Category Archives: Women

March 29 International Day of the Landless

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Press Release

March 29,2019

Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity in collaboration with Asian Peasant Coalition, Pesticide Action Network, Asia Pacific and International Women’s Alliance commemorated the International Day of the Landless, which was marked by the slogan “We Will Take Back Our Land, Our Future!” Globally, the Day of the Landless highlights the struggle of the landless farmers for genuine land reforms and food sovereignty, where they are being evicted from lands that had been tilled for many generations by their ancestors. It is in this context that the many protests and demonstrations have been planned in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Mongolia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia among others Asian countries.

PKMT carried out press conferences at the Peshawar, Multan Press Clubs and a protest rally in Ghotki against the landlessness of farmers, as well as countrywide happenings of land grabs and in the name of foreign investments and development projects.

According to the PKMT National Coordinator Altaf Hussain stated that from 2000 till now, transnational corporations worldwide have land grabbed more than 50 million hectares of land through 1,591 agreements. Further, 200 more negotiations are in ongoing for acquiring 20 million hectares. No doubt, rich capitalist countries along with their imperialist institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO have wrought changes in policies which has allowed the massive push in land grab, drowning the farmers in debt and deprivation, all methods which give transnational corporations control over production and markets.

According to the Raja Mujeeb, Secretary General Asian Peasant Coalition, imperialist corporate agriculture is here to plunder our lands, take away our livelihood and poison our lands. No doubt, most of the land deals are being carried out to in countries like Pakistan that are rich in natural resources. It is draconian that only 8% of these land deals are exclusively for food production and 60% of this is for export. Further, most of these land deals, around 70%, are reserved for agro-fuel production – industry bound oil seed production of oil palm, jathropa, corn, wheat, and sugar. This push for agro-fuel is fulfilling the needs of the rich capitalist countries. In the past few years, China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative has further accelerated land grab, and China is now second to the US, in the number of concluded transnational land acquisitions. In Africa alone, land acquired by Chinese companies range from 240,000 to 6 million hectares.

According to the KPK Provincial Coordinator, Fayyaz Ahmad after leasing an additional 1,000 acres of land in Haripur for a special economic zone, and eviction of farmers from their land for building the Northern Bypass, Peshawar, the next target for investors seems to be Palai in Malakand, a green belt famous for its farmlands and orange orchards. The government of KPK is planning to build a cement factory in the area and has imposed Section 4 for acquiring 400 acres of land. The critical importance of this land for the local communities and its fertility can be gauged by government figures which state that Palai has 171,000 fruit trees which are not only a source of livelihood and food security for the local communities but also critical for the environment; all this happening in a country which is in the frontline of vulnerable countries from climate change impacts. Similarly, for the construction of the Swat Expressway precious agricultural land of local farmers has been acquired for pittance, and on top of that farmers are facing delay in payments for the land.

According to PKMT Sindh Provincial Coordinator Ali Nawaz Jalbani, small and landless farmers were facing exploitation and deprivation because of the unjust distribution of land, corporate agriculture, and the imperialist neoliberal policies inflicted on the command of capitalist countries. At the same time, feudalism is not only forcing misery on the landless farmers but the women face further discrimination based on their gender. They are forced to work under scorching heat for harvesting crops such as wheat and cotton; Hindu are forced to bear not only the oppressive feudal mechanisms but also face further discrimination based on religion. According to Mir Babal, a youth PKMT member from Ghotki, various development projects for energy and infrastructure under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor agreement has resulted in land grab in the area for a number of years.

It was pointed out that in Sanghar, a district where the landless facing acute exploitation with a very high percentage of the population suffering from malnutrition, the government under different guises was taking back land that had been distributed to landless farmers in 2004. The much higher percentage of children suffering from malnutrition in this district was proof of the impact of the industrial agricultural production, which takes its toll on impoverished farmer communities. The Sindh government in many districts of the province for the past many decades has been evicting small farmers. On the other hand, farmers have been forcefully evicted from centuries old villages so that big property dealers and investors, who are well known to have acquired land illegally, are given further opportunities for land grabbing.

PKMT Provincial Coordinator Maqsood Ahmed stated that the government of Punjab after leasing 6,500 acres of land for growing high yielding seeds to foreign corporation in Punjab has recently adopted a policy for leasing state land to national and foreign corporations. The Punjab government has provided state forestland to the corporate sector for planting commercial forests. In South Punjab, proposals by investors for developing commercial forests on 99,077 acres of land have been approved. On the other hand, the same Punjab government in district Rajanpur, South Punjab is bent on displacing small farmers from an area called Rakh Azmat Wala, where the farmers have lived for more than a century.

