Pakistan

Pakistan earthquake: Mobilise labour movement solidarity!

By Farooq Tariq, general secretary, Labour Party Pakistan According to the latest official figures, over 53,000 are confirmed death after the 8 October earthquake. Unofficial figures for the death toll are over 100,000 and more seriously injured. Even after so many days of the most disastrous earthquake in Pakistan, there are areas that no one has yet reached to help the victims. That is mainly true of the area close to the “line of control” that separates Kashmir into Indian and Pakistani held areas. Only helicopters are able to reach the area. The military controls all the helicopters. They...

Musharraf and his rivals

It is too early to know what effect the earthquake will have on the volatile political conditions inside Pakistan, but it is certain to exacerbate existing trends. Cathy Nugent reports Before 9/11 Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, had supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, believing it could help Pakistan’s regional interests and be a bulwark against the other major regional power, India. It was only when the US made it worth their while — with debt relief and a rescheduling of interest payments worth $3 billion — that the Pakistani government dropped the Taliban, joined the “war on...

Solidarity with Pakistani workers

According to socialists and trade unionists, current Pakistani government estimates of casualties (40,000) from the 9 October earthquake are far too low. The figure could rise to 100,000 or more. Kashmir is the worst affected area —70 percent of all housing was destroyed by the earthquake. Northern and tribal areas of Pakistan were also badly affected, but are so cut off from the rest of Pakistan no-one knows the scale of the deaths and destruction. Reports of the appalling gaps in medical, food and other kinds of aid are all too accurate. The situation is made much worse by the fact that...

Thousands killed by earthquake - and capitalism

The earthquake in Pakistan has killed 35,000 people, and made about two million homeless. Or rather, not just the earthquake. The earthquake, plus inequality, poverty, and undemocratic rule. Earthquakes will destroy and kill however socialist we can make the world. But earthquakes which have been direct hits on big cities where many rich people live take a smaller toll. The San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (7.1 on the Richter scale) cost 16 deaths. The Kobe (Japan) earthquake of 1995, measuring 7.2, cost 5,273. In poorer cities, the Bam (Iran) earthquake of 2003, measuring 6.6, killed 30,000...

Workers news Round-up

South Africa Hundreds of thousands of workers in South Africa supported a one-day general strike in protest against job losses on 18 May. Three of AngloGold’s Vaal River mines were shut. Most workers were on strike at Harmony Gold’s big mines in the Free State. Two-thirds of the workforce stayed away from the Kloof mine. At the Beatrix mine in the Free State only one out of four shafts was operational. Many members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa joined the strike. The union targeted Mittal (formerly known as Iscor), Denel, DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Ford and Volkswagen. Two...

Pakistani workers fight privatisation

By Amina Saddiq For three weeks in May and June Pakistan saw an upsurge in class struggle, with the military regime forced to seize physical control of the country’s state-owned telecom corporation and arrest over a thousand telecom workers in order to force through its privatisation plans. The Employees’ Union has now signed a deal with the government allowing privatisation to go ahead, but a rank and file organisation of telecom workers is still opposing the privatiation. A strike started in May at the Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) against plans to sell off 26% of the corporation...

Pakistani women organise

On 11 April a group of women organised a demonstration outside Pakistan’s national parliament. They were protesting against a violent attack on female runners a week earlier. On 3 April groups of Pakistani Islamists threw petrol bombs near to a mini-marathon involving women runners. Feminist activists and democrats in Pakistan are increasingly dismayed by the government's inability and unwillingness to deal with violence and intimidation by the Islamists. Pakistan’s government is controlled by its President, General Pervez Musharraf The actual head of government, the Prime Minister, is a close...

The anti-imperialism of fools

The Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) has produce a withering attack on the fake “anti-imperialism” of Islamist forces across the globe. An article by Farooq Sulehria contains a sharp rejection of these forces. Although we disagree with the LPP’s views on some other “anti-imperialists” discussed in the article, we welcome their honest and uncompromising stance. Anti-imperialism is freedom, for all oppressed, from all oppression. In contrast, an Osama bin Laden, or Ayatollah Khomeini for that matter, offers an anti-imperialism that does not tolerate these values. Theirs is an anti-imperialism that...

Pakistan, Islamophobie: textes en francais

Le numéro 6-7 de la revue Ni patrie ni frontières vient de paraitre. On y trouve notamment des traductions en francais de l'article de Faryal Velmi (de l'AWL) sur le Parti de Travail de Pakistan et de l'article de Rumy Hasan sur l'Islamophobie . Tous disponsibles à mondialisme.org/nipatrienifrontieres . Au sommaire: LES SYNDICATS CONTRE LES LUTTES ? Retour sur le mouvement (Collectif La Sociale de Montpellier) Sur les retraites et les grèves de mai-juin (Mouvement communiste) Comment lutter (CNT-AIT) Les élections professionnelles contre le syndicalisme ( CNT-AIT) Les prud'hommes ne défendent...

"When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty"

Faryal Velmi visited Pakistan recently and talked with Farooq Tariq and other activists of the Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP) The LPP was established in 1997. With a Trotskyist-influenced leadership, the party has now around 2,000 members across Pakistan and is the main leftwing party in the country. Farooq told me that the LPP has taken a lead role in attempting to rebuild and bring together the country's fractured workers' movement against the neo-liberal agenda of President Musharaf, who took power in a military coup in 1999. The public sector has been restructured and privatised, resulting...

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