كلمات إلى “حزب الله”

 سليمان تقي الدين

يعرف «حزب الله» أكثر من سواه مزاج الناس ومواقف القوى السياسية والجماعات الطائفية. ويعرف أكثر أنه مستهدف من الخارج والداخل وما يدور حوله من حراك ضد ما يسمى «خطر» الحزب تحديداً والشيعة بوجه عام. في الظاهر يتعامل الحزب مع هذا المناخ بالاستقواء. يبدو واثقاً من استعداده لمواجهة أي عدوان إسرائيلي وهذا مدعاة اعتزاز وقوة للبنان وإعجاب، ويستحق ذلك التأييد والدعم والاحتضان.
لكن هذا يحتاج إلى جلاء أمرين: الأول يتعلق باستراتيجية الحزب في الصراع مع إسرائيل وما إذا كانت تأخذ بنظر الاعتبار إمكانات لبنان وقدرته على احتمالها، وما إذا كانت دفاعية تتقاطع مع روافد أخرى، أم أنها تبالغ في تحميل نفسها ولبنان ما لا يحتملان، أو أنها بالأصل لا تنبع من أولويات وأهداف لبنانية. أما الأمر الثاني فهو موقع هذه القوة اللبنانية ودورها في حل مشكلات البلاد الداخلية ومساهمتها في صياغة الوحدة اللبنانية، ولأي هدف وبأي أفق ولأي مجتمع ودولة.
هناك التباس أصلي في مشروع «حزب الله» يكبر نتيجة انخراط الحزب في الصراع الإقليمي، ونتيجة انخراط الحزب في السلطة اللبنانية مرة كشريك طائفي وهو يتبنّى «التوافقية الطوائفية»، ومرة كطرف نازع إلى هيمنة يحاول تسويغها بحاجات موقعه الدفاعي الوطني أو «المقاوم».
لا ندّعي أن هذه الإشكالات بسيطة والإجابة عنها سهلة في بيئة مركّبة من صراعات الخارج والداخل والمكوّنات الموروثة وتعقيداتها ولا سيما تلك التي جعلت من «حزب المقاومة» حزباً شيعياً.
بداية نأمل أن يكون واضحاً موقع الأسئلة الحريص على إنجاز مقاومة «حزب الله» الباهر وعلى المحافظة عليه وتطويره وتوظيفه وطنياً وإقليمياً. ولسنا ممّن يتوهمون أو يتذاكون في الحديث عن «لبنانية» مقطوعة الجذور والاتصال بالصراع الدائر على تشكيل المنطقة ونظامها وترتيب توازناتها ومصالحها. ولسنا ممّن يتجاهلون السياق المتعرّج للوطنية اللبنانية والتفاوت الموضوعي في أدوار الجماعات وخصوصيات مساهمتها.
بل أن الهاجس الذي يقلقنا هو في كيفية إيجاد التوازن الضروري بين المصالح الوطنية اللبنانية وبين مساهمة لبنان عامة وجماعاته خاصة في القضايا العربية التي لا نملك حرية الخيار في التخلي عنها.
أما مخاطبة «حزب الله» اليوم فهي أقل طموحاً من استثارة نقاش حول قضايا التحرر الوطني ومن مراجعة التجارب المريرة التي تكاد تتكرر بتضحيات هائلة وبمردود ضعيف على صعيد التقدم الاجتماعي والإنساني. نحن اليوم في قلب معركة دفاعية بعد أن نشأت ظروف نتحمّل معظم المسؤولية عنها وهي تنقل المواجهات من حدود الدول وكياناتها إلى داخل المجتمعات العربية وتضعنا مباشرة أمام تحديات صوغ اجتماعنا السياسي العربي والوطني، وتفرض معالجة أزمات منها العلاقة بين الطوائف والمذاهب والإثنيات كما العلاقة بين دول المنطقة المتورطة في هذه النزاعات. هذا النوع من المشكلات تستحيل معالجته بمنطق القوة والغلبة. بل هو نشأ أصلاً من رحم صراع العصبيات والمغالبة والهيمنة. نحتاج اليوم إلى مشروع سياسي يمثل تقدمه تقدم المجتمع والدولة. مشروع سياسي يصارع ويضع رصيده وإمكاناته كلها في الميزان لكنه يطرح على الآخرين فكرة جاذبة تستجيب لطموحاتهم وتتعامل مع هواجسهم وتسعى إلى إدراجهم في مشروعها. وليس يكفي في فهمنا هذا أن تكون جهة صاحبة قضية مشروعة لكي تؤمّن حولها الإجماع أو التأييد ولنا من تجربة الشعب الفلسطيني أكبر دليل.
في الأردن وفي لبنان خسر الشعب الفلسطيني بيئته العربية الحاضنة. فشلت قيادته في التعامل مع خصومها بالرؤية السياسية الاستراتيجية وفشلت في الاحتفاظ بأصدقائها. وما كان في لحظة تاريخية سلطة ونفوذاً وقوة تحوّل إلى عبء حين تراخت الأرض وتبدّلت الظروف.
لسنا من السذاجة لكي نتجاهل أو نقلّل من أهمية المشروع السياسي الدولي والإقليمي ومن قواه المحلية الذي انطلق عشية التحرير لتحجيم مفاعيله وتداعياته. لكن إدارة الصراع مع هذا المشروع هي المسألة الأساسية. فعلى مدى سنوات الأزمة الأخيرة افتقد «حزب الله» (أي حزب المقاومة) الرؤية السياسية في التعامل مع تعقيدات الوضع الداخلي. وإذا كان البعض من هذا الخلل يعود بطبيعته إلى البنية الذاتية فليس هذا ما يقطع بانغلاق هذه البنية على خيار حتمي.
فلا بد لهذا الحزب الجماهيري أن يبحث عن خيار واقعي وممكن في التكوين اللبناني، ولا بد له أن يستجيب لمعطيات ضاغطة في الإطار الإقليمي والمحلي ومراجعة خطابه وممارسته في تكيّف ضروري لاستنقاذ المشروع الأصلي سواء كان مقاومة أم تحريراً لجماعة أم شراكة فاعلة في صياغة موقع لبنان ودوره وتكوين دولته ونظامه.
في هذه اللحظة السياسية يحتاج الحزب وتحتاج الطائفة الشيعية كما غيرها من الجماعات إلى سياسة الانفتاح والحوار والشراكة لحفظ لبنان وحفظ جماعة أساسية فيه وحفظ منجزاته الوطنية. هناك مناخ سياسي أكثر من بشع يعم أوساطاً واسعة يحمّل «حزب الله» والطائفة الشيعية مسؤولية الأزمات اللبنانية ويصوّب على «خطر» الحزب والطائفة ولا سيما في وضع لبنان كجزء من صراع إقليمي متعدد الاتجاهات ومنه الصراع الشيعي ـ السني. وهناك سياسات يعتمدها الحزب تستنسخ التجربة الفلسطينية وتجربة الإدارة السورية للبنان وتتجاهل هواجس الآخرين ومصالحهم.
ويعتمد «حزب الله» خطاباً فوقياً لا مرونة فيه غير آبه بما يعنيه ذلك من استقواء أياً كان سببه ومصدره، ما يزيد إصرار الآخرين على تركيز المخاطر والمشكلات على «الحزب» ودوره، خاصة وهو يقطع في ترجيح مصالحه «كجماعة» حزبية أو طائفية في مواقفه الإقليمية.
فهل يأخذ الحزب على محمل الجد أسئلة الناس أم هو لا يسمع حتى أقرب التذمرات من بيئته ومن حوله!؟