PKMT demands that development project across the country including those for special economic zones as well as land lease to investors should be stopped. In addition, the role of international corporate sector in agriculture should be eliminated, the ever-increasing allotment of land to the corporate sector should be stopped and instead just and equitable distribution of land to small and landless farmers should be carried out immediately.

Released by Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek & Roots for Equity

Peoples’ Voice at UNEA-4

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Statement of the Farmers Major Group at the fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly

Delivered by Mr. Wali Haider

FARMER MAJOR GROUP STATEMENT AT UNEA-4

Thank you chair.

Honorable excellences, distinguished delegates and colleagues:

I am Wali Haider from Roots for Equity, Pakistan and I’m speaking on behalf of the Farmers Major Group.

The dominant paradigm of unsustainable consumption and production continue to devastate and worsen the situation of the environment and the people along with promotion of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights which force GMOs and commodification of seeds and water. This crisis is further compounded by unabted land grabs by the transnational corporations. This is manifest in the crises in food, climate, environmental degradation, reduced biodiversity, depleted natural resources, and increasing violation of people’s rights and exacerbating inequality.

The industrial model of agricultural production and perverse subsidies in the agricultural sector are destroying the sources of livelihoods of small-scale food producers and their communities, resulting in hunger and forced migration.

To tackle the challenges we are facing in nourishing a growing global population and ensuring food sovereignty require innovations. People-centred and community solutions are innovations and appropriate technologies that protect the environment, promote sustainability, community ownership, social solidarity and mutuality and based on development justice. Innovative solutions that make a difference in people’s lives are often not technological but social innovations, linked with traditional practices and based on indigenous and local knowledge systems. Dimensions of environment, economy and society, the three pillars of sustainable development, are all taken into account in people’s solutions and community innovations towards sustainable consumption and production.

It is proven that in food production, agroecology as a practice based on constant innovation of farmers, a science and a social movement, is known to improve soils, protect health and the environment, improve livelihoods, and increase household income. Agroecology also harnesses traditional and indigenous knowledge systems supported by people’s science and builds community unity. Continue reading →

U.S. threats stun world health agency

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Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution by U.S. Stuns World Health Officials

By Andrew Jacobs

July 8, 2018

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

The State Department declined to respond to questions, saying it could not discuss private diplomatic conversations. The Department of Health and Human Services, the lead agency in the effort to modify the resolution, explained the decision to contest the resolution’s wording but said H.H.S. was not involved in threatening Ecuador.

“The resolution as originally drafted placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children,” an H.H.S. spokesman said in an email. “We recognize not all women are able to breast-feed for a variety of reasons. These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so.” The spokesman asked to remain anonymous in order to speak more freely.

Although lobbyists from the baby food industry attended the meetings in Geneva, health advocates said they saw no direct evidence that they played a role in Washington’s strong-arm tactics. The $70 billion industry, which is dominated by a handful of American and European companies, has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years, as more women embrace breast-feeding. Over all, global sales are expected to rise by 4 percent in 2018, according to Euromonitor, with most of that growth occurring in developing nations.

The intensity of the administration’s opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.’s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding.

During the deliberations, some American delegates even suggested the United States might cut its contribution to the W.H.O., several negotiators said. Washington is the single largest contributor to the health organization, providing $845 million, or roughly 15 percent of its budget, last year.

The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.

In talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Americans have been pushing for language that would limit the ability of Canada, Mexico and the United States to put warning labels on junk food and sugary beverages, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times.

During the same Geneva meeting where the breast-feeding resolution was debated, the United States succeeded in removing statements supporting soda taxes from a document that advises countries grappling with soaring rates of obesity.

The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a W.H.O. effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to lifesaving medicines. Washington, supporting the pharmaceutical industry, has long resisted calls to modify patent laws as a way of increasing drug availability in the developing world, but health advocates say the Trump administration has ratcheted up its opposition to such efforts.

The delegation’s actions in Geneva are in keeping with the tactics of an administration that has been upending alliances and long-established practices across a range of multilateral organizations, from the Paris climate accord to the Iran nuclear deal to Nafta.

Ilona Kickbusch, director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said there was a growing fear that the Trump administration could cause lasting damage to international health institutions like the W.H.O. that have been vital in containing epidemics like Ebola and the rising death toll from diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the developing world.

“It’s making everyone very nervous, because if you can’t agree on health multilateralism, what kind of multilateralism can you agree on?” Ms. Kickbusch asked.

A Russian delegate said the decision to introduce the breast-feeding resolution was a matter of principle.

“We’re not trying to be a hero here, but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important for the rest of the world,” said the delegate, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said the United States did not directly pressure Moscow to back away from the measure. Nevertheless, the American delegation sought to wear down the other participants through procedural maneuvers in a series of meetings that stretched on for two days, an unexpectedly long period.

