More than a year passed since we wrote to you appealing to release the Delhi University Professor Dr Saibaba, who was clandestinely abducted on 9th May 2014 by the Indian police. Since then, this 90% disabled wheelchair bound intellectual is being incarcerated, confined in a highly unsanitary and solitary dark cell in Nagpur Central Jail in the state of Maharashtra, hundreds of miles away from Delhi, where his family lives. Charged with the draconian black law, the ‘Unlawful Activities Prevention Act’ (UAPA), he has been denied bail thrice by the Indian judiciary. We understand that his trial has not started even after a year!
We the undersigned would like to express our general concern over the Indian government’s increasing use of unjust laws to silent its political opponents. Particularly, the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) is being used indiscriminately to silence dissenting voices. This blatantly violates the Constitution of India as well as principles of Human Rights. Wide-ranging powers and legal impunity have been given to the police and paramilitary forces under this Act. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has reportedly issued instructions that those who raise issues of human rights violations must be targeted and arrested, particularly in central and eastern India, where there are numerous struggles against displacement from mining and mega dams.
We would like to remind you that India is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which it ratified on April 10th, 1979. Its Article 9 protects every individual from arbitrary arrests and detention, their right to be informed of charges against them and fair and speedy trial. Article 7 says “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”; articles 18 and 19 protect the freedom of thought, conscience and expression of ideas; article 26 protects everyone against discrimination.
Dr Saibaba is a well-known human rights activist in the Indian subcontinent and beyond. He has been a vocal, important critic of the Indian state’s ‘development’ model and its great damage to the people who supposedly benefit. He has successfully exposed to the outside world the role of the multi-national corporations in grabbing the land, forests and rivers that belong to the indigenous population. He is one of several intellectuals who have drawn attention to the blatant human rights violations against the indigenous peoples of central and eastern Indian states, where the Indian paramilitary forces have been engaged in an unjustified war with India’s own people, infamously known as ‘Operation Green Hunt’. His persistent criticism has made him a high-profile target of the Indian State.
Dr Saibaba is, curiously, treated as a security threat by the Indian State, even though he is a wheelchair-bound disabled person who suffers from 90% disability and post-polio residual paralysis of both lower limbs. He suffers from heart ailment and degeneration of his spine for which he needs constant medical attention. On 26th June 15 ‘The Indian Express’ reported Saibaba’s wife Vasanta, who was only allowed five times to visit her husband during the past one year, fears that she was not sure if her husband will come out of prison alive. His health has further deteriorated over the past one year of his imprisonment. A news report by ‘Nagpur Today’ reported that according to the health report submitted by Chief Medical Officer and the superintendent of the jail to a Gadchiroli court last month, wheel-chair bound Saibaba “is now a known case of systemic hypertension with ischemic heart disease” and also has kidney and gall-bladder stones.
Despite knowing about his fragile and critical physical condition, the Indian courts have rejected his bail three times. Why? We wonder whether the Indian judiciary is afraid that this wheelchair-bound person, if released on bail, might jump bail or will be in a better position to influence the trial, which has not even started.
Given that Indian prisons are crowded with 300,000 defendants awaiting trial, there is a need for a fair criminal justice system that either prosecutes or releases detainees. Such an intervention can come only from a Superior Court. We appeal to you for the judicial protection of all such critical voices, by stopping the criminalisation of dissent.
Given that Dr Saibaba clearly poses no flight risk whatsoever, we appeal to you to release him immediately from the judicial custody so that his family can provide him necessary medical treatment which he desperately needs.
Taking into suo moto cognizance of a news report on Dr Saibaba’s deteriorating health condition and a letter written by Human Right’s activist Purnima Upadhayay, Bombay High Court granted him temporary and conditional bail for three months on 30/06/2015, allowing his family to provide medical treatment. According to media reports, one of the bail conditions is that he should refrain from using laptops and computers when on bail, which means he cannot communicate with the outside world about what has happened to him during his imprisonment. The reports also suggest security forces will be stationed outside his house, which could mean house arrest effectively. It is shocking breach of domestic and international law that wheras it is Dr Saibaba’s treatment in prison that has led to medical complications in his condition, he has been granted bail for a limited period of only three months, giving his family just enough time to nurse him back to health after which he will be taken into custody again subjecting him once again to health complications arising from his disability. This treatment of a political prisoner amounts to renunciation of legal obligations of the state to provide treatment and care to prisoners.
We regret India being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, has imprisoned a 90% physically disabled intellectual for more than a year in a solitary confinement without conducting trial. We request your Honour to restore the fundamental rights granted to Dr Saibaba by the Constitution of India and convert his temporary bail into a permanent one and give him a fair trial in Delhi, where his family lives.