“حزب الله” والفشل التاريخي الاستراتيجي الذريع

دلال البزري

تفسيران يلوحان لإعطاء شيء من المعنى لما حصل يوم الاربعاء الأسود الماضي، عندما حلّ على لبنان شبح السلاح والأقنعة والخطف وقطع الطرق بقيادة عشيرة آل المقداد، والتي يُفترض انها من صميم البيئة الحاضنة لـ”حزب الله”:
التفسير الأول يقول ان هذه الزوبعة إنما هي من صنع الأيادي الحزبلهية؛ ولها من التراث بما يكفي في تقاليد الحزب “الشعبية”؛ مثل هجوم “الأهالي” على القوات الدولية في الجنوب، أو هجوم متظاهري “شباب الضاحية” على الجيش في مار مخائيل من أجل الكهرباء، أو “الهجمة” النسائية على محقّق دولي في عيادة طب نسائي في الضاحية الجنوبية، أو “غزوة كشافة حزب الله” لبيروت الغربية من “أمل” وحزب “قومي” في 7 أيار 2008… وغيرها مما يستحق التدوين من ضمن حوليات تاريخ هذا الحزب بعلاقته مع “الأهل”.
اذا كان هذا التفسير صحيحاً، فهذا يعني ان شيئا لم يتغير من حولنا وبالقرب منا، وبأن الحزب على الدرجة السابقة نفسها من الإعتداد بسطوته، بما يسمح له بالدفاع عن كل هذه “الانجازات” الأهلية؛ بالخطب الرنانة والتصريحات العنترية، التي أقنعت القاصي والداني بـ”إنتصاره التاريخي الاستراتيجي الإلهي” على اسرائيل في تموز 2006.
والحال، أن حسن نصر الله نفسه تملص من قيادة أركان هذا الشبح العشائري، اذ قال ان لا حزبه ولا “أمل” كانوا مسيطرين على “مجلسه العسكري”، ورمى الكرة، (لأول مرة؟) في ملعب غيره: “يجب ان تتصرفوا على هذا الأساس”، “على الكل تحمل مسؤولياته”. (من هم هؤلاء “الغير”؟ أو أولئك “الكل”؟ الدولة على الأرجح، التي دُمّرت بسلاح الحزب نفسه، وصار الآن مطلوب منها ان تستفيق…).
التفسير الثاني القائل بانفلات الأمر من أيادي الحزب، هو، جزئياً، الأقرب إلى الواقع، من غير إعفاء الحزب من مسؤولياته المباشرة وغير المباشرة عن هذا الانفلات. لماذا؟ ولماذا جزئياً؟
جزئياً أولا: لأن كل الممارسات وكل المعاني التي خرج بها أبطال يوم الاربعاء الأسود، أي عشيرة آل المقداد، هي من صميم التنشئة السياسية للحزب: كلها تشي برفض صميمي للقوانين والأعراف الناظمة لحياة المجتمع والناس، من خطف وتخويف وعرض سلاح وقطع طرق وحرق دواليب، وتهديد بالمزيد…. الذين نطقوا كلاًما على الشاشات شرحاً وإنذراً وتخويفاً وعروضاً، كانوا يستخدمون المفردات نفسها، السلاح نفسه، الأقنعة المخيفة نفسها… واللوم نفسه على الأطراف السياسية الخصمة، المحلية والاقليمية، وعلى الدولة ورئيسها ورئيس وزرائها، اللذين لم “يهتما” بالمخطوفين اللبنانيين في سوريا (إبن المقداد والأحد عشر زائراً، المخطوفين كلهم في سوريا).
كل هذا عهدناه: خروج عن منطق الدولة، نخرها من الداخل والخارج، وكسر لهيبتها القصوى، القائمة على احتكارها للسلاح… ثم بعد ذلك اعتماد وضعية المواطن المظلوم السائل عن دولة تحفظ حقوقه، تدافع عنه، تحميه الخ.
جزئياً أيضاً: لأن العلاقة التي أقامها الحزب مع العائلات والعشائر، كانت ملتبسة على الدوام. يضمها الحزب إلى بيئته الحاضنة، رغبة بالتوسع والجماهيرية وسط أبناء الطائفة الشيعية، ولكنه يحفظ لها “حقوقها” كعصبية قوية، تقوم على العدد والتضامن بين أفرادها؛ وذلك خوفاً من خسارة أصواتها انتخابياً. تتربى هذه الكتل “الأهلية”، ذات الاستعدادات السوسيولوجية على خرق القانون والدولة، تتعزز شوكتها بذلك، وتكون مهيأة في لحظة قدر على التفلت من سلطة الحزب، العاجز، في هذه اللحظة عن تلبية حاجاتها، وهي هنا استعادة مخطوف، فتخرج بعديدها ورجالها عن سلطتة الحزب فضلا سلطة عن الدولة، ويكون يوم الأربعاء الاسود، وما يتبقى منه فصولا.
على منوال مشابه، تقوم علاقة الحزب بالدولة وأطرها: قمصانه السود في العاصمة بثوا ذعراً لا يقل سواداً، منذ ما يقارب العامين، فتمكن من “الإمساك” بالحكومة والسيطرة على مكوناتها من وزراء، بحلف أو تفاهم، لم ينجح أحدهما يوما، لا في حل المشكلات المستعصية ولا باتخاذ الموقف الصارم من أي إجراء يتم التصويت عليه. لا مع حلفاء اللحظة ولا حلفاء “وثيقة التفاهم” تمكن الحزب من السير بما يلزم للبلاد.
الحكومة التي “أنجزها” الحزب باتت مثل صراعات امعاءات دقيقة مع بعضها البعض. صراعات مزمنة تفوح منها رائحة العفن. ونتيجتها ان لا لبنان ولا الطائفة الشيعية التي يعتد الحزب بحمايتها، ينعمان بالحدّ الأدنى من العيش الكريم: لا كهرباء تمكن الحزب من تحقيقها، ولا أمن ولا أخلاق ولا حد أدنى من نظام، أو استقرار في معقله؛ بل انه، بمواقفه وتحياته وتنصلاته، عرّض الشيعة للخطر من جهة، أو للطرد من مكان رزقهم من جهة اخرى…
لكن المسؤولية لا تقع على الحزب بمفرده: نظام المحاصصة، الناظم لتوزيع خيرات الدولة لم يوجده الحزب. انه النظام المعمول به في حياتنا السياسية. الحزب وقع في شركه عندما تمردت عليه تكتلات أهلية “حليفة”، عشيرة آل المقداد في حالة أربعائنا الاسود؛ أو ربما “سايرها” عندما ظهرت إرهاصات تمردها، واعتقدت، في مكابرتها العنيدة، انها قد تمر كما مرت تمردات الاهل السابقة. لكنها تفلتت، ولم يعد هناك لا “غطاء” ولا كابح… وبدت المدينة مثل لقمة سائغة في فم وحش غير واضح المعالم.
ولكن، ما الذي منح هذه الكتلة العشائرية كل هذه القوة الضاربة؟ للمفارقة، انها استمدت فائض قوتها من دماء السوريين الثائرين على نظامهم منذ ما يقارب السنتين، هؤلاء الذين استطاعوا أن يهزوا العرش الأسدي، وأن يهددوا كل الخيوط الاقليمية التي أقامت عروشها الرديفة على انقاض عيش السوريين وكرامتهم. استمدت فائض قوتها من فراغ في القوة أحدثه تآكل النظام. قوة حزب الله من قوة البعث، وأي تهديد لهذا الأخير هو تهديد لحزب الله؛ يفرغ من قوته ليعطيه لقوة أخرى جديدة، كانت صاخبة ومشاكسة، ولكنها غير خارجة عن سلطة الحزب المطلقة، وقد بنى هذه الأخيرة على أساس أنها “إلى الأبد” (من يتذكر صراخ أحدهم في اعتصام حزبه الالهي في الوسط التجاري لمدينة بيروت عام 2006 ، من ان حزب الله، هو أيضا، “إلى الأبد”؟).
ولأن الحزب ربح البلد أيام كان البعث يعد نفسه بالخلود، فان أي مسّ بأسباب هذا الخلود، سوف يكون مسا بقوة من قام عليه. هكذا ظهر آل المقداد في تنظيمهم لفلتان المدينة: يملؤون فراغا في القوة، أحدثه الزلزال السوري.
هذا التغير لا ينحصر بحزب الله. إنه يطال أيضاً الأطراف الاخرى، الخصمة. وصعود السلفيين في الوسط السني، في صيدا وطرابلس، والثقل الجديد للاخوان المسلمين اللبنانيين (“الجماعة الاسلامية”) في الوسط نفسه، خير دليل: ليس فقط على ضعف أصاب الزعامة السنية التي قامت ركائزها على التوازن القديم، أو لأن التياران الاسلاميان، السلفي، وبدرجة أقل، الإخواني، صعدا بعد 7 ايار، ضمن عملية محاكاة أصولية سنية لأصولية شيعية مزدهرة… كما تماهت الأصوليتان معاً، الشيعية والسنية، مع الأصولية اليهودية، تبريراً لمزجهما بين الدين والدولة. ليس هذا فحسب؛ إنما أيضا لأن أجنحة الأصولية السنية باتت ترفرف في السماء العربية بعد الثورات، بعدما حلّقت عقودا قبلها في السماء الإسلامية الشيعية. تلك هي لحظة القدر التي يكابر حزب الله ولا يريد النظر إليها.
خير دليل على التعامي عن هذا الواقع خطاب حسن نصر الله الأخير، الذي برأ نفسه فيه من مسؤولية تهمة انفلات الاربعاء الاسود. من دون التفوه بكلمة واحدة عن المجازر التي يرتكبها حليفه يومياً بحق الشعب السوري، على بُعد أقل من مئة كيلومتر، ولا عن تلك المجزرة التي حاول تصديرها عبر أبرز مثرثريه حول “المؤامرات الأميركية الصهيونية”، ميشال سماحة. فهو غير معني إلا بـ”شهداء” النظام، من امثال شوكت وراجحة والتركماني والشعار.
كل هذا لا يعرفه “سيد المقاومة”. هو يقوم بما يعرف: تهديد الاسرائيليين بالقتل. اذا هاجمتنا اسرائيل، يصرخ ويقسم… آلاف القتلى… فيما اسرائيل تعد العدة لشن حرب ضد ايران، لا توافق عليها لا الولايات المتحدة ولا ما يقارب نصف الاسرائيليين ونصف طبقتهم السياسية، فضلا عن قيادات أركان عليا في جيشهم. ومع ذلك تتحضر اسرائيل لكل الاحتمالات: ملاجئ، ستر واقية من الغاز السام، تدريبات مدنية على مواجهة الاخطار، مناورات عسكرية…. هل هيأ نصر الله وحزبه شيئا من هذا القبيل؟ ليس لبقية اللبنانيين الذين لن يؤثروا على زعامته، ولكن للشيعة بالذات؟ هل يتصور مثلا ان يُقتل عشرات الآلاف من الاسرائيليين من دون أن يُخدش لبناني؟ وإلى ما هنالك من تساؤلات، تبدو احيانا ساذجة لشدة ما تكررت في سرنا طويلا…
وفي اليوم الثاني بعد الخطاب، تكون مقدمة نشرة قناة “المنار” الحزبلهية، شماتة بـ”العدو”، الذي “خاف” من تهديدات نصر الله بالموت… يا فرحتنا بخوف “العدو” منا! كأننا لم نتعلم بعد ان خوف اسرائيل منا يفتح لنا أبواب جهنم على مصراعيه.
أما بعد لائحة الفشل غير المكتملة هذه، يصحّ الآن على الحزب، أو ربما بعض اعضائه الذين لم يسترخوا على نعيم الامتيازات والاعفاءات والتجاوزات، أن يتوقفوا عن المكابرة، أن يصحوا على ما يدور حولهم، أن يراجعوا رؤاهم… قبل أن ينجرفوا، ومعهم لبنان الى أيام سوداء، ليس الأربعاء منها إلا بروفةً لطيفةً.

المنظمة السـورية لحقوق الإنســـان ( سـواسـية )

لكل فرد حق في الحياة والحرية وفي الأمان على شخصه
( المادة /3/ من الإعلان العالمي لحقوق الإنسان)
لا يجوز إخضاع أحد للتعذيب ولا للمعاملة أو العقوبة القاسية أو اللاإنسانية أو الحاطة بالكرامة

المادة السابعة من العهد الدولي الخاص بالحقوق المدنية والسياسية

1 -. تتخذ كل دولة طرف إجراءات تشريعية أو إدارية أو قضائية فعالة أو أية إجراءات أخرى لمنع أعمال التعذيب في أي إقليم يخضع لاختصاصها القضائي.
2 – لا يجوز التذرع بأية ظروف استثنائية أيا كانت، سواء أكانت هذه الظروف حالة حرب أو تهديدا بالحرب أو عدم استقرار سياسي داخلي أو أية حالة من حالات الطوارئ العامة الأخرى كمبرر للتعذيب.
3 – لا يجوز التذرع بالأوامر الصادرة عن موظفين أعلى مرتبة أو عن سلطة عامة كمبرر للتعذيب.”

المادة الثانية من اتفاقية مناهضة التعذيب

بيان

السبت 25/8/2012 يوم  دامٍ  في تاريخ سوريا صادرت فيه آلة النظام العسكرية أرواح ما لا يقل عن / 450 / ضحية منهم ما لا يقل عن / 300 / ضحية  في مدينة داريا التابعة للغوطة الغربية بريف دمشق، إضافة لأكثر / 400 / جريح و التي حاصرتها قوات الفرقة الرابعة التي يقودها / ماهر الأسد / بعد قطع الكهرباء و الماء و الاتصالات عنها و أعملت فيها على مدى ثلاثة أيام دكاً بالمدفعية الثقيلة و راجمات الصواريخ، ثم اجتاحتها المليشيات العسكرية التابعة للنظام بحالة هستيرية غير مسبوقة فداهمت مسجد أبو سليمان الداراني و الذي كان قد لاذ  به عدد من المدنيين الآمنين فأعلمت بهم الإعدام الميداني الجماعي بفتح النيران الكثيفة عليهم من مسافة قريبة و على أماكن منتقاة للقتل كالرأس و الرقبة فتجاوزت الحصيلة التقريبية للضحايا في ذلك الموقع / 120 / ضحية لتنتقل المليشيات المسلحة لملجأ قريب من الجامع كان قد احتمى به مجموعة من العوائل و الأسر المدنية فأعملوا فيهم قتلاً و ذبحاً و تنكيلاً بما تجاوزت حصيلة الضحايا في هذا الملجأ ما لا يقل عن / 50 / ضحية ثم استمرت مليشيات النظام بمداهمة ببيوت الأمنين و الإجهاز على أكبر قدر ممكن من النساء و و الأطفال و الشيوخ المدنيين.

في الوقت الذي استمر فيه الإستهداف الجماعي الهستيري الأعمى  غير الفردي و غير المميز بالقصف العشوائي بطائرات الميك الروسية  و الدبابات الحديثة  و القنابل الفراغية و العنقودية معظم الريف الدمشقي بدءاً من جبال القلمون بما فيها يبرود  و النبك و قارة … وصولاً للقدم و معضمية الشام و الذيابية و عربين و حرستا و  الضمير و عرطوز و الكسوة و كفربطنا و الزبداني و غيرها.

كما  لم ينقطع القصف عن قلعة الحصن و الرستن و تلبيسة و القصير في محافظة حمص المنكوبة إضافة للمدينة القديمة.

وصولاً لأبين و أريحا و جبل الأربعين و سرمين و معرة النعمان و معرة مصرين و حزانو و جبل الزاوية  و غيرها من قضاء محافظة إدلب … مروراً بحماه لا سيما كرناز التي لم ينقطع عنها القصف …. و دير الزور و البوكمال والميادين.

في الوقت الذي تركز فيه القصف في حلب على الكلاسة و صلاح الدين و العامرية و الشعار بالقرب من مشفى الشفاء و بستان القصر و حي العرقوب و محيط مطار حلب و باب الحديد و بستان الباشا و الميسر و الهلك و سليمان الحلبي  الحيدرية و الصاخور وبعيدين و  السكرية و مساكن هنانو … هذا عدا عن القصف الذي لم ينقطع على الريف الحلبي لاسيما حريتان و عندان و الأتارب و عزاز و تل رفعت و منبج.

في حين استمر القصف على درعا البلد ودرعا المحطة و داعل و اللجاة و خربة غزالة و ناعته ، و أعدمت قوات النظام ميدانياً أكثر من / 12 / ضحية في الحراك.

كما استمر القصف على جبل التركمان في اللاذقية و بعض  أجزاء من غابات الفرلو على طريق كسب.

المنظمة السورية لحقوق الإنسان إذ تعبر عن مواساتها لأسر الضحايا فإنها تؤكد جملة الحقائق التالية:

-الجناة: هم عناصر و ضباط مليشيات النظام و شبيحته.

– المجني عليهم : في الأعم الأغلب من المدنيين العزل لا سيما في مذابح الابادة الجماعية.

– معظم الضحايا: هم من فئة النساء و الأطفال لا سيما في مجازر الإبادة الجماعية.

– أغلب الضحايا: قضوا بالإعدام الميداني لا سيما خلال الشهر الأخير.

– الاستهداف: كان على الدوام جماعي على أساس الانتماء لمدينة تشكل حاضنة شعبية مناهضة للنظام.