In the end, the United States was largely unsuccessful. The final resolution preserved most of the original wording, though American negotiators did get language removed that called on the W.H.O. to provide technical support to member states seeking to halt “inappropriate promotion of foods for infants and young children.”

The United States also insisted that the words “evidence-based” accompany references to long-established initiatives that promote breast-feeding, which critics described as a ploy that could be used to undermine programs that provide parents with feeding advice and support.

Elisabeth Sterken, director of the Infant Feeding Action Coalition in Canada, said four decades of research have established the importance of breast milk, which provides essential nutrients as well as hormones and antibodies that protect newborns against infectious disease.

A 2016 study in The Lancet found that universal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year across the globe and yield $300 billion in savings from reduced health care costs and improved economic outcomes for those reared on breast milk.

Scientists are loath to carry out double-blind studies that would provide one group with breast milk and another with breast milk substitutes. “This kind of ‘evidence-based’ research would be ethically and morally unacceptable,” Ms. Sterken said.

Abbott Laboratories, the Chicago-based company that is one of the biggest players in the $70 billion baby food market, declined to comment.

Nestlé, the Switzerland-based food giant with significant operations in the United States, sought to distance itself from the threats against Ecuador and said the company would continue to support the international code on the marketing of breast milk substitutes, which calls on governments to regulate the inappropriate promotion of such products and to encourage breast-feeding.

In addition to the trade threats, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, suggested in meetings with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, that the Trump administration might also retaliate by withdrawing the military assistance it has been providing in northern Ecuador, a region wracked by violence spilling across the border from Colombia, according to an Ecuadorean government official who took part in the meeting.

The United States Embassy in Quito declined to make Mr. Chapman available for an interview.

“We were shocked because we didn’t understand how such a small matter like breast-feeding could provoke such a dramatic response,” said the Ecuadorean official, who asked not to be identified because she was afraid of losing her job.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html

In the Belly of the River: Flooding the Landless

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Nov 2014

By Kasim Tirmizey

The village of Kanwan Wali, a government sponsored tent community on an embankment vulnerable to flooding.

The village of Kanwan Wali, a government sponsored tent community on an embankment vulnerable to flooding. | Photography: Kasim Tirmizey

Kachchhi – sone di pachchhi.
Riverine land is a basket of gold.
– Punjabi proverb in the Shahpur District of Punjab1

Under a burning sun, the Khana Padosh tribe of the Moza Vehlan village in Multan tehsil make do with tattered and colorful patches of cloth and wooden sticks to construct their tents. After massive flooding inundated their village, constructed on katchi (riverine) lands, they have been forced to temporarily reside on a nearby band (embankment).

While the katchi lands are prone to flooding, the Khana Padosh say they have little choice but to live there. They would hardly describe the land they live on as a “basket of gold” as the old Punjabi proverb goes. The katchi was considered bountiful in the 19th century, when farming in western Punjab was done through inundated agriculture. It was a system that thrived on regular floodwaters making riverine lands fertile for agriculture. At that time, farmers would organize agrarian life according to the rhythms of floods. Other communities, such as the Khana Padosh, in this part of Punjab were nomadic pastoralists.

Western Punjab underwent massive transformation under British rule through the introduction of canal irrigation. This signalled the demise of inundated agriculture and nomadic pastoralism. The British were interested in increasing the agrarian frontier in order to provide cheap food2 in England and to gain greater land revenue through rent. In the new political economy, katchi lands were marginal and vulnerable territory.

The Khana Padosh tribe living on the embankment.

The Khana Padosh living on the embankment.

The Khana Padosh were historically a nomadic tribe that tended to livestock. The introduction of canal colonies interrupted that mode of life, however. The British considered many nomadic communities to be ‘criminal tribes’. That term, ‘criminal’, had less to do with the law, and more with the British government’s attempt to criminalize the entire nomadic pastoral way of life, seeing as it stood in opposition to their canal systems. The British demand to assimilate to a settler-farmer mode of life was, however, unconceivable for many nomadic tribes.

Today’s Khana Padosh tribe, like their forefathers, are technically landless. A local landowner has allowed the tribe to squat on a portion of the katchi land that he owns near the Chenab River for the sole purposes of temporary settlement.

Bashir Ahmed, of the Kanwan Wali village, is living temporarily on an embankment in a government sponsored tent community in Multan tehsil. Unlike the Khana Padosh, he and his fellow villagers work as sharecroppers on katchi land for a landowner. He explains why he and others live on the katchi: “Us, the poor, we don’t have any money or assets that [allow us to] live in the pakka [settled] areas. That is why we live in the center of the river. That is why we live in the katchi. We have to produce what we can so we can eat.”

Others from Bashir’s village commented that they live on the katchi because land there is cheaper to lease.