Sincerely,
Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), UK
Countercurrents UK
Peace in Kurdistan Campaign,
UK Russell Fraser, barrister, Chair of Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, UK
Michael Goold, Barrister, Vice-Chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, UK
Liz Davies, barrister and Vice-President Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, UK
Prof. Bill Bowring, Professor of Law, Birkbeck University School of Law, and President of the European Association of Lawyers for
Democracy and Human Rights (ELDH), UK
Thomas Schmidt, Lawyer, Secretary General, European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights (ELDH)
Radha D’Souza, University of Westminster, UK
Frances Webber, human rights lawyer, UK
Margaret Owen OBE, human rights lawyer, UK
Russell Fraser, barrister, Chair of Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, UK
Matt Foot Solicitor Birnberg Peirce and Partners, UK
Alastair Lyon, Solicitor Birnberg Peirce and Partners, UK
Desmond Fernandes, author and genocide scholar, UK
David Morgan, historian and journalist, UK
Jonathan Bloch, author, UK
Sarah Kellas, solicitor, UK
Dr. Andy Higginbottom, Associate Professor, PG Programme Co-ordinator, International Politics and Human Rights, UK
Nick Hildyard, policy analyst, UK
Dr Vicky Sentas, lecturer in Criminal Law and Criminology at the Faculty of Law, UNSW, Sydney, Australia
Professor Felix Padel, Consultant Adviser to The Gujarat Ecological Society, Vadodara, Gujarat, India
Robert Atkins, Solicitor, UK
Melanie Gingell, barrister, UK
Desmond Fernandes, writer and genocide scholar, UK
Indian Workers’ Association, (Central Organising Committee), Great Britain
Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance (ACDA), UK
Prof. Amit Bhattacharyya, Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
Prof. Kunal Chattopadhyay, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
Dr. Soma Marik, Associate Professor, RKSM Vivekananda Vidyabhaban, Kolkata. India
Abdul Majeed, Professor (Retd), Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan
Dr Parimal Ghosh, Professor, Department of South and South-East Asia, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India
Jan Myrdal, Author, political writer and human rights activist, Sweden
Dr Manan Ganguli, Health and Rights campaigner, UK
N.P. Sapkota, Social activist, London, UK
Prof. A.K. Maleri, Democratic rights activist, Ludhiana, Punjab, India
Buta Singh, writer and rights activist, Nawanshahr, Punjab, India
Satnam, writer and rights activist, Patiala, Punjab, India
Arjun Prasad Singh, Social and Political Activist, Bihar, India
United Nepalese Front Europe
Tohum Cultural Centre-London
Prof.Harbhajan Singh, Writer and Literary Activist California, USA.
We are honest friends of RISE and not its enemy and as a friend we offer the following criticism of the new Scottish Socialist group in formation today on the 29th August in Scotland
Democracy and Class Struggle says that it is delusional if the Scottish Left in RISE Respect - Independence - Socialism - Environmentalism to think that an Independent Scottish Socialist Republic can be legislated through the Scottish Parliament or any other bourgeois institution and we sincerely hope the new RISE organisation in Scotland does not promote a purely social democratic electoralist view of democracy on the discredited Syriza Reformist model.
The Democracy and Class Struggle take the view that a Scottish Constituent Assembly should be created to reclaim Scottish sovereignty and formulate a new Independent Scottish Constitution.
Sovereignty is not something that you ask the UK parliament for but something to declare for yourselves. A Scottish Declaration of Independence.
The Scottish people will have to create new Scottish institutions like a democratic Constituent Assembly if they want to really challenge the British State and create an Independent Scotland.
If we look at Norwegian or Irish Independence in the 20th century in Western Europe Scottish Socialists and Communists will need at minimum to create a Scottish Citizens Army to support the Scottish Constituent Assembly if they truely want to introduce Independence and Socialism in Scotland
Socialism in Scotland will be opposed by the British State with all the perfidiousness it can muster which has been on display to the world for centuries and no one should be ignorant of it now least of all socialists and communists.
John Maclean Scotland's great son and inspirer of the idea of an Independent Scottish Socialist Republic was a victim of that perfidy and knew the difference between Reform and Revolution in the struggle for National and Social Liberation and we must not forget it now.
John Pilger’s harsh but accurate Syriza description is noteworthy (“The Problem of Greece Is Not Only a Tragedy. It Is a Lie,” Global Research, July 13, 2015): “The day after the January 2015 election a truly democratic and, yes, radical government would have stopped every euro leaving the country, repudiated the ‘illegal and odious’ debt – as Argentina did successfully—and expedited a plan to leave the crippling Eurozone. But there was no plan. There was only a willingness to be ‘at the table’ seeking ‘better terms.’”
Pilger continues: “The true nature of Syriza has been seldom examined and explained. To the foreign media it is no more than ‘leftist’ or ‘far left’ or ‘hardline’—the usual misleading spray. Some of Syriza’s international supporters have reached, at times, levels of cheerleading reminiscent of the rise of Barack Obama. Few have asked: Who are these ‘radicals’? What do they believe in?
“The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind—but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, an imperial thug.
Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among those former social democratic parties still describing themselves as ‘liberal’ or even ‘left,’ Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, ‘schooled in postmodernism,’ as Alex Lantier wrote.”
The Department for Work and
Pensions has admitted defeat in its attempt to hide the number of people who
have died while claiming incapacity benefits since November 2011 – and has
announced that the number who
died between January that year and February 2014 is a shocking 91,740.
This represents an increase to
an average of 99 deaths per day or 692 per week, between the
start of December 2011 and the end of February 2014 – compared with 32 deaths
per day/222 per week between January and November 2011.
The DWP has
strenuously asserted that “any causal effect between benefits and mortality
cannot be assumed from these statistics”.
It is correct to make this
point.
The DWP has also claimed
that “these isolated figures provide limited scope for analysis and nothing can
be gained from this publication that would allow the reader to form any
judgement as to the effects or impacts of the Work Capability Assessment”.
However, the
increase in the frequency of these deaths is enough to raise questions about
the way the incapacity benefit system is being run – questions that demand
full, frank and immediate answers.
For example, the
work-related activity group is composed entirely of people who are expected to
recover from their illnesses and be well enough to return to work within a
year. In that group, there should be no deaths at all – barring
accidents. Why have nearly 10,000 people lost their lives after being assigned
there?
Deaths in the support group
and the assessment phase are more problematic because they involve people who
do have serious illnesses, many of whom may be expected to die while claiming. But
are these deaths being hastened artificially by the DWP’s treatment of them?
A statistical release
published today (August 27) in response to my Freedom of Information request
dating back to May 28, 2014, states that the total number of deaths involving
claimants of Incapacity Benefit, Employment and Support Allowance and Severe
Disablement Allowance – between the start of December 2011 and the end of
February 2014 is 81,140, including 50,580 (ESA claimants) and 30,560 (IB/SDA
claimants). All figures are rounded up to the nearest 10.
Add this to the 10,600
deaths that were already known between January and November 2011 and you have
91,740.
Information for ESA claimants
shows:
▪7,540 deaths
while claims were being assessed, bringing the known total to 9,740.