– الاستهداف: كان على الدوام بدون تمييز لا سيما ضحايا القصف العشوائي بالنيران الكثيفة العمياء.

– هدف قوات النظام : كان على الدوام القتل لأكبر عدد ممكن من المدنيين بهدف إعادة الخوف المكبوت للصدور.

تؤكد المنظمة السورية لحقوق الإنسان أن ما حدث و يحدث في سوريا إنما هو جرائم إبادة جماعية بكافة عناصرها و أركانها المادية و المعنوية في زمن تحولت فيه سوريا إلى واحة للإفلات من العقاب في ظل مجتمع دولي محكوم بالوكالة من قوى الشر التي لا تعترف للسوريين بحقهم في الحياة و الكرامة و بذات الوقت فإن المنظمة السورية لحقوق الإنسان على يقين تام بأن الشــعب السوري سينال الحرية و الكرامة  و لو اجتمعت عليه و تواطئت ضده جميع قوى الشر في  هذا العالم.

وحدكم ايها السوريون

الياس خوري

غياث مطر الشهيد الذي وزع الماء والورود على الجنود السوريين في داريا، في بادرة تؤكد نبل الثورة السورية، خطفته اجهزة المخابرات  في 6 ايلول/ سبتمبر 2011 واعادته بعد أربعة أيام الى ذويه جثة ممزقة. غياث مطر يبكي اليوم بلدته داريا، وهو يرى جثث أكثر من ثلاثمئة شهيد قتلتهم الآلة العمياء للجيش الأسدي ومعه الشبيحة والزعران الذين اجتاحوا داريا كالتتر، وأبادوا كل من وصلت اليه نيران بنادقهم. لم يكتف النظام بهذه المجزرة الوحشية، بل أضاف اليها المزيد من الهمجية، حين قام اعلامه بـ’التغندر’ بكاميرا قناة ‘الدنيا’ لصاحبها رامي مخلوف فوق الجثث التي لم يجف دمها بعد، واجراء ‘حوارات’ مع مصابين ومن بينهم امرأة بدا وكأنها تلفظ انفاسها الأخيرة! مجزرتان، الأولى عبّرت عن عربدة القتل المجاني والعطش الى الدم، والثانية ارادت ان تسجّل بالصوت والصورة وقائع ما جرى، تعبيرا عن الحقد والسفالة والضِعة من جهة، ومن اجل ارهاب السوريات والسوريين، وتخويفهم من مصير ينتظرهم، كمصير أهل داريا وبابا عمرو واعزاز وغيرها، من جهة ثانية. لا يمحو المجرم آثار جريمته، بل يتفاخر بها امام الجميع، لأنه يعتقد ان الدعم الروسي والايراني سوف ينقذه من الهاوية، ويمنع سوقه الى القضاء. بشّار السفّاح تفوّق في الأمس على والده القاتل، وحلّ مشكلته النفسية مع صورة الأب الذي ملأت تماثيله سورية بشبح التهديد بحماه أخرى. يوم الأحد الماضي وانا أنظر الى صور الضحايا في داريا، تذكرت ذلك اللقاء في بيروت وفي منزل المستعرب الفرنسي ميشال سورا، الذي قُتل خطفاً. كان ذلك عام 1981، وبيروت تعيش لحظات التفكك قبيل الاجتياح الاسرائيلي، يومها سألت المفكر السوري الياس مرقص الذي كان آتيا من اللاذقية عن الأوضاع في سورية بعدما تنامت الينا أخبار مذبحة حماه. لم يجب مرقص على سؤالي بشكل مباشر، بل حدثني عن جنكيزخان. وعندما ابديت تعجبي من لجوء مرقص الماركسي – الواقعي الى الاستعارة بدل ان يجيب، نظر اليّ وقال: ‘ماذا تريدني ان أحكي’. ثمّ روى كيف دخل رجال المخابرات الى أحد مقاهي اللاذقية، حيث كان يحتسي قهوته، وأمروا الجميع بالركوع. كان الألم يغطي عيني الرجل بماء لا يشبه الدموع، هذا الرجل الجليل  الذي شكّل لجيلنا أحد مراجعه الفكرية، والذي كان سلوكه السياسي والأخلاقي فوق الشبهات، وجد نفسه راكعاً مع الراكعين! تذكرت الياس مرقص لا لأنهم أذلوه مثلما اذلوا الشعب السوري كله، بل لأنه بدل ان يتحدث عن النظام الأسدي، او من اجل ان يتحدث عنه، استعاد صورة المغول وهم يجتاحون المشرق العربي. انهم المغول، ولا هدنة مع المغول، لا تحت اشجار السنديان كما كتب محمود درويش مرة، ولا في ظلال المقابر. شهوة الدم تستولي على آلة نظام فقد شرعيته وسلطته، وظهرت كذبة ممانعته على حقيقتها، طائرات الميغ والسوخوي لم تجرؤ على التحليق امام الطيران الاسرائيلي حين قصف سورية، لأن مهمتها لا علاقة لها بقاموسي الممانعة والمقاومة، مهمتها الحقيقية تركيع الشعب السوري واذلاله. السوريون وحدهم امام آلة الموت. كل الدعم اللفظي الامريكي والاوروبي كاذب ومخادع وكلبي. صمت العالم المدوي امام آلة القمع الأسدية، ليس بسبب ان لا بترول في سورية كي تثير شهية الغرب الى الربح والهيمنة، كما يقال، بل من اجل اسرائيل. فالدمار الذي يلحقه النظام بسورية لم تكن اسرائيل تحلم به. وحين يسقط، وهو سيسقط، فإن امام السوريات والسوريين سنوات طويلة كي يعيدوا بناء ما تهدّم. لا تصدقوا التحليلات التي تقول ان حجب السلاح عن الجيش الحر سببه خوف الدول الغربية من الاسلاميين. لا غياب البترول ولا الخوف من الاسلاميين، هما السبب. فالدول الغربية وخصوصا الولايات المتحدة لا تخشى الإسلام السياسي لأنها تبني تحالفا معه. السبب واحد هو زيادة منعة الكيان العنصري الاسرائيلي، الذي بلغت به الوقاحة والعجرفة الى حدّ اتهام جنوب افريقيا بالعنصرية لأنها قررت وضع إشارات خاصة على البضائع المصنوعة في الضفة الغربية المحتلة! بشار الأسد يقوم بما لا يستطيع احد القيام به. انه يدمر سورية ويحطم نسيجها الاجتماعي، فلماذا اذن تقديم السلاح والعون لمن يريد اسقاطه؟ فليبق الى ما لا نهاية، وليرقص حليفاه الروسي والايراني طربا على ايقاع قنابله ومجازره. فهو في النهاية سيفقد سلطته بعد ان يكون قد دمّر البلاد كلها من شمالها الى جنوبها، وسيجد حليفاه نفسيهما في العار وسيصيران مكروهين من قبل السوريين والعرب. صار سفّاح الشام حاجة اسرائيلية اكثر من اي وقت مضى، لذا لا تنتظروا شيئا ممن يدّعي صداقة الشعب السوري. الشعب السوري وحده. وحده يدافع عن كرامة الانسان في كل أرض العرب، ووحده يعيد بدمه المسفوك المعنى الإنساني والأخلاقي للسياسة. ماذا اقول لك ايها الوحدك. وحدتك يا أخي لا تشبه سوى وحدة الفلسطيني الذي وجد نفسه وحيدا امام كل منعطف دموي صنعه الوحش الاسرائيلي. اعرف يا أخي ان الكلمات لا توقف نزفا ولا تمسح دمعة ولا تستقبل آهة خارجة من قلب ام ثكلى. اقول لك انك وحدك. اقول لك ان صمودك في وحدتك واصرارك على كرامتك المغمّسة بدم ابنائك، ووقوفك دفاعا عن اطلال البيوت التي هدمتها المدفعية والطائرات، هي طريقك كي تنتصر في وحدتك على السفّاح الذي يريد تركيعك من جديد. اعرف انك لن تركع، واعرف ان هامتك المكللة بالدم هي عنوان كرامتنا الانسانية  اليوم، لكنني لا أملك سوى كلماتي التي تنحني اجلالا لتضحياتك واضحياتك.

South Africa: Class Struggle, State Repression, and the tarnished myth of “the people’s” ANC

The Marikana Massacre and The South African State’s Low Intensity War Against The People

by Vishwas Satgar, Defending Popular Democracy

On Thursday, August 16, police officers fired into the crowd with automatic weapons. When it was over, 34 miners lay dead. Here, police check the bodies of dead mineworkers.

The massacre of the Marikana/Lonmin workers has inserted itself within South Africa’s national consciousness, not so much through the analysis, commentary and reporting in its wake.  Instead, it has been the power of the visual images of police armed with awesome fire power gunning down these workers, together with images of bodies lying defeated and lifeless, that has aroused a national outcry and wave of condemnation. These images  have also engendered international protest actions outside South African embassies. In themselves these images communicate a politics about ‘official state power’. It is bereft of moral concern, de-humanised, brutal and at odds with international human rights standards; in these ways it is no different from  apartheid era  state sponsored violence and technologies of oppressive rule.  Moreover, the images of police officers walking through the Marikana/Lonmin killing field, with a sense of professional accomplishment in its aftermath, starkly portrays a scary reality: the triumph of  South Africa’s state in its brutal conquest of its enemies, its citizens.

At the same time, the pain and suffering of the gunned down workers has became the pain of a nation and the world; this has happened even without the ANC government declaring we must not apportion blame but mourn the dead. In a world steeped in possessive individualism and greed, the brutal Marikana/Lonmin massacre reminds us of a universal connection; our common humanity.  However, while this modern human connection and sense of empathy is important, it is also superficial.  This is brought home by a simple truth: the pain of the Marikana/Lonmin workers is only our pain in their martyrdom. They had to perish for all of us to realise how deep social injustice has become inscribed in the everyday lives of post-apartheid South Africa’s workers and the poor. The low wage, super exploitation model of South African mining, socially engineered during apartheid, is alive and well, and thriving. It is condoned by the post-apartheid state. This is the tragic irony of what we have become as the much vaunted ‘Rainbow nation’.

Moreover, the spectral presence of the Marikana/Lonmin massacre speaks to us about another shadow cast by the ‘Rainbow’ fairytale.  It forces us to confront the hard edge of violence fluxing through our stressed social fabric. At one time, violent crime – car jackings, robberies, rapes, murders – defined our everyday understandings of violence.  Our narration of these violent events constructed a sense of criminal violence as a major fault-line running through South African society. Such violence spreads fear, racial division and a sense of siege. It has been our undeclared civil war. However, the social geography of violence changes with the Marikana/Lonmin moment. A new faultline is revealed. Such a faultline has been in the making  deep inside South African society through xenophobic attacks, violent police attacks on striking transport and municipal workers (over the past few years), violence against gays and lesbians especially in township communities, and police complicity in thwarting legitimate protest actions in poor communities and informal settlements. Through a failure to act decisively (in some instances like during xenophobic violence or by failing to provide policing in informal settlements) or through orchestrated violence the South African state is at war with the working class within its borders; it is a ‘low intensity war’. More specifically, such a war spans shootings, intimidation, failure to allow communities to lay charges, failure to investigate crimes perpetrated against poor communities, failure to be responsive to the safety needs of poor communities, fabrication and smear campaigns against local leaders, complicity with goons linked to local politicians (particularly the ANC) and a failure to act knowing that innocent lives are in danger.

A few examples of police orchestrated low intensity warfare working in cahoots with ANC goon squads or local politicians against communities illustrates this more clearly. This is based on testimony received from activists. First, after  Abahlali Base mjondolo (Shack Dwellers movement) successfully challenged the Slums Act in the Constitutional Court, ensuring community participation to determine whether there can be relocation from an established community they became the target of police-ANC violence. In early 2010 an ANC goon squad violently removes Abahlali from Kennedy Road informal settlement. This is also captured in a documentary entitled: Dear Mandela. The police carry out arrests of Abahlali leadership on trumped up charges and public violence which are eventually kicked out of court.  Abahlali is not able to return to Kennedy Road informal settlement.