Azra Talat Sayeed, the director of the NGO Roots for Equity, which focuses on the political mobilization of peasant and labour communities, argues that the fundamental issue behind the impact of the floods is landlessness:

“Many thousands of these people live on the banks of various [rivers] which run the length and breadth of the country, only because Pakistan has failed to implement even the most rudimentary of land reforms, let alone a policy that would allow for a just equitable distribution of land. Feudal lords, who are fast changing into ‘corporate land lords,’ rule the country and millions of farmers are forced to eke out a very meagre earning by working as sharecroppers, agricultural workers or contract farmers. Others are forced to endanger their lives and livelihood by living in what could be called a ‘seasonal red zone’; no doubt global warming and ensuing climate change have exacerbated the situation.”3

Landless people and smallholders represent 92 percent of the population in present day Pakistan. For the rural poor, katchilands are the last resort for survival. While some nomadic tribes opted to settle in one area, have received small portions of land to practice agriculture on, the Khana Padosh tribe opted not to do so. The Khana Padosh do not have a history of agrarian life, nor do they engage in farming today. Farming has been a mode of life that requires an intense amount of apprenticeship and practice, and, most of all, access to land that is not vulnerable to severe inundation. The Khana Padosh say that they mostly continue to act as pastoralists, tending to livestock under contract with wealthy farmers. Others seek daily wages as labourers in the nearby city of Multan.

Communities across the katchi had a few days warning of the oncoming floods. These communities packed whatever houseware they could take with them, a few days worth of food, and headed towards the embankment.

Muhammad Ghulam with a basket that he made from wooden sticks to be sold in the market. This production continues in the embankment as means of livelihood.

Muhammad Ghulam with a basket that he made from wooden sticks to be sold in the market. This production continues in the embankment as means of livelihood.

“Our villages in the katchi have been totally inundated. Our homes have been destroyed,” Ghulam Muhammad of the Khana Padosh tribe told Tanqeed. “When we return to our village we will have to start from scratch. We don’t even have any food or tents. Things will worsen when the cold weather arrives and we are without proper shelter.”

While the government has been distributing basic rations and providing tents to some communities from the katchi, they have not given anything to the Khana Padosh.

“The government has not given us any rations. Nor do they allow us to sit in government sponsored tent communities,” says Muhammad.

Across Punjab, it is those villages that have connections with feudal lords or politicians that have generally been able to gain access to government rations. As the Khana Padosh are among the most marginalized of communities, they do not fit into the network of patronage. Bashir Ahmed says that they received government relief only after they repeatedly pressured officials into giving them their rights.

What are other possibilities for communities that live on the katchi in the face recurring floods? Roots for Equity has called for equitable redistribution of land as the only just way to address the issue. Without access to safe and fertile lands, millions will continue to reside on the vulnerable lands of the katchi. The Pakistan Kisan Mazdoor Tehreek (Pakistan Peasant Workers Party or PKMT) also advocates sustainable agriculture in the riverine lands. This is a medium-term measure to avoid the indebtedness that has resulted in the increasing entrenchment of corporate influence into agriculture in Pakistan.

In a field south of Multan tehsil, villagers who are members of the PKMT are experimenting with sustainable forms of agriculture. They are using a diversity of traditional, rather than corporate, seeds. They do not use pesticides and chemical fertilizers. PKMT realizes that the corporatization of agriculture is leading to the impoverishment of peasants. Opposing corporations and pro-corporate laws, such as the recent Punjab Seed Act of 2013, is necessary, but not enough. They also believe in creating their own alternative economies that are based on food sovereignty. Efforts are being made by some villages on the katchi in the Kanwan Wali village to transition to more self-reliant forms of agriculture.

But what do historical pastoralists like the Khana Padosh do when agriculture is not their calling? Equitable redistribution of land and ending a land-water ownership regime based on private property are important aspects within any long-term solution to the massive floods that have impacted the most marginalized of Pakistan in recent years. And no genuine land reforms will be possible without the mobilization of peasants, pastoralists, and labour.

Children of the village of Kanwan Wali on the embankment.

Children of the village of Kanwan Wali on the embankment.

The socio-ecology of Punjab is shaped by the legacies of colonialism as well as ongoing feudalism, imperialism, and corporate agriculture. Colonialism introduced commercialized agriculture, whereby the landscape of western Punjab was transformed, moving away from inundated agriculture and nomadic pastoralism and towards irrigated agriculture. In this transforming landscape, nomadic pastoralists were increasingly marginalized and rendered criminal. In addition, those tribes and sub-castes that were loyal to the British, especially during the 1857 war of independence were given large landholdings. Marginal communities such as the Khana Padosh were made landless in a territory that was increasingly ruled by private property, where their nomadic way of life was being made extinct.