▪7,200 deaths in
the work-related activity group, bringing the known total to 8,500.
▪32,530 deaths
in the support group, bringing the known total to 39,630.
▪And 3,320
deaths in which the claimant was not in receipt of any benefit payment and is
therefore marked as “unknown”.
The total number
of claimants who flowed off ESA, IB or SDA whose date of death was at
the same time and of those the number with a WCA decision of “fit for work”,
between December 2011 to February 2014 was 2,650 (2,380 ESA, 270 IB/SDA).
And the total number of
individuals who flowed off ESA, IB or SDA whose date of death was at the
same time with a completed appeal following a WCA decision of “fit for work”,
Great Britain: December 2011 to February 2014 was 1,360 (1,340 ESA, 20 IB/SDA).
The new numbers suggest the
average number of deaths per day between January 2011 and February 2014 was
around 79.5 – 556 per week.
This compares with an
average between January and November 2011 of around 32 per day – 222 per week.
This Writer has not yet
examined the DWP’s accompanying statistical release – providing the fudged
Age-Standardised Mortality Rates between 2003 and 2014. The information in this
one states that mortality dropped from 1,111 deaths per 100,000 (across all
three benefits) to 1,032.
But claims for
Incapacity Benefit (ESA didn’t exist at the time) were at an all-time high in
2003 – of nearly three million throughout the year. The numbers claiming this
kind of benefit have both fallen and risen since then.
So what are we to conclude?
Firstly, the
figures released today demand more considered, in-depth study than can be
managed by This Writer within an hour or so of their release.
Second, that
the DWP should drop its appeal against publishing them (for obvious reasons).
Third, that the
Age-Standardised Mortality Rates give a false picture of the number of deaths –
as predicted on this blog.
Democracy and Class Struggle says the BBC News Today is full of talk about immigration statistics and the views of Nigel (wideboy) Farage and no discussion of these important statistics just released on deaths from the Department of Work and Pensions.
This reflects our human values and their inhumanity, real humanity comes from the working class not the bourgeoisie.
The Government will be brought to account one way or another has justice demands it.
The Tories will wonder what hit them as they did in the 2011 "Riots" in London - the anger of the people will not be restrained forever - you have been warned - enough is enough !
New Delhi, 22 August. Writers, intellectuals and activists gathered today at Aiwan-e-Ghalib auditorium in New Delhi as part of a two-day convention to express their solidarity with the on going struggle of Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation and its continued genocidal campaign.
This convention is being held to mark the first anniversary of the deadly bombardment on Gaza by Israel which killed more than 2200 people including 500 children.
The first event in the convention was a symposium on 'Zionism and the Palestinian Resistance: Historical Perspective, Challenges and Prospects'. The symposium began with a presentation by ND Jayaprakash, Vice President of Delhi Science Forum.
Outlining the history of Zionist movement Mr. Jayaprakash explained that the birth of Israel as nation was a consequence of uprooting the native Palestinian population from their own land and even after that it continued to occupy vast stretches of Palestinian territories.
He also explained the nature of current Israeli occupation in West Bank and Gaza where even the most basic civil rights of Palestinian people are being snatched away by the Israeli occupier.
Speaking at the symposium author and musician Peggy Mohan said that we must differentiate between Zionism and Judaism in the same way as we must do in case of Hindutva and Hinduism.
She said that Zionism is part of the new world order in the late stage of capitalism. She termed this new world order to a beast and said that Zionism is the front most fang of this beast.
Israel today is an outpost of US imperialism in the middle-east whose natural resources are being devoured by this beast. She said that the Palestinian resistance offeres hope that this world order can be changed.
Anand Singh from ‘Indian People in Solidarity with Palestine’ said that right from its origin Zionism has made close allaince with the leading imperial and colonial powers and after the second world war the emergence of US as the most poweful imperial power has brought it closer to US.
He said that Zionism today exists with the support of not only US but even the rulers of Arab world who are fearful of the mass revolt in their own country. He also said that all the electoral parties in India have betrayed the cause of the Palestinian people and the people of India must oppose the proposed visit of Narendra Modi to Israel.
General secretary of Palestine Solidarity Committee Feroze Mithiborewala from Mumbai said that Palestinian issue has become the central most Geo-political issue today. He called today’s world order globalised monopoly capital characterised by US imperilism and Israeli Zionism. He said that the Palestinian resistance has ensured that cracks have started to come to appear due to global movement of Boycot, divestment and Sanctions. He said that the ideology of Zionism is being challenged in differet parts of the world.
Other speakers included Prof. Kamal Mitra Chenoy and senior Hindi poet Neelabh Ashk.
The symposium was followed by a poetry session in which Palestinian poetry and poems on Palestine by Indian poets. Well known Hindi poets Pankaj Singh, Neelabh Ashq, Katyayani, Kavita Krishnapallavi read their poems on Palestine. Tanzil Ahmed from AMU also read his poem. Neelabh, Satyam, Abhinav, Tapish Maindola, Shujat Ali and Faiz read poems several by Palestinian poets like Mahnud Darveish, Samih Al-Qasim, Moin Bissesso, Taufiq Zayyada and others. At the end of today's session a documentary film 'Tears of Gaza' was shown which vividly portrays the suffering of people in Gaza.
23rd August The two-day convention to express solidarity of Indian people with the ongoing resistance of Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation and its continued genocidal campaign was concluded today at Ghalib institute in Delhi. During the convention today it was decided to launch a signature campaign to put pressure on the Indian government to cancel the upcoming visit of Narendra Modi to Israel and sever India's diplomatic links with Israel. Today’s session began with a symposium on "New Imperialist Design of Middle-East and the Question of Liberation of Palestine".
The first speaker in the symposium was Prof. Zikrur Rahman, former Indian ambassador to Palestine. He said that the imperialist design in middle-east has always been to subjugate the people of the region.