Second, a more recent example in Umlazi township Durban also shows this police-political party nexus working in insidious ways to suppress community demands. The local Unemployed Peoples Movement (UPM) and ward 88 residents demanded a recall of their ANC councillor and a democratisation of the ward committee. In their perception the ANC ward councillor was corrupt, failing to deliver and engaging in clientelistic control of development resources. This unleashed a series of reprisals.  On 23 July the leader of the UPM was arrested under false charges. The complainants turned out to be  incited by the councillor working in cahoots with the station commander at Umlazi police station. These charges could not stick but they held the leader of UPM  for a day. It would seem these trumped up charges were meant to prevent him from leading a community meeting being held on the same day. This story has many twists and turns with the police-ANC apparatus constantly trying to intimidate the UPM and residents of Ward 88 in the course of this struggle.

What is striking about these examples is there challenge to mainstream academic and media explanations of community based violence as being merely reducible to intra-ANC battles. In all these instances a conscious awakening and challenge by communities and movements to the ANC state unleashes a low intensity destabilisation of these community forces through the police-ANC state nexus.

Contrary to Zwelinzima Vavi, the General Secretary of COSATU, who believes South Africa is poised to experience the shock of a ‘ticking time bomb’ rooted in deep inequality and unemployment, this bomb is already exploding in various locales. However, the response of the ANC state has been about a recourse to low intensity violence. The Marikana/Lonmin massacre merely brings this trend into sharp relief. The challenge to COSATU is simple: does it want to remain a democratising force, with a proud history, and take a stand with the wider working class or does it want to be complicit in the low intensity war against the broader working class and citizenry?  At a mass meeting on 22nd August at the University of Johannesburg the Marikana workers and community passionately appealed for solidarity. Such solidarity actions are congealing into but not limited to: calls for  a national and international day of solidarity action with Marikana workers (including 3 minutes of silence on August 29^th at 1pm as a symbolic reference to the 3 minutes it took the callous South African Police Services to mow down the 34 workers on 16 August 2012); support for solidarity strike action emerging within the platinum mining industry; a call for an independent ‘peoples commission of enquiry’ to ensure full transparency, testimony and justice for the Marikana workers and communities afflicted with state-ANC violence; calls  demanding the withdrawal of charges and immediate release of miners held in police custody and calls for an end to the police siege and harassment of the Marikana communities. Marikana as a defining moment in post-apartheid politics is essentially about galvanising the battle to reclaim South Africa’s democracy from below. It resonates with and expresses the desire of the majority to end the ugly reality of South Africa’s deep seated and racialised class based inequality that has been widening under ANC rule.

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Source: http://defendingpopulardemocracy.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-marikana-massacre-and-south-african.html

Internationalism and the revolution of the masses in India: an interview with GN Saibaba

[On 14th of April 2012, the  “Jan Myrdal great award, the Lenin award” was presented in a theatre in Varberg, Sweden. Individuals from different countries and from different parts of of Sweden came for the celebration. Many of participants stayed at Hotell Gästis in central Varberg, where Indiensolidaritet interviewed the secretary of the Revolutionary Democratic Front of India, G.N.Saibaba.]

Indiensolidaritet, Sweden, August 28, 2012

GN Saibaba

Interview with G.N.Saibaba in Varberg Sweden, 14-15th April 2012

Indiensolidaritet: Can you say something about the political work you do in India?

Saibaba: I work for an organization called Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF). It is a federation of revolutionary mass organizations working among different oppressed classes and sections of Indian society.  Revolutionary students and youth organisations, revolutionary peasants’ organisations, revolutionary workers’ organisations, revolutionary cultural organisations as well revolutionary womens’ organisations from different regions across India are constituents of RDF. Thus RDF is a large network of revolutionary organisations reaching out to all sections and strata of the society.

From the year 2009 onwards Operation Green Hunt began, the Indian state’s genocidal war on the poorest of the poor in India. All of us in our organization RDF work with other parties, groups, democratic organisations and individuals to raise our voice collectively and unitedly against the present military onslaught on the people and the extermination campaign against the people of India. We see this massive military operation as a continuation and the latest addition in the war waged by India’s ruling classes against the people of the subcontinent for last many decades be it in Kashmir, North East, Punjab, and now in central and eastern India. So we are at one level involved in the basic struggles of the people and at another we are working along with a large network of political forces and carrying out a countrywide campaign against Indian state’s anti-people policies, particularly Operation Green Hunt.

Indiensolidaritet: The way we see it, there are two lines regarding solidarity work in Europe. One line is trying to unite people on an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal basis and another one focuses more on Maoism. What do you think about this?

Saibaba: Yes, there is this perception and understanding of how to develop the solidarity movement for the peoples‚ struggles and the particularly the military attack on the people that is going on in India. So what I can see is that there are large sections who think that the large sections of the people of India and the larger confrontation is more important to focus on, to tell the world outside India. There is another section of organizations which hold that the present campaign by the Indian state is targeting the revolutionaries in India and therefore the revolutionaries should be supported directly. What is important today is that the people of India, the poorest of the poor 80 percent of the country who live an extremely perilous existence, are looking forward to a basic change in their lives. The poorest section of humanity in the world therefore is waging a defiant struggle in India under the leadership of the revolutionary Maoists who are from among their own. So if you take the larger picture of what is happening in India, you can see that this is a great resistance against the loot of the land and minerals by the corporate sector. Monopoly capital in its desperation to dominate the world’s resources would like to overcome its crisis by exploiting the cheap raw materials in India and other oppressed countries. It’s an attempt by the imperialists, by monopoly capital on the world scale, to transport their burden of the economic crisis upon the shoulders of the poorest of the poor in India.

Removing the people from their homes and hearths has become pertinent for the corporations backed by the government to capture the valuable mineral resources which are estimated to a value of several trillions of dollars.  So the resistance movement is built up by the indigenous people, the poorest of the poor, the millions and millions of the wretched of the earth. To crush this movement and to silence all the people the Indian government has sent more than 250,000 armed personnel to these regions backed by its air force and navy. You therefore can see the importance of the struggle. Of course the revolutionary forces are involved. They work in these areas and organise the people, but the question is much larger. It is an anti-imperialist struggle of the people, led by the revolutionary Maoists. This is a larger question because this resistance exists not only in the central and eastern parts of India where the Maoist movement has a strong presence, but extends to every part of India even where the Maoists are absent.

So in our view, we have to take into account this anti-imperialist struggle as a whole. We have to recognize that this is a larger struggle of the people of India who are not led by the revolutionaries everywhere simply because they do not exist in other parts.  So the international solidarity should be to the entire movement. The other section of the people who feels that the revolutionary movement is a target too is not wrong in their perception. Yes, the revolutionary movement is a target of attack. In fact the Indian prime minister has termed it “the largest internal security threat” way back in 2005 reflecting the intent of the ruling classes to finish off the revolutionary movement. But what is important to recognise is that the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle spanning over entire India and the revolutionary movement in India which exists in a considerable part of the country are interrelated. We cannot separate this two. The larger anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle is very important and we must not lose sight of it. We must stand in solidarity with the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle of the common people of India. The Indian ruling classes and the imperialists have planned many genocides and massacres but the people have successfully resisted them so far through coordination and collective struggle, not allowing any of these corporate houses to intrude and take over their lands and resources.

So we in India feel that to give support to the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles of the people is also to give support to the revolutionary movement in India. Therefore we need not and should not separate these two and give support only to the revolutionaries as if the revolutionaries exist outside and separately from this struggle. The revolutionary struggle in India is a part of the larger anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle going on in the subcontinent.

Indiensolidaritet: How can we support the people’s struggles against exploitation in general and against Operation Green Hunt in particular?

Saibaba: First of all I will have to give you a larger picture of the present situation back home in India and for this, a longer explanation is needed. Operation Green Hunt is a highly orchestrated and well planned military campaign against the people of India. This operation is modeled by the Indian state and the imperialist forces led by the US along the line of what was called the Red Hunt in the 18th century in North America. Through the Red Hunt campaign, the land of the indigenous tribal people in that continent was usurped and violently taken over by the European explorers and invaders. They also planned and executed the systematic elimination of the tribes of Red Indians who chose to resist this genocide. The history of the US tells us that this process of extermination of an entire population of indigenous people in North America was termed as Red Hunt. The invading Europeans believed that a good Red Indian is a dead Red Indian. The Red Indians had to be annihilated to establish the country which came to be called the US. There was no place for the tribal people in this New World created by the colonial explorers from Europe. Thus the country called US was constructed on the dead bodies of the Red Indians.

Very much the same concept of annihilation and extermination of an entire population operates in this military campaign called Operation Green Hunt. The ruling classes of India India call it Green Hunt for two reasons. Firstly, the military experts, strategists and authors who are on the payroll of the Indian state tell us that the hunt, or in more political terms the Indian state’s war on people is taking place in the greenest regions of the Indian subcontinent.

Central India and Eastern India have high hills and expansive forests, and is one of the greenest areas of the subcontinent. From the perspective of environmental concerns, we can call this the lungs of the earth. The ecosystem of this region consisting of mountains, forests, rivers, minerals, vulnerable ecology ˆ they sustain life on earth and in this sense are the protectors of all of us. This is one of the very few regions of the world which have still remained untouched by imperialism/capitalism and therefore are very important for our survival as well as for the earth to survive. So it is in this green region that Operation Green Hunt is being conducted. If successful, you can well imagine that this operation will turn greenery into barrenness. By forcibly evicting or exterminating the tribal people and thereafter facilitating the entry of multinational, private and government corporations, this war will destroy our very lungs and threaten our existence itself. So you can very well imagine the self-destructive nature of this Green Hunt.

Secondly, at another level the security analysts claim that Operation Green Hunt is termed so because the revolutionary fighters wear olive green uniforms and are the targets of this hunt. But this mode of thinking too reflects the same 18th century ideology behind the Red Hunt in the US. It is interesting to note that in September-October 2009, one of the ministers in the Indian government who is leading this Operation Green Hunt went to Afghanistan and the US, and soon after his return announced this Operation Green Hunt. He did not explicitly term it Operation Green Hunt. He said it is a paramilitary operation. Later the same minister denied that there is anything called Operation Green Hunt. But lower level officers in each of the regions where this operation is being conducted exposed his lie by frequently referring to Operation Green Hunt. Government of India still denies it by saying that there is no Operation Green Hunt. The reason for that denial is not difficult to see. In 2009 when the Indian interior minister announced this operation there was a massive protest from the intellectuals and the democratic forces from all over India. They immediately withdrew the nomenclature, though the operation has continued with ever greater intensity in different parts of India from then till now.

Nevertheless, the resemblance of India’s Operation Green Hunt and US’s Red Hunt goes deeper than just the name. In intent, purpose and intensity they are very much similar. In “Mr Chidambaram’s war” (the Interior Minister), an essay by Arundhati Roy, describes how Operation Green Hunt has three objectives: 1. Occupy 2. Dominate 3. Hold. If you go to the website of India’s interior ministry you can see these words. It is interesting to note that it is the same terminology that the U.S. is using to describe its strategy in Afghanistan. It doesn’t matter whether Indian state acknowledges or denies the term or the war it is waging on the people because the war is there on the ground. The entire people of India call it Operation Green Hunt.

We can understand Operation Green Hunt as a “war on the people of India” as well, and this is the main focus of the campaign. The ruling classes may play as much with words, but the truth is that it is a “war on the people of India”. What is this war about? The U.S. and other imperialists from European Union have sent military forces to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other places and are fighting imperialist wars of occupation against the people of these countries. In India too the imperialists have the same designs as in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, i.e., to grab all the natural resources, be it natural gas, petroleum, bauxite, coal or any other available resource. They have not yet sent in their military forces to India, even though the imperialists are aiding the Indian government with military strategists, army generals, intelligence input, weapons, surveillance equipment, and so on. These imperialist warmongers think that these resources which belong to the people of India can be grabbed without directly involving themselves in a war. This is because Indian rulers are completely subservient to the imperialist forces and are fighting this war on behalf of the imperialists. The Indian government is fighting a war for the US and European imperialists and others by using the army of India and the paramilitary of India. The servile Indian rulers are sending our own army against our own people. The imperialists are planning and conducting this war in India by simply sitting in their own countries and executing it through the Indian government in waging their war. This is the true nature imperialism since beginning of 20th century. The Indian government, the rulers of the country and India’s big corporations too are eagerly playing to the tune of the imperialists with a hope of earning some crumbs as spoils of war thrown at them. It is shameful for all of us citizens of India to see that the of army and paramilitary forces of our own county, which are supposed to protect Indian “sovereignty” and the Indian people’s freedom are being used to completely sell-out our “sovereignty” and to kill our own people in millions through genocides and massacres.