Millions of other landless people opt to lease cheap land or squat on the katchi. This is despite the fact that this is a zone of recurring flooding. Global warming has been attributed to the expansion of capitalism,4 most evident in the greenhouse gas emissions from industrialization. The wretched of the world, it seems, only experience the exploitation and oppression of capitalism, and now they are further forced to squat on the most vulnerable of lands. Ironically, in the case of the Punjab, it was these very lands that used to be considered “a basket of gold”, not so long ago.

Kasim Tirmizey is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. He is currently based in Lahore, Pakistan.

  1. Wilson, James. Grammar and dictionary of western Panjabi: as spoken in the Shahpur District : with proverbs, sayings & verses. (Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2005).
  2. Patnaik, Utsa. in The agrarian question in the neoliberal era: primitive accumulation and the peasantry 7–60 (Pambazuka Press, 2011).
  3. Sayeed, Azra Talat. Communities Impacted by Floods in Pakistan. Roots for Equity (2014). at <http://rootsforequity.noblogs.org/post/2014/09/20/communities-impacted-by-floods-in-pakistan-2014/>
  4. The connection between capitalism and climate change has been made in several places. More recently, Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Alfred A Knopf, 2014.

http://www.tanqeed.org/2014/11/in-the-belly-of-the-river/

29 March, Day of the Landless

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Press Release

29 March 2018

The Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity in collaboration with the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) and the other Asian organizations have marked the Day of Landless under the theme “Peasants of the world: intensify our struggle for Land and Life!”

The Day of the Landless is observed globally to highlight the struggle of farmers for land and other natural resources as they have been forcefully evicted from their land, despite the fact that they have inhabited these lands for generations’. The numbers of countries including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Mongolia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippine, Thailand, and Indonesia have held various events to mark this day.

PKMT has lodged a protest against the pervasive land grabbing and landlessness in Pakistan on the day of landless at the Hyderabad Press Club, Hyderabad, in which the small and landless farmers from different districts of the province have participated. The PKMT Sindh Coordinator, Ali Nawaz Jalbani spoke on this event emphasizing the invaluable contribution of farmers to our communities. He pointed out that small and landless farmers not only provide food to the people through their hard work but are also responsible for export of agricultural products that yields valuable foreign exchange. But even in spite of them feeding the country, they suffer from severe malnutrition, hunger and poverty; no doubt this condition is a result of massive landlessness among farmers. In Pakistan, feudal lords, the elite and rich farmers own 45 percent of agriculture land. This is the critical reason that a country that which has high food product, tragically still comes on top when it comes to infant death statistics.

Allahdino, a PKMT member pointed out that “We the landless farmers are forced off land, evicted from our villages, losing our livelihood, and community forced to work as wage labor in towns and cities under inhuman conditions. With no food grains, every-day hunger is the mode of the day. Contract farming is on the rise, where farmers are being forced to work as part of an assembly line, producing at the behest of agro-chemical corporations who produce not food but profitable items such as sugar cane, livestock fodder, and agro fuels.

According to Sony Bheel, patriarchy is a hard cruel reality. Women, have very few rights, and as agricultural women workers these women face intense structural poverty. They country’s food security in the forms of grains or vegetables, dairy or livestock production is absolutely not possible without rural women’s hard physical labor. However, women a major part of the landless are not even recognized as farmers and face exploitation at the hand of both capitalists and feudal lords. The increasing chemical intensive agriculture is responsible for not only destroying biodiversity but also intoxicating the food chain system which impacts women and girl children immensely. It is because women and girls work the most in cash crop harvesting be it cotton or maize or vegetable picking. Hence the landless, especially women landless suffer the most from multiple forms of exploitations, discriminations and oppressions.

The members of PKMT from Ghotki and Badin, Mohammad Sharif and Mohammad Ramzan said that in Pakistan, farmers are facing oppression and deprivation due to neoliberal policies of capitalist countries, unfair land policies and corporate agriculture. In the name of development and innovation; motorways, Special Economic Zones, energy and other projects are being established, all which are forcing land evictions, depriving farmers of their land and livelihood.

There are many such examples: In Hattar, Haripur, KPK, more than a 1000 acre of land has been allotted for the extension of Special Economic Zone, and in Peshawar the construction of Northern bypass project. In Punjab, 6,500 acres of land is being provided to foreign seed companies. In Rajanpur district, the Government of Punjab is promoting forest cultivation for trade through public private partnership; inevitably farmers are being evicted, others forced into contract farming with corporations. In Khairpur, Sindh, 140 acres of land has been used for Special Economic Zone. These are the clear examples of the oppression present due to land grabs and exploitations faced by the small and landless farmers in the country.

Saleem Kumar, the Tando Mohammad Khan, Coordinator, PKMT stressed the point that instead of distributing land to farmers, the government is promoting foreign investors, allocating land to the corporate sector, steps that further erode the sovereignty, well-being and prosperity of the people of Pakistan.

Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek has made food sovereignty its critical most demand with right to land resonating as the loudest call for gaining social and economic justice.

PKMT’s struggle against imperialist globalization and feudalism challenges land grabbing, corporate agriculture and the whole realm of neoliberal policies that are strangulating farmers lives and livelihood; In essence PKMT demands equitable distribution of land among women and men farmers, the most critical base for ending hunger, poverty and malnutrition in the country.

There is no doubt without Land there is NO Life!

Released by: Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) & Roots for Equity

Urdu Press Release

land less day PR 29,march 2018 urdu

Women Rise and Resist Imperialist War and Aggression! Unite to Fight for Genuine Liberation!

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International Women’s Alliance
8 March 2018

This March 8, the International Women’s Alliance (IWA) and its member organizations invite women worldwide to resist imperialist plunder and war. In honor of the first women strikers in 1908, we commemorate International Working Women’s Day to recognize and continue women’ role in the struggle for peace, justice and self-determination. On this 110th anniversary we uphold the power and legacy of women’s resistance and affirm our commitment to build a strong women’s movement towards women’s genuine emancipation. We have witnessed the impact on women of wars of aggression continuously launched and supported by Imperialist countries.

In the Middle-East, the occupation of Palestine by United States-backed Israel has resulted in the destruction of countless lives in the West Bank and Gaza, including women and children.

Imperialist-led military attacks have increased in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan as they continue to be targets in the United States’ so-called fight against terrorism. With these attacks, women and children are seen as “collateral damage”. Meanwhile, the United States is increasingly exposed as the world’s Number One Terrorist.

In Asia-Pacific, the imperialist powers are strengthening their hegemonic control of the region thru the impending implementation of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. This agreement, which will be signed on the very 8th of March 2018 in Santiago, Chile, only furthers their neoliberal policies and unfair trading laws in the region.

In Asia, the Philippines has continued to suffer from intensified militarization. With the increasing presence of U.S. troops in the country and with President Duterte’s Martial Law, women and children have become victims of human rights violations, and of sexual violence, which is systematically used as a tool of war and as a tool to curtail the fundamental rights of the people.

In the Americas, particularly in the United States, with white supremacist and misogynist President Donald Trump in power, his administration continues to perpetuate political and economic oppression targeting people of color; women including queer women; immigrants from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean; LGBTQ communities, and people with disabilities.

In Canada, systemic racism against First Nations people, particularly women, has resulted to thousands of indigenous women murdered or disappeared with impunity.

In Europe, the rise of right-wing movements, and religious and ethnic fundamentalism in India and elsewhere has fanned the flames of anti-immigrant and narrow nationalist violence.

A second cold war is heating up as imperialist powers led by the U.S. prepare for the eventuality of a world war. Regional wars have intensified in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America to maintain political and economic hegemony. Puppet and client regimes are created. Regime changes are imposed when governments will not bow to the dictates of imperialist powers. As the imperialists rev up their engines of war, they likewise ignite the resistance of women of the world.

The past years have seen women at the forefront of the struggles against violence, exploitation and oppression. Whether they stand against phalanxes of police and military during strikes, pickets and demonstrations, against the threat of nuclear attack against North Korea, or against the invasion and destabilization of Venezuela, more and more women are joining the struggle against militarism, imperialist wars of aggression, and the rising neo-fascism in many parts of the world.

The resistance of women in Palestine, as emboldened by Ahed Tamimi and many others, who continue to resist and protect themselves and their families, has spread across the world. Women stand in solidarity and struggle against the Israeli occupation. Another model of resistance is that of the women in Kurdistan. They have formed armed self-protection units to protect their homeland and culture from annihilation.

We believe in the power of linking with women so we can collectively resist against imperialism and all forms of violence against our bodies and lives. We aspire for a global society that promotes and protects the rights and interests of women and is void of all forms of discrimination and violence against us. We strive to intensify local struggles and campaigns against imperialism and capitalism, to strengthen international solidarity, and to contribute to the people’s struggle for national liberation, sovereignty and self-determination. This is our militant tradition and we are upholding it this March 8 International Working Women’s Day!

No War on Women at Home and Abroad!
Women Say No to Imperialist Wars of Aggression!

Several injured in tenants-police clash in Charsadda

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January 26, 2018

CHARSADDA: A tenant woman set herself on fire in protest against police action to evict them from houses and land in Ijara village on Thursday while over a dozen people, including police personnel, were injured in clashes with the peasants and their female family members. The woman, who is said to have received severe burns, was taken to the tehsil headquarters hospital.

According to the district administration officials and local residents, women and children of tenants came out of their houses when the police and FC personnel tried to use force to evict them from the land occupied by them in Ijara village of Tangi tehsil.