Referring to the historical ties of India to the Palestinian liberation struggle Prof. Rahman said that the recent shift in the Indian government’s stand towards Israel goes against the very ethos of India. Expressing optimism about the ultimate victory of the struggle of the Palestinian people, Prof. Rahman said that the Palestinian people will win this battle tomorrow if not today or the day after if not tomorrow.
Abhinav Sinha, editor of students-youth magazine 'Ahwan', said while outlining the history of imperialism that the control over the strategic commodity of oil in the middle-east not only ensures military and economic supremacy of an imperial power but it also hampers the interest of the rival imperial powers. He said the Zionist project received the support of the imperialist powers because of the crucial location of Palestine from geo-political perspective.Today middle-east has become a knot of the imperialist contradictions. This contradiction cannot be resolved through national liberation but only through a workers’ revolution. He emphasised that a two-state solution to the Palestinian people is not viable and only solution which is left is a one state solution which happens to be a socialist project.
Senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan said that the last year’s Israeli bombing over Gaza was unrequited crime, yet the undying spirit of Palestinian resistance continues to prevail. After the so called global war on terror it was the fourth outright military assault by Israel against Palestine.
He added that the US’s objective in attacking Iraq was to help the Israelis to relocate Palestinian people to the Iraqi territory. The chaotic situation in the middle-east is bound to produce more violence and suffering of the Palestinian people. But he also expressed hope that one day this issue will be resolved.
Palestinian activist Nasser Barakat thanked the Indian people for their support to the Palestinian cause. He said that being a Palestinian he was not at all against Jews but Palestinian people would continue to fight against the occupation of their land by Israel.
Pheroze Mithiborwala gave a presentation which provided the evidence of Islamic State’s link with US and Israel and appealed the Indian muslims must come forward to expose it. Mr. N.D. Jayaprakash also gave a presentation in which he vividly portrayed the hardship of the Palestinian people in the apartheid state called Israel.
The symposium was followed by a session of music in which Vihan Saanskritic Manch presented a few Palestinian songs and songs expressing solidarity with the Palestinian resistance.
This was followed by the screening of a documentary film "Five Broken Cameras" which brilliantly portrays the resistance of a Palestinian village in the West Bank against the construction of a separation wall in their village.
The current leader Kim Jong Un. We'll eventually see if he will become "eternal" like his ancestors. Democracy and Class Struggle re publish this article by the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada as a contribution to the development of a Marxist Leninist Maoist view on North Korea and we invite other contributions on this question. The Democracy and Class Struggle position on North Korea is contained in our Statement : RCPUSA from Post Maoism to Pro Imperialism
A Short History of US Imperialism in Korea
Always ready to encourage serial killings in a new imperialist intervention, the bourgeois press agitates on a regular basis for a new war against North Korea. The popular portrayal of North Korea is a country whose people (who should be freed by Western imperialists) are enslaved and starved by an unpredictable and paranoid leader (that we should eliminate) who is allegedly preparing the first global atomic war. This discourse of an imminent threat would justify “our troops” going there to provoke a “regime change” no matter what it will cost in terms of human losses.
After Iraq and Afghanistan, and according to the mood of the moment, the next target for imperialism could be Syria, Iran, or North Korea. The bourgeois media, however, are careful not to speak of the previous imperialist interventions that are the main reason for the North Korean regime and its population’s hostility. Below we will examine, through a brief history of US imperialism, the nature of this threat.
Japanese Occupation and Resistance (1910-1945)
At the end of the 19th century, Korea, like many other parts of the world, was the victim of Japanese German, American, French, and British imperialists who were competing for control of the country. Japan finally won out and, in 1910, Korea was annexed by the Japanese Empire.
Under this occupation, the peasants were massively expropriated while workers suffered exploitation as they saw their food rations decreased by almost half. The people underwent continual exactions from Japanese settlers who were acting in almost complete impunity under the extraterritorial rights doctrine. 1 The situation worsened up until the Second World War when millions of Koreans were enslaved, many dying in the mines or sequestered in brothels reserved for Japanese soldiers.
It is in this context that a powerful resistance movement emerged, which would see one of its highest points in the March 1st Movement of 1919 that brought together more than two million people over three months in some 1,500 street demonstrations. Seven thousand demonstrators died at the hands of police officers, many under torture. Fifty thousand were put behind bars under Peace Preservation Law, 2 and thousands more escaped repression into neighbouring Manchuria, which soon was also occupied by the Japanese Army.
The unbridled exploitation of the peasant and working masses thus led the nationalist movement, initially limited to the old fallen nobility, to extend and radicalize, inspired by the wave started by the October Revolution and fed by the revolutionary struggles in neighbouring China.
The US Occupation of South Korea
• The “Liberation”
In August 1945, following the Japanese surrender to Allied forces, the Soviets, at the request of the Americans, halted their advance in the zones occupied by Japan. On September 8, US forces landed on the Korean peninsula and set up a military government south of the zone where the Soviet were stationed, north of the 38th parallel. But the Americans, despite being part of the war against Germany and Japan, recognized the Japanese as their natural allies in Korea since their objective was to contain the Communist progression.
Thus, on Sept. 9, 1945, John Hodge, head of the US military government in Korea, announced the restoration of the former colonial authorities. The widespread outcry that this decision aroused forced him to retract it, but he nevertheless appointed Japanese advisers to the Americans in management positions. The old colonial police was also rebuilt; a significant part of its new staff was recruited from the still active fascist youth leagues. Finally, in December 1948, the Peace Preservation Law was restored under a new name: the National Security Law. So-called “Liberation” was in fact the beginning of a new occupation.
• Phony Elections
In November 1947, in order to ensure a minimum of “democratic legitimacy” to their regime, the U.S. proposed that the UN oversee elections in Korea. But upon arrival, the UN observers voiced their concerns about the validity of the process. The Australian delegates warned that the elections were “appearing to be under the control of a single party”—the then Korea Democratic Party.