So it is a strange thing for the people in our part of the world, but this is the reality today. I would like to say that the campaign for the poorest of the poor in India who are fighting and resisting the imperialist onslaught is important to the people all over the world because the fight of the Indian poor people is not merely to defend themselves. It is against imperialism and against the monopoly bourgeoisie. And your fight against monopoly capital and our fight against its lackeys in India can build solidarity and come together to save humanity itself. This is a fight not to save the people of any particular country, but to save humanity and the entire earth, the only known place for human existence which is threatened by monopoly capital. So we have a larger reason for unity and a larger ground for solidarity. We must not see the national borders as barriers to our common fight since the question of the destruction of nature, natural resources and the people of the world is concerned today. Therefore solidarity across borders and the building of a common fight is something that is the need of the hour for the international community of democratic forces.

Indiensolidaritet: So what does this solidarity work mean for the peoples’ struggles and for the Indian government?

Saibaba: The solidarity movement for the Indian peoples’ struggles which is to be internationally established is very important and has the same significance today as the solidarity movement for the people of Vietnam during the sixties and seventies and for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan in the past decades. The Indian government’s war on the people is planned in a large scale and involves carefully planned genocides of the indigenous people of India who constitute a population which is larger than the population of Germany and Sweden put together. It is the indigenous people in the eastern and central India, the “adivasis”, who are targeted by the Indian rulers with active aid from the imperialist forces and the corporate sector. The biggest of the corporate houses from Europe and the U.S. have deep interests in this area. But they know that their interest will not be served unless the people, hundreds of millions of people, are removed from their ancestral land. Not coincidentally, these areas are also the areas which figure among the strongest resistance struggles in the world today.

This massive war on the people by the imperialists and the Indian rulers together threatens to massacre these people, and as democrats of the world we cannot afford to allow this to happen. In the 17th, 18th and 19th century the European bourgeoisie eliminated millions of indigenous people of Africa, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. This could happen at that time because an international solidarity of democratic forces was absent or extremely weak. But in the present, at least since the days of the Second World War, there is a conscious international democratic solidarity which effectively raised their voices against the American war in Vietnam. They supported the democratic resistance against the U.S. military campaign in Vietnam and launched several campaigns that helped the Vietnamese people to gain strength and confidence.

Similarly, an international campaign today will strengthen the resistance struggle of the people of India and will give them confidence. They would be assured that the democratic voices of the world are with them and that the people of India are not alone in their struggle against imperialism and feudalism and to establish a new society. Indeed, a new society is already taking shape in these areas of struggle in India and it is our duty to inform the entire world about it. So this is the significance of the international solidarity campaign. This is the need of the Indian people and also of the people of the democratic society at an international level. It is a historical task of the democratic forces of the world to defend and stand in solidarity with these fighting forces.
Indiensolidaritet: Can you tell us something about the solidarity work in relation to the Indian government? Is it somehow disturbing them that this solidarity exists?

Saibaba: Yes, the Indian government is worried about this international campaign for the fighting people of India. This is because the campaign also makes it clear that the tall claims of the Indian state that it is one of the largest democracies of the world, that the economy of country is growing faster than other countries and that India is going to be the next superpower in Asia after China, and so on. All these falsehoods will come to light once the international campaign exposes the truth that India is not really a democratic state but is an autocratic and totalitarian state.  It doesn´t allow democratic dissent and there is no internal democracy in India. And also the so-called high economic growth in India is at the expense of millions of people. Today in India, 80 percent of the people live on less than half a dollar a day on average in a year. This is worse than a subsistence economy, for on half a dollar a day you can´t even get something to eat and survive. In other words, the quality of life for the vast majority of Indian people is worse than that of the sub-Saharan populations, with the difference that the population in India is several
hundred times more than that of all the sub-Saharan countries put together.

We can say that instead of having the largest democracy in the world, India has the largest population stricken by poverty, exploitation and oppression.
So the government of India is already worried about the international solidarity campaign which has the potential to expose the reality that it wants to hide from the world. When the international campaign takes shape and speaks up, it will be very difficult for the Indian government to maintain the falsehood that India is a democratic state. India’s growth story is like the history of colonial economies which grew out of internal and foreign exploitation. This growth rate is very vulnerable because it is sustained through exploitation, suppression and massacre of the vast masses of people for the benefit of a small minority. This economic growth is inhuman and temporary, since only a few families in India are reaping its benefits while the majority of the people are getting severely facing its brunt. And these realities are coming out now. The Western media never brings out these realties to the international community. The Indian government suppresses such information and the imperialists too like to project India as a developing economy or lucrative investment destination.

It is a fact that the imperialists don’t want the facts and realities of India to come out. The international campaign alone can bring out these facts and present them before the international community.

Indiensolidaritet: You mentioned earlier that the Indian government will be more careful in its genocidal campaigns if there is a large public opinion that knows what’s really going on in India, behind all these lies.

Saibaba: Yes, the international campaign and your voices against the genocidal war in India have forced the government of India to rethink about its genocidal campaign. It has already started happening. For example, several protest demonstrations at Indian embassies in several countries in Europe, the US and South America put pressure on the Indian government.

Initially in 2009, the government of India planned to complete the war on the people within three years. They wanted to evict the people from tens of thousands of villages within three years using army, paramilitary and other coercive forces. But the campaign within India and outside, particularly
the international campaign, forced the Indian government to go slow on its plans. Though the Indian government went through with its deployment, it slowed down the military campaign and during these three years the peoples’ resistance got precious time to consolidate, build its defence and gain
more strength. As a result, the carrying out of the military campaign became much more difficult for the Indian government in the last three years. The resistance grew and expanded during this period and thus the international campaign has direct impact on the people who are resisting.

The people also gained confidence and strength. One more example that I remember is as follows. Last March the government of India declared in the parliament that the campaign taken up by some organizations in India and outside has portrayed the government of India in apoor light and that there
is no war on the people of India. It was called a false propaganda to smear the image of the Indian government. This shows that the government of India have not been able to politically counter our collective international campaign and is forced to claim it as a false propaganda campaign.

Officials of the government in the parliament say that the campaign actually has exposed the government of India. This shows how the government of India is concerned about maintaining its image which it feels is under threat due to the campaign. The real relevance of the international campaign began to be felt by by the Indian government itself. Thus the international campaign stands for the benefit of the people and for the protection of the peoples‚ movement. It is a kind of legacy for the world people.

Indiensolidaritet: Of all the struggles we are supporting, the Naxalite movement is very important. What is the Naxalite movement of today?

Saibaba: You may know of the history of the Naxalite movement. The first ever armed rebellion of the tribal people in post-1947 period took place in the North Bengal village of Naxalbari in 1967. It opened up a new arena of class struggle and came to be known as the Naxalite movement. An important characteristic of this movement is that it is a peasant‚ armed rebellion led by the proletariat. It is primarily an agrarian revolution, similar to what happened in China during the thirties and forties of the last century.
The struggle that started from Naxalbari inspired the youth, intellectuals and the workers of India in every part of the country because they understood that any kind of struggle in India has to be based on the peasantry who constitute the vast majority of the population. Soon after 1967 the Indian government sent its army to suppress that movement and completely crushed that movement in Naxalbari, the one village. But Naxalbaris sprang up everywhere in India in the 1970s and 80s. In 600 regions in India they modelled themselves along Naxalbari uprising, and today the armed revolutionary movement that is going on in vast parts of the countryside in India are a continuation of the Naxalbari uprising.

Naxalbari has given the Indian people a vision and a future model of the struggle that runs along the axis of agrarian revolution. The understanding that the agrarian revolution will liberate the vast majority of the population following the proletarian ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism which is later called Maoism spread among the masses.

So, after the suppression of the Naxalbari uprising since the late 1960s the predominant trend of the peoples’ struggles is the path of Naxalbari, if are a keen researcher of history of all peoples’ struggles since 1947 in the subcontinent. That is why it is said that Naxalbari is the only path of struggle in India. This is the slogan you can see in every street, on every wall for the last 40 years. It is the writing on the wall in the subcontinent, despite all major attempts by Indian and Western European historians to hide this fact from history writing. There is no doubt to say that the ideological position and trajectory of the Indian revolutionary movement has been shaped by the Naxalbari movement. Today the vast swathes of rural India are gripped by the ideology of Naxalbari, a revolutionary breakthrough which was aptly termed as “Spring Thunder in India” by China under Mao’s leadership. So the Spring Thunder is continuing and that is the basic line of struggle in India and constitutes the largest revolutionary resistance movement in India today, though this has not happened without colossal ups and downs.

Indiensolidaritet: As I understand it, there are several parties or groups that you can say belong to the Naxalite movement. Which are these parties?

Saibaba: In the 1970s there were mass uprisings in about 600 places following a split in the communist movement in India. The undivided communist movement represented by the Communist Party of India (CPI) split into CPI and CPI(Marxist) in 1964. In 1968 CPI(M) further split and CPI(Marxist-Leninist) was formed under the leadership of Charu Mazumdar.

But in the decade of 1970s the Marxist-Leninist movement got split into several parties due to differences on the questions of how to conduct the revolutionary struggle, attitude towards the Indian parliament and the attitude towards the imperialist forces and the Indian ruling classes. The splitting of the Marxist-Leninist party and the movement into small factions was the major trend in the seventies. But the decade of 1980s saw the consolidation of the major Marxist-Leninist parties in important regions of the country. The formation of major parties took place during this time. You can see three strands in party building –the party in south India called itself CPI (ML) (People’s War) while in north India two parties emerged, Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and CPI(ML) Party Unity.

These three parties worked in three different areas in isolation from each other and without knowing much about each other. But they considerably expanded the revolutionary areas and later they came together.

But let me also tell you that there are other ML parties which do not believe in taking up armed struggle but they want it to start it much later in the course of struggle. This can be understood as Phase Theory which many revolutionary parties in India conform to. According to this theory, in the first phase one has to prepare the masses through open and legal mass resistance struggles. In the second phase, underground organisation of the movement is carried out, while in the third phase the armed struggle is started. Though these parties had large mass bases initially, due to their faulty understanding, they became smaller and smaller. This Phase Theory did not work. But the first of the three revolutionary parties I have mentioned started armed struggle straight away, as they did not believe in phases of revolution. They analysed that a revolutionary situation already existed in Indian society and the people can be organized for an armed movement. Even they believed and understood that armed forms of struggles predate their own existence. Hence they need to lead them with the MLM ideology at the centre. They succeeded while the rest of the groups became weaker and alienated from the oppressed masses. The revolutionary classes and individuals in the society came together in the larger revolutionary
groups and these groups expanded over time. On the other hand, those groups which believed that they should spread the revolutionary ideas by going to Parliament or believed that they should start the armed struggle much later could not carry forward the revolutionary movement. They remained for forty years in the same preparatory stage and are now smaller forces, almost non-existent, even forgoing their character as revolutionary forces.

But those who believed from the very beginning that the Phase Theory is wrong, that the Indian Parliament has no relevance in India and that the peoples’ struggles can and should start with armed struggle became major revolutionary forces. They joined hands and merged in 2004 to become
Communist Party of India (Maoist),  the largest and the most formidable revolutionary force in India. About ten smaller ML parties still exist, but they have no relevance, leading no major struggle, thereby existing only on paper mainly. One such organization is called CPI(ML) Liberation which contest parliamentary elections in some pockets of the country. People consider it to be a revisionist group like the CPI and CPI(M) which has no radical or revolutionary content and relevance. On the other hand, CPI(Maoist) has emerged as the single largest Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Party of the country after the coming together of all revolutionary forces in India. The movement it leads is still called the Naxalite movement because its origins lie in the Naxalbari village.

Indiensolidaritet: Ok, but I also heard that there are parities called CPI(Naxabari) and CPI(ML) (Janashakti) that exist and some people also call them progressive.

Saibaba:  As I said, there are about ten parties including CPI(Naxabari), which is a small group with a revolutionary spirit. They have not gone down the path of other parliamentary Marxist-Leninist groups. They are closer to CPI(Maoist) than the revisionist ML groups. Similarly, two or three other very small parties which have a revolutionary content are much closer to CPI(Maoist). But the rest of the parties, CPI(ML) New Democracy, CPI(ML) Kanu Sanyal and some lesser known parties called CPI(ML) Provisional Committee, CPI(ML) Second Central Committee etc. have no revolutionary content left in them and are more or less like the revisionist parties.  They hardly have any influence among the people.

Indiensolidaritet: We are using the flag of the Revolutionary People’s Councils and its logo for our organization. Can you say something on how and where this people’s government developed?

