rights of the tillers and workers. Those claiming to be farmers, representatives have no knowledge of the farmers’ problems, he added.
JI chief said that the ruling elite had been plundering public wealth and had made the country bankrupt and then acquired huge loans from the IMF and the World Bank, thus bringing the country and the nation under heavy debts. He said that the banks granted loans to the wealthy while the small peasants remained high and dry and did not have enough money to purchase seeds, fertilizer and pesticides. As a result, the farm produce suffered, he added.
Shoora: Central Shoora of Jamaat e Islami has expressed deep anguish over the bloodletting and civil war being spread all over the Muslim Ummah.
A resolution adopted at JI Shoora meeting at Mansoorah said the forces of world colonialism occupying Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq had already spread destruction and a conspiracy was hatched to divide and demolish the Masjid al Aqsa. On the other hand, the Muslim rulers in Egypt, Syria, Bangladesh, Yemen, Libya and Tajikistan were perpetrating tyranny on their own people.
The resolution condemned the brutalities in Syria for the last four years that had caused the death of around three lakh people while millions others had been forced to migrate to other states. The JI central decision making body deplored that in such a situation, some Muslims states and world powers including Russia were taking sides instead of trying to end the bloodshed.
It noted that a similar situation was going on in Iraq, Egypt, Libya. More than forty thousand Egyptian citizens had been put behind bars while so-called courts were handing them death sentences. All the time, the so called world powers are following the US dual policy and double standards. Egyptian military dictator Gen. Sisi, after committing crimes against his own people, is also targeting Gaza citizens and in support of the Zionists, had stopped all movement of the Gaza people. Recently, deep ditches have been dug out on the Gaza boundaries thus annihilating the residents of the area, it added.
The Shoora said that the situation was being further compounded by the rise of some armed groups whose emergence remained questionable on many counts, and who were declaring all others infidels and using the terminology of Islamic State, Islamic Caliphate and Jihad, thus making all these as contemptible in the eyes of the world at large.