Despite opposition from France, Canada and Australia for the immediate holding of elections in Korea, the United States managed to get the support of other delegates.3 Elections were therefore held. The American military government had indeed planned the “democratic transition” in 1945 when they oversaw the formation of the Korea Democratic Party (Han-guk Minjudang), which consisted of large industrial magnates and landowners all closely related to Japanese interests.
The Americans thus established an interim government in 1946 at the head of which the Han-guk Minjudang was placed; one year later, the same party was responsible for overseeing the elections.4
The opposition to the electoral process was global, from North to South and from Right to Left. The main political parties refused to participate, except the Han-guk Minjudang and Singman Rhee’s NARRKI. 5 To avoid a low turnout that could have affected the legitimacy to the future government, ration coupons that nearly 50% of the population needed for survival were only give to those who voted. 6 On May 10, 1948, Singman Rhee was elected President of the Republic with a participation rate of 95%. With the support of the Americans, he continued the same politics of systematic repression of political opposition.
• Decimating the Opposition
On September 7, 1945, on the eve of the US invasion of Korea, the Government of the People’s Republic of Korea was established and supported by a number of organizations that participated in the resistance. Anarchists, social democrats and communists participated in the formation of the government, establishing hundreds of people’s committees throughout Korea. In factories, in the countryside, cities and villages, workers and peasants were collectively deciding on matters related to their work and living conditions.
Among other things, the government announced its will to redistribute land to poor peasants, nationalize major industries, impose a minimum wage and the eight-hour day, defend and promote the equality of men and women, and ensure freedom of press and expression. Accusing them of being Soviet Union puppets, the Americans declared the government illegal. The Inmin Gonghwaguk continued its activities underground and reorganized itself as the Workers’ Party of South Korea (Namrodang) with more than 360,000 members. The repression, however, did not stop.
Located at 100 km of the Korean coast, the Jeju Island, where about 250,000 people were living, was then a bastion of Namrodang. In April 1948, large demonstrations were held opposing the elections. A series of events, including the refusal of two regiments to attack protesters, led to a one-year armed conflict. At the end, about one in three were considered dead or missing; houses and villages were destroyed. On May 19, 1949, the US ambassador to Korea notified Washington: “All rebels of Jeju Island were either killed, captured or converted.”
In 1949, the then President Syngman Rhee set up political rehabilitation program for “thought violators.” Communists, socialists and other critics of the regime were forced to enlist in this program. Called the Bodo League, 7 the group quickly included up to 300,000 members, who were constantly monitored by the police. In 1950, shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War, Syngman Rhee ordered the execution of all League members. The Army and the Korean police summarily executed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, including children. The Americans then had the audacity to film the mass graves to make a propaganda film in which they accused communists for this massacre. 8
• The Korean War
In 1950, the leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, decided the time had come to reunite Korea by relying on the support of the South Korean masses. South Korean troops would join the Korean People’s Army (Inmin Gun) en masse; behind enemy lines, numerous support strikes paralyzed the South Korean economy. In June 1950, the Inmin Gun crossed the border of the 38th parallel; in less than three months, they succeeded in repelling the South Korean and American armies to the coast at the southern end of the peninsula.
The US then appealed to the UN, who mobilized a special force of 230,000 men, including 26,000 Canadians, to defend the “Republic of Korea.” What could have been seen as a civil war became a real war of aggression, with a dozen foreign nations invading Korea.
As early as October 1950, UN forces recaptured Seoul and quickly reached the extreme northern border of Korea. China then engaged in the conflict with 270,000 men to support Inmin Gun and pushed the UN troops south of the 38th parallel. A protracted trench war followed for three years until the July 27, 1953 armistice that would set the borders of the two Koreas on the former demarcation line.
An atomic bloodbath was avoided several times, but the US/UN offensive was nonetheless a carnage: three million civilians dead, more bombs dropped than against Japan during World War II, and the use of more napalm than would be used in the Vietnam War. Six hundred thousand soldiers lost their lives, mostly Chinese and Korean. US generals would report that at the end of the war not a single city, nor a village or a building, rose higher than ground level north of the 38th parallel. It is estimated that, following the contamination of soil by bombing, 75% of formerly arable land was no longer usable.
• 40 Years of Military Regimes
From 1948 to 1987, the United States politically, economically and militarily supported the various authoritarian regimes that succeeded in South Korea. The Americans set up over 80 military bases and installations in South Korea; they maintained more than 30,000 garrison soldiers while keeping, since 1948, the military command of the South Korean Army. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency—a true political police created in 1961—engaged in the extortion, torture and murder of thousands of political opponents. Street and people’s protests were severely and systematically repressed—and still are.
In May 1980, after big demonstrations in Gwanju, the Carter administration urged the South Korean government to regain control of the situation, by force if necessary; between 1,000 and 2,000 demonstrators were slaughtered. It was not until 1988 that the regime experienced a small democratization, but the National Security Act is still in force. Amnesty International reported that in 1998 alone, nearly 400 people were arrested for opinion offenses, including a student who was sentenced to eight months in prison for having published an article from the Trotskyist Chris Harman online.
More recently, in 2002, a South Korean man was sentenced to two years for accusing the US government of being the main instigator of the partition of Korea. In the portion of Korea they occupied, with their repression of the people’s movement and the support they gave to the most reactionary forces, the US imperialists highly contributed to the growth of the two opposing regimes’ dynamics in the North and South. The latent state of war that ensued then served, on both sides of the border, as an excuse for suppressing the legitimate struggles of the popular classes by fierce security policies. Today, Americans and their allies are the main obstacle to the reunification of Korea that is widely desired by Korean people.
Kim Tremblay
1. The extraterritoriality rights grant citizens of another country full legal immunity. They were mostly imposed on a State by the colonialist powers for the benefit of their own nationals. Although the latter remained subject to the laws and justice of their own country, those were generally more tolerant if not lenient with respect to crimes committed in the colonies.