Saibaba: The Revolutionary People’s Councils (RPC) have come up gradually, particularly in Bastar encompassing south Chhattisgarh. There are about a few thousand of such RPCs in Bastar, and some of them have also come up in Odisha, Andrah Pradesh, Jharkandh and Bihar. But in Bastar RPCs
and the peoples’ governments have developed to a higher level. In the rest of the areas too they are developing in the same direction. The RPCs are called “Janatana Sarkars” in the local language in Bastar. “Janatana” means of the people and “sarkar” means government.  In the political language of the revolution they are called Revolutionary People’s Councils.

They are formed and elected by the people in a direct election where the entire village sits together and elects. The ruling-class elements in the village have no voting rights while all the people from the oppressed classes have voting rights. Once the people’s government is elected it acts like a government of the village which has several committees, such as the development committee, the health committee, the education committee, the security committee and the people’s militia. The people’s militia works under the village government or the RPC.

The government has full political power and it works for the people. If any elected member is not functioning according to the expectations and interests of the village and people, the constitution of the RPCs provides the right to the people to recall the member and re-elect another person in
his/her place.

The people’s governments or the RPCs promote and develop indigenous technology in industry and agriculture. They don’t depend on the technology or the so-called development model that are imposed by imperialists and the ruling elite. The very idea of development according to people’s own
technology, knowledge and skill is part of this experiment. The effort of the RPCs is to raise the level of peoples‚ consciousness and cultural level. The technology they use is in consonance with the consciousness and the level of the people’s culture so that there is no feeling of alienation between work and knowledge. In the process, they completely reject the technology developed and promoted by imperialists and the comprador bourgeoisie which are oppressive and exploitative. So the development that is experienced in the villages with RPCs is based on a self-reliant economy.

The hundreds and thousands of these committees and councils have established a self-reliant economy based on their own needs, own resources and their own technology. This is a complete negation of the model of development‚ dependent on imperialism, imperialist technology and imperialist funds which has been introduced by Indian rulers in 1947. It is through this imperialist technology and imperialist investment that the exploitation of our country and resources has taken place. The revolutionary people and the revolutionary people’s councils completely reject this. So in these areas of central and eastern India where agriculture was developed only to a rudimentary level, the people through RPCs have developed agriculture and fisheries, small-scale industry and so on. As a result, for the first time in the history of these regions, the vast masses of the people have successes in creating a surplus, and socialize it without allowing it transform into capital.

The RPCs have systematically carried out land distribution among the indigenous people and other oppressed people, so that there are no landless people in the areas under the RPCs today. RPCs put the surplus back in collective agricultural farming, while everybody gives their voluntary labour. The people produce their crops and a portion of it goes to the common pool overseen by the people’s government. The rest of the produce is distributed among the people as per their requirements. It is not just only the agricultural produce that the people collectively control, but the RPCs also regulate all trade and commercial activities in their purview to establish and ensure non-exploitative exchange. But they still require necessities like medicine and other products that the RPCs do not produce.

So the surplus produce that remains after being used for the village is sent to the market. The surplus that is generated in the village is used for the welfare of the village, again socialising it. But this is welfare from a revolutionary perspective, and has nothing to do with the government’s welfare schemes which are launched to keep social discontent under check. The surplus generated in this manner serves the people in that the RPC uses it for their health, education and other requirements apart from putting it back for the development of agriculture and industry, i.e., for further revolutionising production. In this way a new society is being built in India by the most oppressed of the people. As a part of this process, the feudal and reactionary cultural practices are being discarded on the one hand while imperialist culture and exploitation is being resisted on the other. RPCs are the foundations of this new society. The revolutionary movement wants to expand the RPCs from the village level to the block level and gradually a larger government will be formed at the district level.

With the development of RPCs in different parts of India, the power of the Indian rulers will be overthrown and people’s power will be established in their place. People’s power is at the centre of these Revolutionary People’s Councils. Like the slogan of “All Power to Soviets” in revolutionary Russia, “All Power to the People” is the slogan of the revolutionary movement in India. The RPCs have all the power, which is the implementation of the slogan “All Power to the People.” This is the guiding principle with which the RPCs function in all spheres of social life in the revolutionary regions.

Indiensolidaritet: Do you know how the Maoist party is related to the new government?

Saibaba: The people’s government has the party committee within its core.  It is not the case that all the people in this government are party members, but a section of them are. When representatives to the RPCs are elected, both party members as well as non-party members will be there. The party functions through these party committees within the RPCs. So you can understand that the RPC is like a united front, because there are communists, non-communists and general people. CPI(Maoist) does not believe that Revolutionary People’s Councils should be run by the party alone. In the RPCs, members of the party work with the common people who have traditional wisdom and knowledge of the struggle. Like in a united front, in RPCs, Maoist party forces and non-party forces come together to form the people’s government. The party members elected to the government function as per party ideology to develop revolutionary consciousness among other members of the Revolutionary Peoples Council.

Indiensolidaritet: How is the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) related to the people’s militia? Is the people’s militia the backbone of the PLGA?

Saibaba: As far as my study and understanding of this vast movement goes, I can say that the militia is constituted by the participation of a large number of people in the villages, and therefore the militia is called the basic force. Behind the militia functions the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army. So the PLGA is very much dependent on the militia. The people’s militia is the basic force and the PLGA is the main revolutionary army. But all basic requirements related to the defence of the revolutionary areas
and the revolutionary movement are taken care of by the militia because they are the largest force in number and it should be the principal force.

However, the growth of the people’s militia can only begin after the PLGA is established in an area. But once the people’s militia develops, the PLGA goes to the background. Then, the PLGA is called in only when the militia needs reinforcement. Otherwise the PLGA does not take the main role in the armed
struggle. So the first on the frontlines of the revolutionary armed struggle is the people’s militia followed by the PLGA. This is what I have understood in the emergence and development the people’s militia in different areas of central and eastern India over the last two decades of the history of this trajectory.

Indiensolidaritet: Some people might say, “Oh the party is controlling everything.”  What do you think?

Saibaba:  People who do not know how a revolutionary party like the CPI (Maoist) functions or those who would like to malign the Maoist party may say such things. There are places where wrong things are practised or mistakes happen. But his is not the policy of the CPI (Maoist). If you see the reality and closely follow the movement, you can understand that the CPI (Maoist) gives primary importance to the
agency of the common people in their area. It is the people who themselves take the initiative in struggles. There are many examples of this. The roadmap of how to develop a village in a revolutionary way or how to develop guerrilla warfare is not centrally given by the CPI (Maoist). In these areas the people know of this through practice through their own history of struggles. For example, the indigenous people have a long history of waging guerrilla fight. They fought the armies of the Mughal emperors and the British colonialists in hundreds of rebellions in all of the last three hundred or more years of their known history, and this is equally true of their earlier history as well.  This is a people’s history which is yet to be written. They might not have termed it as guerrilla warfare, but the history of the peoples’ uprisings in these areas is invariably of guerrilla fight. There were about 150 armed rebellions against the British by the tribal people mostly written but many more which were not yet properly written by the indigenous people, and in each one of them they won while the British were defeated. The mighty force of British imperialists was defeated by the tribal people with superior knowledge of the terrain and with simple bows and arrows. They seized the weapons of the imperialist invaders and used them against the British. Not always more developed social formation has won over the less developed social formation. One such massive uprising is the Bhumkal Rebellion of 1910 in the Bastar region. The rebellious tribal people used sophisticated guerrilla methods against the British forces and defeated them.

In popular memory all these methods are still alive because they have taught each other and passed on the experience of guerrilla warfare from one generation to the other. Therefore, it is not the CPI (Maoist) who taught guerrilla warfare techniques to the indigenous people. Rather, it is the indigenous
people who taught them how to wage guerrilla warfare. A public intellectual in India called B D Sharma who has worked with the adivasis for the last 50 years always reminds us about this in his public lectures and writings. In this example we can see that the initiative, assertion and creativity in every stage of the struggle come from amongst the people, including the development model they have chalked out for themselves. In the revolutionary movement the people are at the centre. The Maoists give utmost importance to the people’s initiative, assertion and participation, particularly the people’s agency in the revolution. Any party which places itself at the centre can’t become an instrument of revolutionary change because it’s the people’s agency that develops to transform the society in toto that that can play this role. So the people and their party advance the movement together. This is really where the party has played its role, by creating the conditions for the people to take initiative and unleash their full potentials, creativity and regeneration in the making of a new society free from exploitation and oppression. And then history is created by the masses of people themselves.

Rachel Corrie’s death was an accident, Israeli judge rules

[Rachel Corrie in an interview with Saudi Arabian television on 14 March 2003, two days before she was killed. Photograph: Lorenzo Scaraggi/Getty Images]

Judge finds no fault in military investigation that cleared defence force of responsibility for protester being killed by bulldozer

Harriet Sherwood in Haifa

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 August 2012

The death of the pro-Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie was not caused by the negligence of the Israeli state or army, a judge has ruled, dismissing a civil lawsuit brought by the family.

Corrie’s death was an accident for which the state of Israel was not responsible, said the judge at Haifa district court.

There had been no fault in the internal Israeli military investigation clearing the driver of the bulldozer that crushed Corrie to death in March 2003 of any blame. The judge said the driver had not seen the young American activist.

Corrie could have saved herself by moving out of the zone of danger as any reasonable person would have done, said Judge Oded Gershon. He ruled that no compensation would be paid and the family would not have to pay costs of the case.

After the ruling was read out by the judge, the family’s lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said: “We knew from the beginning that we had an uphill battle to get truthful answers and justice. But we are concerned that this verdict denies the strong evidence and contradicts the principles of international law.”

Also speaking after the ruling, the state’s attorney said the Israeli soldiers at the scene of Corrie’s death did “everything they could” to prevent harm being caused to any person.

The lawsuit, filed by Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, of Olympia, Washington state, accused the Israeli military of either unlawfully or intentionally killing Rachel or of gross negligence.

Their daughter was killed on 16 March 2003, crushed under an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to obstruct the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah on to the Gaza-Egypt border.

At the time – the height of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising – house demolitions were common, part of an increasing cycle of violence from both sides. Palestinian suicide bombers were causing death and destruction with terrifying frequency; the Israeli military was using its mighty force and weaponry to crush the uprising.

The Israeli Defence Forces said the houses it targeted with bulldozers and shells were harbouring militants or weapons or being used to conceal arms-smuggling tunnels under the border. Human rights groups said the demolitions were collective punishment. From 2000-04 the Israeli military demolished around 1,700 homes in Rafah, leaving about 17,000 people homeless, according to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.

Corrie was one of a group of around eight international activists acting as human shields against the demolitions. According to witness statements made at the time and evidence given in court, she clambered on top of a mound of earth in the path of an advancing Caterpillar bulldozer.

“She was standing on top of a pile of earth,” fellow activist and eyewitness Richard Purssell, from Brighton, said at the time. “The driver cannot have failed to see her. As the blade pushed the pile, the earth rose up. Rachel slid down the pile. It looks as if her foot got caught. The driver didn’t slow down; he just ran over her. Then he reversed the bulldozer back over her again.”

Tom Dale, an 18-year-old from Lichfield in Staffordshire, said: “The bulldozer went towards her very slowly, she was fully in clear view, straight in front of them. Unfortunately she couldn’t keep her grip there and she started to slip down. You could see she was in serious trouble, there was panic in her face as she was turning around. All the activists there were screaming, running towards the bulldozer, trying to get them to stop. But they just kept on going.”

The day after Corrie’s death, Israel’s then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, promised US president George W Bush that Israel would conduct a “thorough, credible and transparent” investigation into the incident.

Within a month the IDF had completed an internal inquiry led by its chief of staff. It concluded that its forces were not to blame, that the driver of the bulldozer had not seen the activist, that no charges would be brought and the case was closed.

“Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved,” it said. Corrie and other ISM activists were accused by the investigators of “illegal, irresponsible and dangerous” behaviour.

The Corries launched their civil lawsuit against the state of Israel as an “absolutely last resort”. The case opened at Haifa district court in March 2010.

Among those giving evidence was the driver of the bulldozer, who testified anonymously from behind a screen for “security reasons”. He repeatedly insisted that the first time he saw the activist was when she was already dying: “I didn’t see her before the incident. I saw people pulling the body out from under the earth.”

The hearings ended in July last year.