During the protest, a woman sprinkled kerosene oil on her body and set herself on fire. She got burn injuries and was rushed to the THQ hospital in critical condition.

Later, sensing gravity of the situation the administration decided to give 20 more days to the tenants to leave the land and houses, which belonged to landlords of the area. The decision was made after a meeting with representatives of tenants.

Moreover, nine tenants, including women and children, were injured when armed men of the landlords stormed their houses to evict them in Hando village.

The district administration claimed that tenants had been removed from 285 kanals in Qandaharo, Mir Ahmed Gul and Hando villages.

Deputy commissioner Mutazir Khan and district police officer Zahoor Afridi while addressing a joint press conference said that the police personnel had taken action to reclaim the land occupied by peasants in the light of Peshawar High Court verdict.

They said that the land had been handed over to the owners. They said that some tenants were also arrested during the action.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2018

WORLD FOODLESS DAY, OCTOBER 16, 2017

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Press Release

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report 2017 jointly released by FAO and other intergovernmental agencies have highlighted some shocking information: people suffering from hunger and malnourishment have risen from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016, of which a vast majority (520 million) live in Asia. Globally, it has also been made evident that conflict and climate change has a vastly negative impact on food security especially for rural communities, and is also a major reason for migration. This is the context of FAO ‘celebrating’ the World Food Day under the theme of “Change the future of migration. Invest in food security and rural development.” In short, millions of people from third world countries are fleeing their homes due to various factors including conflict, hunger, poverty, and a variety of climate change impacts such as floods, droughts, among others. Pakistan, in 2017 continues to be ranked as one of the least peaceful countries: among peaceful countries it ranks 152 of 166 counties.

To mark the ever-rising number of hungry in a country which has surplus wheat rotting in state warehouses, millions of Pakistanis are being displaced by state-sponsored militarism and hence losing land, livelihood, livestock – all that are essential for maintaining food and nutrition. Statistics shout the facts: Pakistan ranks 77 in109 countries for food security indicators; of every tenth person, six suffer from food insecurity; almost 44% children suffer from malnutrition where as 50% of women suffer from anemia.

These diabolical figures are a result of extreme oppression and inequity in the country; the most critical being inequitable land distribution. Forty-five percent of land is held by only 11% of big landlords. Millions of small and landless farmers are forced to produce under the exploitative, oppressive conditions of semi-feudalism, and now mounting hegemony of powerful agro-chemical corporations under the capitalist framework of neoliberalism have been allowed to renew colonization of our lands and resources. The multiple impacts of land and resource hegemony, conflict, climate change and destruction of our agricultural lands by intense use of dangerous chemical fertilizers has left the rural communities and urban poor suffering from the vast indignities of hunger and poverty. The concentration of power by the agri-business giants under the auspicious of World Trade Organisation (WTO) and its trade liberalization agreements, especially TRIPs is one of the major structural causes of rising world hunger.

Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity held a press conference and a protest at the Islamabad Press Conference, October 16, 2017 to register their protest against the ongoing heinous human rights violations being inflicted through concentrated wealth and control over resources especially land by the feudal and corporate elite in the country. PKMT leaders Altaf Hussain, Tariq Mehmood Pathani, and Azra Talat Sayeed spoke at the occasion.

PKMT calls out to all peoples organizations to increase the struggle for food sovereignty as the way forward to end the joint crippling impacts of semi-feudal and neoliberal policies being employed to plunder the land and productive resources of our people. PKMT demands a food and agriculture policy based on food sovereignty framework with equitable distribution of land, ensuring women’s farmers right to land. There cannot be just and lasting peace, sustainable development and prosperity without a people-led development agenda.

Released by: Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT)

Urdu Press Release

Press Release World Foodless Day 2017 urdu

‘TILL THE FARMER GETS HIS LAND, POVERTY WILL NOT END’

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 Haneen Rafi

Dawn, July 24, 2017

KARACHI: “The rights of the peasant will benefit greatly only by creating widespread social awareness of land reforms which can be our greatest weapon. And this cannot be possible without including women in this struggle,” said PPP Senator Taj Haider at a seminar organised by the Awami Workers Party in Karachi on Sunday.

Highlighting the importance of empowering the farmer and peasant, Mr Haider criticised the fact that Pakistan remained one of the few countries that allowed a system to persist in which a few individuals sitting at home directly benefitted from the farmer toiling away on the fields.

The urgency of the land reforms needed in Pakistan have remained a constant demand of the AWP in a bid to battle the monopoly of feudal land owners that have for long usurped the rights of the peasants.

AWP peasant secretary Hassan Askari highlighted how land reforms in East Pakistan were more rigorously pushed through than in West Pakistan. “In East Pakistan land reforms were supported more because most of the land owners there were Hindus. In West Pakistan the land owners however, were not touched.”