2. In force from 1894 to 1945, the Peace Preservation Law of the Japanese Empire significantly restricted the freedoms of assembly, of speech and press. By 1900, labour unions were targeted and banned; strikes, too, were forbidden. Then from 1928, Left organizations were targeted, so that anyone disputing the right of private property was liable to the death penalty.
3. Chiang Kai-shek’s China, El Salvador, India and the Philippines supported the resolution, while Syria abstained.
4. The Han-guk Minjudang indeed detained 12 of the 15 seats at the National Electoral Committee.
5. Fervent anti-communist, Singmann Rhee was probably the only nationalist figure to be supported by the US. His party, the National Alliance for the Rapid Realization of Korean Independence, yet broke out into two sections, one supporting the electoral process, the other boycotting.
6. During the Japanese occupation, rice production had been fully centralized. Upon arrival, the Americans decided to replace it by free market. A complete disorganization of the production followed; South Korea yet considered the “rice bowl of the peninsula” was on the brink of starvation. Narrowly avoiding a humanitarian crisis, Americans brought back a centralized rationing system.
Some people and organizations that are nostalgic for the existence of a “socialist camp” under the leadership of the social-imperialist Soviet Union cling to North Korea as one of the last “socialist states” in existence. According to them, this is the reason why the Bush administration put North Korea on the “Axis of evil” list of countries following 9/11. However, neither the Islamic Republic of Iran nor Saddam Hussein’s Iraq are socialist and they also found themselves on this list along with the DPRK.
For Maoists, the regime established on the territory known as North Korea has never been socialist. It came from a legitimate national liberation struggle which, like many other movements that erupted at the same era, triumphed in the context of the Cold War, when there was in fact a socialist camp that was counterweighting the old colonialist and imperialist powers.
Founded in 1945, the Workers’ Party of Korea first introduced itself as Marxist-Leninist. After Stalin’s death and the coming to power of Khrushchev in the Soviet Union, North Korea adopted a similar line as Romania and North Vietnam, refusing to sever its relationship with either the Soviet or Chinese parties at the time of the Great Debate that split the international communist movement. The Workers’ Party of Korea then made sure to maintain formal and cordial relationships with both protagonists.
Juche: an Anti-Marxist Ideology
This desire to maintain its independence has always characterized the ideology promoted by the North Korean regime. The Prime Minister, Party Secretary and founder of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, is officially the author of the “Juche” ideology (a term often translated as “self-reliance”); in 1972, Juche officially replaced Marxism-Leninism as the state’s official ideology in the country’s constitution.
In short, Juche is defined as “a new philosophical thought which centres on man” and allows him to “solve all problems mainly by [his] own efforts.” Initially, Juche was introduced as a “creative application of Marxism-Leninism,” in continuity with it. Eventually, however (in 1998, specifically), any reference to Marxism-Leninism was removed from the North Korean constitution. In 2009 the very notion of “communism” was discarded, replaced three years later by Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism, in reference to the father and his son who successively ruled over the land until the death of the second in December 2011.
In the words of Kim Il Sung, the Juche boils down to “organize and mobilize the entire people in building a sovereign and independent State… without being influenced by established theories or foreign experiences.” 1 As for the goal of communism—that was still officially on the agenda in his time—the leader suggested that it will be reached mainly by “developing the productive forces” and “revolutionizing, working-classizing and intellectualizing all members of society and thus transforming them into communist men of a Juche type.”
Like Khrushchev’s revisionism in the USSR, Juche affirms the end of antagonistic contradictions between classes, and thus the end of class struggle as the motor force of history. The “entire people” share a common if not a unique interest, more fundamental than any other one: that of “defending the fatherland.”
Officially, the Workers’ Party of Korea recognizes the existence of three different classes in North Korean society, whose unity is also symbolized by its logo: the working class, the peasantry and the samuwon—the so-called class of intellectuals and professionals. In this scheme, there is neither a bourgeoisie nor antagonistic classes: the enemy is to be found outside of North Korea; otherwise he is necessarily in connivance with foreign countries.
Juche is the opposite of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist understanding of classes and class struggle under socialism as systematized during China’s Cultural Revolution. The GPCR was aimed at revolutionizing society and moving forward towards communism through the collective mobilization of the masses in waging class struggle; it had nothing to do with revolutionizing individuals in a moral sense.
As conceived by Juche, Ideological Revolution is totally different from Maoist Cultural Revolution: according to Kim Il-sung, “learning party members and other workers to enjoy work is an important objective” of this revolution. Here we are very far of what the dictatorship of the proletariat and the concrete exercise of power by the working masses might look like.
In this regard, Juche is similar to the conception that Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania were promoting in the 1960s and 1970s when they were trying to counterbalance the Chinese Cultural Revolution (or to avoid such a revolution in Albania) with a campaign to revolutionize individuals.
From One Kim to Another
After the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994, his son, Kim Jong Il, succeeded him. From there, the North Korean regime abandoned any claim to continuity with, or at least some connection to Marxism-Leninism.
In a 1996 speech, 2 Kim Jong Il insisted: “The Juche philosophy is an original philosophy which has been evolved and systematized with its own principle… which is fundamentally different from the preceding philosophy.” Interestingly, he openly criticized North Korean social scientists who were still attempting—painstakingly, we must say—to present Juche as a development of Marxist dialectical materialism.
According to Kim Jong Il, Marxist dialectics was limited and imperfect because it neglects “the essential qualities of man—the best qualified and most powerful being in the world… who is the master of everything and who decides everything.” He advocated that there is “a universal law of social movement” that is independent of the “general law of the development of the material world.”
He added that “the history of social development is the history of development of man’s independence, creativity and consciousness.” In short, it is the ideas and consciousness that are leading the world… and these ideas should be no other than that of the party: “We must accept the Party’s ideology as the absolute truth, defend it resolutely and keep it as a revolutionary conviction, and thus understand, interpret and propagate the Juche philosophy correctly.” Here again, we are quite far from the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s call to “dare to go against the tide” and “bombard the headquarters!”