Filipino-Canadian internationalists declare: Migrants are inseparable from the Canadian working class struggle

[Hundreds of millions of migrants worldwide, driven and displaced from their homelands by brutal repression, hunger, trafficking, and other crushing forms of oppression, are major parts of the exploited workforces in their new homes, where they continue to suffer racist and xenophobic attacks, brutalities, and exclusions in new conditions.  Historically, the struggle against such conditions has been framed by resistance to the oppressive treatment of migrants, by solidarity among migrants of different origins, and by steadfast support for the struggles in their homelands.  But, in time, these migrants have brought their anger and resistance–and their experience in struggle–into the peoples movements and class struggles in their new lands of residence, where they play an ever increasing role as transnationals in raising the banners of resistance, internationalism, and revolution.  Now, in Canada, an organized group of Filipino-Canadians, has announced their unity with a Maoist Canadian Party, the PCR-RCP (not to be confused with the RCP-USA which has no organizational or political commonality with the Canadian group).

    We are not able to assess other aspects of the Filipino-Canadian group, or of the PCR-RCP at this time; but we think this announcement is a potentially important development and crosssing of a threshold, in the relations between migrants and working class forces–not only in Canada, but in every country where significant migrant forces endure exploitation and oppression, and whose resistance is reshaping the class struggle to reshape the world in revolutionary and internationalist ways. — Frontlines ed.]

—————————————

http://theredflag.ca 

Filipino Canadian Proletarians Join Forces With the PCR-RCP!
Partisan #25 • August 24, 2012 

We, the Filipino Canadian Proletarian Committee of Cote-des-Neiges,
Montréal have announced our intention to add our forces to the
growing strength of the Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire –
Revolutionary Communist Party (Canada). The leadership and contributions
of the PCR-RCP are to be found in the building of the proletarian
movement that is needed in Canada and the necessary international
communist movement and it is with revolutionary pride and social
responsibility to the Canadian working class that Filipino Canadian
proletarians based in the west end of Montréal join the dynamism of
their Marxist-Leninist-Maoist comrades.

Since the 1970s there has been a rich revolutionary movement among the
Filipino Canadian proletariat, largely because of the solidarity built
around the struggle against Marcos’ dictatorship in the Philippines.
Through the 1980s and 1990s and early 2000s support and solidarity work
by Filipino Canadian comrades continued for the Philippine revolutionary
movement. As the consciousness of Filipino Canadian proletariat
continued to be raised about the struggle “back home” there was
a growing need to resolve the issues of the Filipino Canadian people as
part of Canadian working class.

Mass organizing with the anti-imperialist and working class perspective
has garnered a wealth of experience in organizing Filipino Canadians in
Québec among the various sectors of youth, women, workers and
cultural artists is a large source of the capacity building and
education of the Filipino Canadian comrades from Montréal. We are
still a dynamic group composed of the different sectors with strong
links to the mass base of Filipino Canadians in Montréal. Solidarity
and unity with other progressive immigrant organizations, migrant
justice groups, anti-racist collectives and feminist allies continue to
be the strong foundation of our on-going struggle and commitment for a
socialist society towards communism.

In 2012 the Filipino Canadian Proletarian Committee of Cote-des-Neiges
was formed, shaped by the experience of comrades surrounding the issues
of systemic racism, patriarchy, political repression and
anti-imperialism. With the coordination between the Filipino Canadian
Proletarian Committee of Cote-des-Neiges and the PCR-RCP for the
mobilization of May Day in Montréal coupled with initiatives
surrounding the Québec student uprising, the decision was made to
join the PCR-RCP.

The red flags have been raised and commitment to the proletarian
struggle and education as well as to the Canadian and international
working class has been rendered!

Let’s march forward together towards the proletarian movement that
is much needed in Canada!

Towards stronger internationalist communist solidarity!

Long live the PCR-RCP (Canada)!

Il y a 40 ans en Argentine : les martyrs de Trelew

    Si l’Amérique latine a connu de nombreuses dictatures, militaires voire parfois civiles (elle n’a, à vrai dire,     jamais connu la démocratie bourgeoise au sens propre, sinon dans de courtes expériences comme Allende au Chili, et depuis autour de l’an 2000 dans quelques pays comme le Brésil, l’Argentine etc.)     ; notamment dans la période 1945-85 (voire 1990 en Amérique centrale), dans la triple préoccupation d’écraser le mouvement révolutionnaire, de lutter contre l’influence social-impérialiste     soviétique et d’asseoir la tutelle semi-coloniale US face à des bourgeoisies (beaucoup plus fortes qu’en Afrique, par exemple) tentées par l’émancipation et l'”émergence” ; les dictatures     argentines de 1966-73 et (surtout) 1976-83 furent de loin les plus féroces, mettant en place une répression et une élimination systématique des forces populaires progressistes et révolutionnaires     (en même temps que d’imposer le “néolibéralisme” des Chicago boys), comparables à l’Espagne de Franco en plus méthodique et organisé, inspirées en     particulier des méthodes élaborées lors de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne et diffusée dans le continent américain par Roger Trinquier ou Paul Aussaresses. Une histoire tragique dont Servir     le Peuple est parmi les rares médias maoïstes à se faire l’écho, et qui fait profondément partie de son identité politique.

Il faut bien dire qu’à l’époque, le pays était en proie à une effervescence révolutionnaire incontrôlable,     expliquant, pour “calmer le jeu”, l’intermède du retour du – très populaire – général Perón en 1973, auquel sa veuve Isabel succèdera de 1974 à 1976. Mais, justement, cette effervescence avait le     malheur d’être prisonnière d’une particularité argentine : la question de Perón et du péronisme.
Les débats sur le péronisme ont secoué le mouvement communiste argentin et international pendant toute la seconde moitié du 20e siècle et jusqu’à nos jours, alors que la réalité est pourtant très     simple : pays très particulier d’Amérique latine, l’Argentine a la particularité d’avoir sa classe dominante (bourgeoisie et propriété terrienne) traversée par un clivage depuis les origines,     clivage donnant deux droites réactionnaires et dont le péronisme et l’anti-péronisme du siècle dernier ne furent     que la réactivation. D’un côté, la région de Buenos Aires (et le Grand Sud colonisé par elle à la fin du 19e siècle), grand port ouvert sur le monde, mais     paradoxalement siège d’une bourgeoisie aspirant à faire de l’Argentine une nation capitaliste moderne et indépendante, parlant d’égal à égal avec les puissances européennes et nord-américaines ; de l’autre, la bourgeoisie et (surtout) la     grande propriété agraire des provinces intérieures du Nord (l’Amérique latine classique), assumant la soumission à l’impérialisme (principalement     britannique jusqu’aux années 1930-40, puis principalement US) pour exporter sa production. Au 19e siècle (1829-53), cette contradiction s’incarna dans l’affrontement entre l’homme fort de Buenos     Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas, et celui de l’intérieur, le gouverneur d’Entre Rios, Justo José de Urquiza.

Et au 20e siècle, elle s’exprima dans l’affrontement entre le péronisme et son adversaire, tout autant sinon plus     réactionnaire, partisan ouvert de la tutelle néo-coloniale US, incarné dans ce que l’on peut appeler le “parti militaire”, qui mènera trois coups d’État suivis de dictatures réactionnaires     sanglantes (1955-58, 1966-73 et 1976-83). La réactivation de cette “guerre des deux droites” fut, en réalité, causée par la crise mondiale de 1929, qui ruina l’économie agro-exportatrice de     l’intérieur et vit la mise en place, durant une première période de dictature militaire (la “décennie infâme” 1930-43), d’une politique volontariste et industrialiste de modernisation du pays     (générant un vaste prolétariat ouvrier non conscientisé, qui sera le terreau électoral du péronisme).

Cette “guerre des deux droites”, des années 1940 aux années 1980 (et encore, dans une certaine mesure, jusqu’à     aujourd’hui), va totalement polariser la vie politique du pays, de l’extrême-droite jusqu’à… la gauche     populaire progressiste et révolutionnaire, au moment même où les conditions objectives mondiales étaient les plus favorables à la révolution prolétarienne. Ainsi, le PCA et le PSA seront toujours     farouchement anti-péronistes (avec toutefois des dissidences : Borlenghi du PS, Puiggrós du PC, qui rallient Perón), quitte à soutenir (plus ou moins “avec des critiques”) les régimes militaires, jusqu’à leur     “aggiornamento” après la dernière dictature. Le mouvement trotskyste se divisera, lui aussi, entre adversaires résolus de Perón (rejoignant le PCA et le PSA dans le “Front démocratique”) et     partisans de sa politique développant, selon eux, la classe ouvrière et donc les “conditions objectives” de la révolution. La figure emblématique du trotskysme argentin, Nahuel Moreno, tentera de concilier ces deux tendances, avant de pencher franchement vers     l’anti-péronisme, puis d’osciller entre les deux camps. La principale scission anti-révisionniste et pro-chinoise du PCA, le PCR (1968), sera quant à elle clairement pro-péroniste, y voyant un     mouvement “bourgeois national”, “tiers-mondiste” et “indépendant des deux superpuissances”, dans une vision totalement “théorie des trois mondes” rappelant, par certains aspects, l’attitude du     PCMLF face au gaullisme ; alors même que ses militants étaient décimés par la Triple A (Alliance Anticommuniste d’Argentine, escadron de la mort péroniste de droite). Il y aura de surcroît, dès     les années 1950 et surtout 1960, toute une gauche radicale péroniste (Jeunesses péronistes et “organisations combattantes” comme les FAR ou les Montoneros) drainant des éléments qui, ailleurs,     auraient été marxistes, montrant (douloureusement) l’influence néfaste du “mythe” Perón sur les masses populaires et la jeunesse. [Dans un souci de précision, on évoquera brièvement, dans le camp     bourgeois, un troisième larron : l’Union civique radicale (UCR), née dans les années 1890 et dirigeant le pays de 1916 à 1930. Très proche du     radicalisme BBR (encore aujourd’hui avec le PRG), peu intéressée par le débat nationalisme / compradorisme assumé, l’UCR était surtout tournée vers la société argentine elle-même, qu’elle voulait     “moderniser” dans une vision positiviste et paternaliste franc-maçonne. Néanmoins, à la fin des années 1950, elle finira par éclater entre un courant pro-Perón et un courant     anti-péroniste.]

En définitive, DEUX organisations conséquentes (seulement) sauront se placer     au-delà de ce débat pourri : le Parti communiste marxiste-léniniste (PCML), autre scission anti-révisionniste du PC (mais aujourd’hui son héritier, le Parti de     la Libération, soutient à fond le gouvernement Kirchner, que le PCR a au moins le mérite d’affronter sans concessions) ; et le PRT-ERP.
Celui-ci est fréquemment, et de manière simpliste, présenté comme     une organisation “trotskyste”. La réalité est beaucoup plus complexe, comme le montre cette très intéressante étude que SLP vous invite à lire en digérant après le dîner (il serait difficile de     résumer 98 pages en un article ici…) : http://jeremyrubenstein.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/une-histoire-du-prt.pdf

En réalité, le PRT est né en 1965 de la fusion de deux forces révolutionnaires dans le Nord-Ouest argentin (région     de Tucumán, Salta, Santiago del Estero) : le Front révolutionnaire indoaméricaniste populaire (FRIP) des frères Santucho, d’où seront issus les principaux cadres, mouvement nationaliste     progressiste à forte tendance indigéniste, recherchant un socialisme adapté à la réalité latino-américaine (“indo-américaine”) et ayant évolué vers le marxisme dans la première moitié des années     1960, devant les expériences chinoise, vietnamienne et surtout cubaine ; et Palabra Obrera, l’élément trotskyste, de Nahuel Moreno… mais celui-ci démissionera dès 1968, refusant l’orientation     vers la lutte armée (avec la formation de l’ERP, Armée révolutionnaire du Peuple), pour former le     PRT “La Verdad” (emmenant donc avec lui l’élément trotskyste “pur et dur”). Un refus de la lutte armée bien typique du trotskysme, à une époque où même un     social-démocrate comme Allende (sous la pression de la base, bien entendu) pouvait dire que “la lutte révolutionnaire armée constitue la ligne     fondamentale de la révolution en Amérique latine”. [Une opinion à laquelle, bien entendu, souscrit totalement SLP, même encore aujourd’hui, car même si la population urbaine     s’est considérablement accrue par rapport à la population rurale (phénomène déjà à l’oeuvre dans les années 60-70) et si l’économie latifundiaire a évolué vers la plantation/ferme     agro-industrielle, la classe dominante et les structures fondamentales de domination n’ont pas changé (moderniser n’est pas changer) et de toute manière, la Guerre populaire est la stratégie     révolutionnaire universelle et contient forcément un aspect de lutte armée.]