“One of the most dynamic revolutionary forces is the kisan,” said AWP Sindh president Bakhshal Thallo, who explained how it was the British who organised and privatised the feudal system in South Asia.

Central secretary general Akhtar Hussain was of the opinion that to make land reforms, or for that matter any sort of reforms successful, the grassroots need to be galvanised and be invested enough to get the reforms implemented. If this is missing, then no amount of reforms will garner much change as there are many examples in Pakistan.

He also spoke about different legal developments the country has witnessed with regards to land reforms.

Prof Tauseef Ahmed Khan criticised how giving ownership of the land to the peasant was not a custom accepted by those in power. “It was for the first time after the revolution in 1917 in the Soviet Union that a state accepted that the land belongs to the peasant and eliminated the feudal system.”

He explained that it was when the communist party was established in the subcontinent that the idea that the peasant who works on a piece of land should own it too came to the fore. However, in his opinion the political parties led down this cause. Even in Pakistan this trend subsisted. “It was the Left politics that created a sense of awareness among the kisan about his rights. And till the farmer does not get his land, poverty will never end from this country.”

https://www.dawn.com/news/1347188/till-the-farmer-gets-his-land-poverty-will-not-end

PKMT demands pro-farmers policies

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Press Release:

July 16, 2017

The Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) Khyberpakhun Khua chapter holds its 5th provincial assembly on July 16, 2017 in Bagh Darai, lower dir.  All of the PKMT members for KPK province participated in large numbers.

Altaf Hussain, PKMT National Coordinator spoke on water issues and market rate for the grower. He stress that due to the climate change there are less rain or more rains hence most of the rainfed land had is being distorting. The government is also not interested in solving the issue since there is no electrify for tube wells. In these critical circumstances whatever production that farmer got could not get good rate in the market. The Globalization and WTO policies implemented in such a way in the country that imported grains i.e. potatoes, onion among others are so cheap. He demand that climate justice, that mean those who responsible for the climate issues for example US, EU and other 1st world nations should pay compensation to the third world loss and they should also change their industrial production system in which high carbon emission is being discharged.

Fayyaz Ahmed, Provincial Coordinator, PKMT pointed out that 70.8 percent of households in Sindh were already suffering from malnutrition and poverty from the oppressive exploitative feudal land lords in the province, and to push profit-oriented corporate land grab and real estate development projects in the province would intensify hunger and poverty in the province. He also told that women agriculture workers should also been recognized as labour.

Asif Khan, member PKMT from Haripur mentioned that commodification of the natural resources which include land, water, seed, and forest etc. for corporate interest bring the mother earth at high risk. Deforestation, land erosion, food contamination, glacier melting are happening at a very high speed. Flood, drought, diseases are the manifestation of these issues. If people owns and control these very natural resources peoples’ life would be at ease, happy healthy, and prosperous like in case of a village in Gilgit “Goharabad” where they own and control their mountain, tress, fruits etc.

PKMT leaders Raja Mujeeb, Tariq Mehmood and Wali Haider told that government is pursuing policies that advocate the production of genetically-engineered cotton; a policy which would ultimately allow hegemonic transnational seed companies such as Monsanto to take control and dictate the total agricultural cotton policy and production in the province, which surely will also spread to other provinces. The Amended Seed Act, 2015 and Plant Breeders Rights Act has already been passed which will aggressively promote hybrid and GM cotton; the next step would be they promotion of GM maize, as maize is the most important crop for KPK, the farmers of KPK should be aware of the implications and must resist. All of these initiatives are there to protect intellectual property rights of the TNCs in result BT cotton and Maize business will have a legal cover.

PKMT firmly reasserts farmers collective right to seed, its free exchange among farmers; it is the farmers who have bred, preserved and passed on the genetic material of seed over many millennia and we will not allow profit-hungry corporations to control the most basic agricultural input – critical for maintaining life on our planet. The agro-chemical mega-corporations that thrive on ‘selling’ lies about higher yields has gained super profits while leaving farmers reeling under multi-pronged crises from suicidal debt, to ever-increasing cost of production, pests and super bugs infestation, falling yields, and destroyed lands and lives. BT-cotton cultivation is a diabolical attack that will replace/reduce wheat production, the most critical food crop that ensures food security of the small and landless farmers.

PKMT demands that instead of promoting TNCs interest and GM crops, the government must put a moratorium on GM technology so that national genetic resources, environment, biodiversity and most importantly right to seed for farmers can be protected.

Local and indigenous seed stalls and pictorial exhibition of PKMT 10 years struggle were also displayed in the Assembly.

Released by: Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT)

https://www.dawn.com/news/1345831/timergara-people-seek-clean-drinking-water