As for Kim Jong Il’s successor, Kim Jong Un (who assumed office after the death of his father in December 2011), the few documents or speeches attributed to him are going in the same direction, promoting patriotic and national unity and culminating with the idea of a fusion or amalgamation of the people and the party.
In a speech he made to support the nomination of his father as “Eternal General Secretary” of the WPK, 3 the young Kim presents the party as a mother who must ensure the well-being of its children: “As a mother does not abandon her child, even though he or she is uncomely or mischievous, but is more nervous and concerned about him or her, Party organizations should ensure that all the people are embraced by the Party and feel the affections of the General… so as to turn our society into a large, harmonious family united single-heartedly.”
In the same way, here is the role that Kim Jong Un assigns to North Korean women: “Our women constitute a powerful force that pushes ahead one of the two wheels of the revolution. Party organizations should provide Party guidance to the women’s union organizations efficiently so as to ensure that women fully discharge their duties for the prosperity of the country and the amity and happiness of society and their families and continue to exalt their honour as the flowers of the era.”
We could go on to quote the Eternal President (Kim Il Sung), the Eternal General Secretary (Kim Jong Il) or the one who sooner or later will become the “Eternal Supreme Commander” (Kim Jong Un), but it is quite clear to us that the Workers’ Party of Korea has nothing to do with genuine communism and that it is little more than a remnant of modern revisionism—like all these sclerotic parties that have proven caricatures of a political and social project that should be dedicated to the emancipation of the oppressed and exploited.
Socialism or State Capitalism?
It is not surprising that organizations that are nostalgic for the USSR of Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and all these bureaucrats who disappeared after being victims of a “cooling,” embrace North Korea as the new flagship of socialism. After all, these organizations were already acting as apologists for the state capitalism that existed in the USSR before the arrival to power of Mikhail Gorbachev and the transition he led to private capitalism.
For Maoists, socialism cannot be anything other than the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is to say, the actual exercise of power through councils (soviets) and other similar bodies controlled from bottom to top by the proletarian masses. Socialism is first and foremost a transitional society—a more or less long period during which the proletariat must lead a conscious and collective struggle to destroy the vestiges of capitalism and prepare the conditions for the transition to communism and a classless society.
Those for whom socialism is essentially defined by legal form of ownership—by the fact that private ownership of means of production has been replaced by collective (state) ownership—can certainly see the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a “socialist country” (although the economic reforms implemented over the past ten years have seriously undermined the state model). However, this does not render service to the world proletariat, who need the greatest clarity on these issues, nor to the legitimate struggle of the Korean people against US imperialism—which has never abandoned its goal to control the Korean peninsula.
To be clear, it is possible and necessary to oppose US provocations against North Korea, and support the right of the DPRK to defend itself by all the means at its disposal against hostile manoeuvres of this or that imperialist power, without thereby having to lie about the reality of the regime that prevails there. Rejecting the lies the bourgeois media tells about the DPRK is not the same as lying about its socialist nature.
The bureaucratic bourgeoisie around the army and in the state apparatus is the real ruling class in North Korea. It oppresses the proletarian and peasant masses as it maintains a lead weight on them and collectively benefits from the exploitation of their labour, without even giving them any possibility of autonomous organization. Only the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of the whole peninsula will allow for the establishment of a free Korea stripped from any form of imperialist domination whatsoever—whether US, Russian, or Chinese.
1.Quotations from Kim Il Sung come from a report issued on October 9, 1975 for the 30th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea [our translation]. An official French version is available at http://juche.v.wol.ne.jp/pdf/fkimilsung200803.pdf
2.“The Juche Philosophy is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy,” discourse published in Kulloja, theoretical magazine of the Workers’ Party of Korea, July 26, 1996. On line: http://library.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/readb/108.pdf
North Korea denied laying the landmines, and in the statement did not explicitly take responsibility for them but expressed regret at the wounding of two South Korean soldiers while South Korea agreed to halt anti Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts.
North and South Korea agreed early on Tuesday to end a military standoff that sparked an exchange of artillery fire and had ratcheted up tension on one of the world's most heavily-fortified borders.
Under an accord reached in the early hours, following more than two days of talks, North Korea expressed regret over the recent wounding of South Korean soldiers in landmine blasts and Seoul agreed to halt anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts.
North Korea also agreed to end the "semi" state of war it had declared. The two sides will hold follow-up talks to discuss a range of issues on improving ties, the joint statement said.
Both sides began rolling back heightened military postures at noon (0300 GMT), Seoul's defense ministry said.
The working class areas of London are now under attack from the capitalist class as they seek to turn the capital into a haven for big landlords and investors from all over the planet. What passes as ‘affordable housing’ in London today is affordable only to the wealthier members of the middle class and the rich.
Working class people are either driven out into far away cities and towns and forced to seek alternative employment (if indeed they can get any) or crammed into inadequate private rental accommodation, not to mention the migrant workers forced to live in shanty towns now springing up throughout London and the outskirts.
Property prices are being pushed up so high that the real beneficiaries are the big landlords and estate agents who buy up huge swathes of London. Many properties are left empty, becoming a savings fund for their rich owners hoping prices will rise even further and they can then sell them to developers.
This inflation of property prices is reaching bizarre heights, for example last year a hovel of a basement flat in classy Kensington was on the market for a staggering £600,000!
Zone 1 and 2 of London are now uninhabitable for most working class people, those who do remain often share sometimes two or more to a room.
The mass sell-off of local authority homes which were never replaced now means that many estates which were once home to working class communities are now populated by the middle class of the financial sector or being smashed up by property developers to build flashy new flats.
In reality the majority of newly built properties will never be bought by those living in them, the big landlords buy them up as a property portfolio and rent them out at exorbitant rents, often to professionals or to a large group of people to share.