À partir de là, et alors que de puissants mouvements populaires     (Cordobazo, Rosariazo) secouent la dictature fasciste de la “Révolution argentine” (1966-73), le PRT-ERP,     dans la pratique comme dans l’idéologie, s’éloigne de plus en plus du trotskysme, jusqu’à rompre officiellement avec la IVe Internationale (Secrétariat Unifié), alors dominée par la figure de     Pierre Frank, en août 1973 (document en castillan). Dès lors, les références assumées seront, outre les bolchéviks et la     Révolution russe de 1917-22, Mao Zedong, Hô Chi Minh et la guerre populaire vietnamienne, Che Guevara et la révolution cubaine, Mariátegui etc.     etc.

C’est que, outre ses composantes originelles, le PRT-ERP comptera aussi un important et influent noyau MAOÏSTE, qui     infléchira fortement sa ligne ; ainsi, dans le document du IVe Congrès “La seule voie vers le pouvoir ouvrier et le socialisme” (1968), on peut lire : “Aujourd’hui, la     tâche principale des marxistes révolutionnaires est de fusionner les apports du trotskysme et du maoïsme dans une unité supérieure, qui signifiera un plein retour au léninisme“, belle marque     de cette influence, alors que nous sommes juste après le départ de Moreno et encore fort loin de la rupture avec la “IV”. Ce seront peut-être, quelque part, les maoïstes les plus conséquents d’Argentine à cette époque – le PCR, on l’a dit,     évoluant sur une ligne ouvriéro-économiste et pro-péroniste trois-mondiste déplorable, pour laquelle il n’a effectué à ce jour aucune autocritique…
Sa rupture avec le trotskysme consommée, le PRT se lancera à fond dans la lutte armée révolutionnaire contre le régime “constitutionnel” réactionnaire de Perón lui-même puis de sa veuve Isabel,     avec en arrière-plan “l’éminence grise” fasciste José Lopez Rega, “patron” de la Triple A ;     tout en se préparant à l’éventualité du “pire”, c’est à dire d’une nouvelle dictature militaire exterminatrice (qui surviendra effectivement en mars 1976 : 30.000 « disparus »     (desaparecidos), 15.000 fusillés, 9.000 prisonniers politiques et 1,5 million d’exilés pour 30 millions d’habitants). Il appellera les péronistes de gauche     sincères à rompre avec leurs illusions (d’un Perón “prisonnier” de l’ultra-droite) et à se joindre au mouvement révolutionnaire authentique, non sans un certain succès, puisqu’en mars 1974, un     certain nombre de personnes sincèrement progressistes, trompées par Perón, notamment dans les Jeunesses et les organisations combattantes péronistes, scissionneront pour former le “Parti     péroniste authentique”. Sera également constituée une “Coordination révolutionnaire” avec d’autres organisations armées des pays voisins  : MIR chilien, ELN bolivienne et Tupamaros     uruguayens.

De solides bases d’appui seront établies dans le Nord-Ouest, d’où le Parti était issu et où il était profondément     ancré dans la réalité populaire. Mais, faute d’une stratégie militaire suffisamment élaborée, elles seront écrasées par l’offensive contre-révolutionnaire déchaînée en 1975 par Isabel Perón     (opération Independencia), calquée sur les méthodes de quadrillage de la guerre d’Algérie… Le document PDF en lien ci-dessus donne un assez bon éclairage des erreurs ayant conduit     à cette défaite (foquisme en pratique tout en le rejetant en paroles, militarisme, obsession de la guérilla rurale – Tucumán – au détriment de la lutte urbaine, etc.). L’année     suivante, les militaires ayant destitué Isabel Perón n’auront qu’à “finir le travail”, abattant notamment Mario Roberto Santucho (le     secrétaire général) et 5 autre cadres dans une fusillade le 19 juillet 1976.

Pour en revenir à notre in memoriam, donc, la lutte armée déclenchée dès     la fin des années 60 par le PRT-ERP et les péronistes de gauche avait conduit un grand nombre d’entre eux en prison. En août 1972, 25 d’entre eux s’évadèrent avec l’objectif de gagner le Chili de     l’Unité populaire, et de là Cuba. Mais une poignée seulement (6), dont Santucho, y parvint ; les autres, repris, seront sauvagement assassinés à la mitrailleuse, montrant là le visage infâme de     la réaction argentine et de la réaction mondiale en général. Dans la conscience populaire révolutionnaire d’Argentine, le 22 août 1972 reste donc gravé comme un jour de martyre et     d’heroicidad, comparable au 19 juin 1986 dans l’histoire révolutionnaire du Pérou.

Source

Le 15 août 1972, durant le gouvernement dictatorial du géneral Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, 25 prisonniers politiques     appartenant au PRT-ERP (Parti Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs – Armée Révolutionnaire du Peuple), aux FAR (Forces Armées Révolutionnaires) et aux Montoneros, s’échappèrent du pénitencier de     Rawson dans la province de Chubut. Six d’entre eux parvinrent à gagner le Chili de Salvador Allende. Dix-neuf ne réussirent pas à parvenir à l’avion. Ils se livrèrent après qu’on leur eut accordé     des garanties pour leur intégrité physique. Le 22 août, les 19 prisonniers furent lâchement fusillés par des rafales de mitrailleuse dans la base navale Almirante Zar. Trois d’entre eux survécurent pour raconter l’histoire que     nous récupérons aujourd’hui, pour maintenir vive la mémoire, pour ne pas oublier, ni pardonner.

Les fusillés :

Carlos Alberto Astudillo (FAR), Rubén Pedro Bonet (PRT-ERP), Eduardo Adolfo Capello (PRT-ERP), Mario Emilio Delfino     (PRT-ERP), Alberto Carlos del Rey (PRT-ERP), Alfredo Elías Kohon (FAR), Clarisa Rosa Lea Place (PRT-ERP), Susana Graciela Lesgart de Yofre (MONTONEROS), José Ricardo Mena (PRT-ERP), Miguel Ángel     Polti (PRT-ERP), Mariano Pujadas (MONTONEROS), María Angélica Sabelli (FAR), Ana María Villareal de Santucho (PRT-ERP), Humberto Segundo Suarez (PRT-ERP), Humberto Adrián Toschi (PRT-ERP), Jorge     Alejandro Ulla (PRT-ERP),

Les survivants :

Maria Antonia Berger (MONTONEROS), Alberto Miguel Camps (FAR), Ricardo René Haidar (MONTONEROS)

Six camarades réussirent à fuir le 15 août, gagnant le Chili puis Cuba :

Roberto Quieto. (FAR), Marcos Osatinsky. (FAR), Domingo Mena, (PRT-ERP), Mario Roberto Santucho, (PRT-ERP), Enrique     Gorriarán Merlo. (PRT-ERP), Fernando Vaca Narvaja. (MONTONEROS),

Les prisonniers de Rawson n’étaient pas seuls. Nombre de voisins de la cité s’offrirent comme mandataires des prisonniers     et formèrent l’Assemblée du Peuple. Ils furent eux aussi victimes de la répression d’État quelques mois après l’évasion : le gouvernement national ordonna de nombreuses violations de domiciles et     de commerces et finit par arrêter 15 personnes qui furent transférées à la prison de Devoto.

History will not be kind to the Syrian regime…

The great Palestinian philosopher and former MK Azmi Bishara on the Syrian revolution.

1) Let’s suppose that impoverishment of the people and the suppression of their freedoms are marginal when placed in the context of a grander goal, such as defending the homeland. That would only make sense, however, during limited periods of time, such as during wars. Anyway, such claims do not justify the way in which the people have to share out the misery between them, while the rulers enjoy the riches. Nor does such sloganeering justify the institutionalized, systematic denial of the rights of their people. There is no justification for the tyranny and corruption of the rulers, and their appropriation of the fruits of the masses’ labour. Trying to exploit a cause held dearly by both the people and the regime to achieve this is the beginning of demagoguery, and it is a tool used solely to preserve the existence of the corrupt, tyrannical regime. None of this, of course, takes away from the righteousness of the cause being exploited, but it does serve to bestow legitimacy on an illegitimate regime. Rebellion against this tyranny will necessarily place the removal of that regime as its first target, but the sanctity of the just causes which the regime exploits must also be preserved. This applies when the question comes to US plans to dominate our region, seeking to design the policies of Arab states with Israeli interests at heart, as well as the question of Palestine and the duty to resist the occupation at every turn.

2) No people, anywhere in the world, would accept torture, false imprisonment, financial corruption and the muzzling of the media for generation after generation, regardless of the justification. Nor does anybody to have the right that those being persecuted remain quiet for the sake of grander concerns, without hopes for a change, all to placate commentators who seem to think that the suffering of the people is secondary to the “Central Question”, especially as all the evidence that no progress on that same “Central Question” in the first place.

3) Nobody has the right to just claim to have “understood” the people’s pain and the righteousness of their claims, and then ask those people to simply stay on the sidelines while the leaders undertake some reforms. No human likes being shot at and bombed, but you cannot expect that people who get shot at while protesting peacefully to take it sitting down. If you cannot compel the regime to deal peacefully with peaceful protests, then [any demands that the rebellion end] are demands that the people accept that they should be killed, that their losses for the revolution thus far have been in vain.

4) History will not be kind to the Syrian regime for the way it ordered soldiers to fire on peaceful protestors. Those peaceful protests had been the regime’s greatest fear, and so they worked to quell them in the cradle.

5) It seems inevitable that, if you are being bombed, driven from your home and your possessions looted, that you will reach out to anybody who stretches his hand out to you. Those who abandoned the revolutionaries at their time of need have no right to lecture them on who their sources of support are, especially if nobody is able to persuade the regime to carry out any kind of meaningful process of reform towards democracy, or even to hand over power gradually.

6) There is no fault in the people seeking their own dignity and freedom; there is no sin for those youth who have taken up arms in the face of the regime’s barbarity. The only culprit here is the regime. Writing off the earliest protests as a foreign conspiracy, and dismissing Arab diplomatic moves for a gradual transfer of power—such as the now seemingly fanciful August, 2011 plan for a National Unity Government which would usher in Presidential elections in 2014, and a January, 2012 plan for power to be handed over to the Vice-President –this regime refused them all. None of these proposals ever sought to undo Syria’s army, or to undermine the army’s morale.

7) The duty of the revolution’s leadership and the political opposition at this point is to remain vigilant with regards to those powers which are supporting their efforts, and the political ends for which they do this. It falls on this revolutionary leadership to preserve the sovereignty and identity of Syria, preventing foreign support for their revolution from turning into a bridgehead for those foreign powers’ ulterior plans.

8) In spite of all of the above, I can understand the confusion and anguish felt by a wide number of Arab patriots about the events presently unfolding in Syria. It is not only the anguish shared by those who are shocked by the fate of large swathes of this part of the Arab homeland, at the way the regime has chosen to go with the Samson option, but rather a more nuanced, political anguish. Looking at those states which presently support the Syrian revolution, or at least claim to, one can see countries which have never been democratic, and have in fact stood in the way of all of the other Arab revolutions. Doubtlessly, these states are doing so for an entirely different set of reasons: Syria’s foreign policy and the country’s long-standing support for the resistance movements in Palestine and Lebanon. The use of sectarianism to fan the flames of the revolution are also here, deeply troubling: in our part of the world, sectarianism is not only disgusting, it is deadly. Yet no matter how anguished and confused an outside observer feels on these issues, anguish and confusion cannot be the policy of the Syrian people, and the Syrian revolution. The Syrian people are not an outside observer, they must choose between either moving forward, or falling back and having to deal with an emboldened, despicable new set of thugs. The Syrian people cannot afford to fret over the identity of those supporting their revolution, their only worries are about the limited number of those supporters, and the limited, cautious nature of that support.

9) A truly patriotic intellectual committed to democratic values must never shirk from explaining the dangers of a potential sectarianism, making clear what the real components of a democratic state based on citizenship and social justice are, on the need to avoid replacing one form of tyranny with another. Nor must we forget the historic role played by Syria in the Palestinian cause and in the wider Arab sphere. Yet this enthusiasm must be based, first and foremost, on concern and support for the Syrian people, and a defense of their revolution against tyranny. Singing the praises of Assad’s regime is an unforgivable sin, and will only serve to discredit the causes for which, ostensibly, this support for the Syrian regime is built.

10) As far as the Syrian people are concerned, no cause can be more sacred than the defense of the life of their children; no cause, for them, can be more urgent than the need to topple the Assad regime and replace it with the democratic government which they deserve.