Daily Times

LAHORE: The South Punjab Minorities Land Rights Forum on Thursday pointed out residential and agricultural land issues, saying the minorities were forced to vacate lands where they had memories of their childhood and origin despite being the indigenous people of the land.

“We are not nomads but indigenous people and we should be treated as equal citizens, and the government must provide us basic rights as well as protection,” former Punjab Assembly member Naveed Amir Jeeva, forum’s representatives Farhad Masih, Pervaiz John and Pandit Kishori Lal said in a press statement after addressing a press conference at the Lahore Press Club.

They said that they were even deprived of the land of their centuries old graveyards as well as religious places.

They said that they had put forward their demands, including right to their residential and agricultural land, graveyards and religious places, to the relevant authorities as well as opinion makers. They said that the government had to play a responsible role to end discrimination and protect rights of the minorities.

The former lawmaker said that as many as 25 different religious minority groups were facing multiple issues in the southern Punjab. “We have a major contribution to the agricultural production but we are homeless and even have no right over lands where we grow crops,” he said. He lauded efforts of the government for the protection of graveyards in Bahawalpur and Khanewal districts, and said that they would appreciate all efforts of the government for the protection of minorities.

The forum’s representatives said that they had time and again demanded of the government to award them residential land rights but no substantial progress had so far been made in this regard. They said that landlords, feudal lords and some government departments were exploiting them. They urged the government to come forward to end discrimination against religious minorities in the light of the guiding principles given by Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

They demanded of the authorities to award residential rights to all those slum dwellers who had been using land for the past several years and living in colonies. Due to this denial, the slum dwellers were facing difficulty in acquiring Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) and casting votes in the elections, they said in reply to a question.

To another question, they said that the price of land was increasing due to development of new infrastructure, and landlords and influential people had started expelling poor members of the minorities just to occupy their lands with impunity.