The fact you could lose your job, be out of work and penniless is of no concern to these parasites. Even worse investors now purchase entire blocks of housing not to rent but to keep as a safe investment.
Labour council
Labour controlled Lambeth council has big plans for what it calls ‘re-generation’ of Brixton and Vauxhall, in reality it is a collusion with developers and construction firms to build expensive apartments, office tower blocks, opulent hotels and shopping areas for the big high street chains.
There is the minimal of social housing and small shop keepers will be burdened with ever spiraling rents until they move off.
It is with this background that trade unions, socialists and community groups organised ‘Reclaim Brixton’ on the 25th April as a show of strength against the rapacious investors, developers and town hall bureaucrats.
Resistance
Brixton has had a history of resistance to capitalist oppression, in particular as a response the racism of the British imperialists state. In 1981, 85, 95 the oppressed black youth of Brixton joined by their white comrades rose up against police terror and racist employment discrimination by capitalists.
This community which suffered oppression due to the ethnic diversity and poverty of its residence has had strong class solidarity which had to be broken by capitalism. Brixton has been plagued by police terror against black workers and youth, not for nothing is Brixton Police Station known by locals as the ‘lynching house’.
However the solidarity could not be destroyed but now it is under threat from the developers driving the working class and poor out, many black workers will be pushed out and the African and Caribbean cultural heritage of Brixton will be destroyed.
This social cleansing is also ethnic cleansing!
In the short term the only beneficiaries will be the better off middle class who will repopulate these new ghost towns and in the long term the investors, developers, and landlords.
Occupations
The working class and shop keepers will not surrender without a fight! The decades of solidarity cannot be broken in one swoop by the landlord capitalists!
The Reclaim Brixton event will occupy our public spaces again, for the use of the working people as they wish!
The ongoing occupations of abandoned homes across London which started with the courageous E15 mothers in Stratford shows the way.
As part of the struggle against capitalism we need mass occupations to avoid the eviction of tenants by landlords whether private or ‘social’ and we need to take the power from the state and defend our class against their attacks.
This was done by the Black Panther Party in the US, as a necessity for survival until the revolution. They built community health care, feeding, child care, education and political training programmes for the black working class in the Ghettos of America and a base for self defense from the racist imperialist state.
Similar forms of resistance were created in the struggle for national liberation in north Ireland, in particular the area of Free Derry liberated by the Provisional IRA in the early 1970s.
These examples of revolutionary struggle by the oppressed were a continuation to what had taken place in China.
From the 1920s until the successful victory of the revolution in 1949 the Chinese Red Army established Red Bases with soviets (workers and peasant councils) which carried out programmes of socialised health care, literacy education, political consciousness raising and self defense in the midst of the civil war and the struggle against Japanese imperialism.
Occupations and resistance are a start of a process of struggle which must develop into a war march by the working class against finance capital.
For the working class and oppressed to take over society for its own benefit and that of all humanity it must be politically educated in a vanguard revolutionary party committed to class struggle and the overthrow of capitalism and capitalist relations.
Resistance to social cleansing in Lambeth
Labour run Lambeth “Co-operative” Council was preparing to evict one of the last remaining tenants in one of the Housing co-operatives in Clapham on 22nd April, but they were met with mass resistance.
There have been a number of housing co-operatives in Lambeth for over 40 years on the whole they were derelict properties which were old, many who took them on were squatters and in agreement with Lambeth council in the 70s and 80s were given so called ‘shortlife’ tenancies.
The tenants payed for all the maintenance and up-keep themselves in return for a low rent, they would also be given short notice periods, that was over 40 years ago! It would generally be assumed that by now it is your home as you had poured in much of your own finances into maintaining these former abandoned houses.
However now the middle class and property investors have made these former areas of London they previously despised into up and coming playgrounds for the wealthy and the financial services banksters and so forcing property prices (and rents) through the stratosphere.
So now when Lambeth council lays back and excepts the government cuts to local authorities, the savagery of which cannot yet be contemplated fully, they see the chance to make an easy bit of cash by flogging the co-ops off and attacking their elderly and vunerable residence.
Members of the community and local activists rallied to the aid of Trace Newton, who the Doctor had already said was at risk of a stroke due to the stress of the eviction threat, the latest resident of this particular co-op to face eviction at the hands of Lambeth the “Co-operative” council!
At least 50 people gathered around and inside her house on Lillieshall road, Clapham on the morning of 22nd April when the eviction was to take place by court order. Lambeth Housing Activists, Lambeth United Housing Co-operative, along with members of Left Unity, the Green Party, the Labour Party,
Unite the Community, Unison and other local activists and residence formed a picket around the house and some barracaded themselves inside , some spoke from the top window of the house to the crowd below.
Even the representatives of the bourgeois parties turned up to support the tennent, including Kate Hoey the Vauxhall MP for Parliament.
Officials from Lambeth council brazenly turned up on the scene including their press officer, how exactly he will make good press out of this is anyones guess!
They were quickly shouted and chased away. The cops stood on the sidelines until a bailiff turned up, complete with knife and bullet proof vest and court order.
The activists quickly formed a tight blockade around the house pushing the fascist bailiff back, the cops attempted in vain to break the blockade and protect the fascist agent of the capitalist court.
They could not break the resistance however and the bailiff was forced to turn and leave. For now the eviction was defeated. Some of the activists had overheard that a new order would be issued by the capitalist courts and the bailiffs and the state forces would return again.
All the activists and the community will be ready to face them off again. We know though that next time they will return with the full force of the state and an army of bailiff thugs to evict Trace Newton.
We can be sure that Lambeth council will face massive resistance again, indeed such resistance to evictions is growing across the capital against the policy of social cleansing which is another ideological attack on the working class and is reviving fascist style terror against tenants and the vulnerable.
No to evictions! De-criminalise squatting! Cap the rents!
