ML Update: a CPI(ML) Weekly News Magazine

The Vajpayee government has predictably made full use of the presidential address to the joint session of Parliament to articulate its post-Gujarat political offensive. From Gujarat and Ayodhya and Pakistan and Bangladesh to disinvestment and connectivity, President Kalam took the joint sitting of Parliament on a conducted telescopic tour to his pet theme of 'Vision 2020'.

The presidential address tried to clinch the entire debate on Gujarat with the claim that the December elections have strengthened democracy and ended a sad chapter in the state's history. This amounts to claiming parliamentary legitimacy for the BJP's official policy of rewarding the perpetrators of last year's genocide and terrorising the survivors.

On Ayodhya, the President has called upon the judiciary to 'expedite its work and give an early verdict'. Viewed in the backdrop of the Supreme Court's welcome rejection of the Government's plea for an immediate hearing and strident VHP demands for transfer of the entire land, the reference is clearly an integral part of a concerted pressure tactic to extract a judicial solution in favour of the saffron brigade.

The address virtually remained silent on the impending threat of yet another US-led war on Iraq. A renewed war on Iraq would destabilise the whole of Asia and create tremendous external pressure on India's own economy by disrupting oil supplies. There could be no bigger immediate threat to India's vital economic interests and national security concerns than a war on Iraq. Yet, the address remains obsessed with Pakistan and Bangladesh and the nuclear programme in North Korea while keeping mum on the central question of freedom for Palestine and withdrawal of US troops from Asia.

The address has also thrown an open challenge to the growing movement against disinvestment in profit-making public sector companies in key strategic sectors like aluminium and oil by terming the disinvestment policy 'irreversible'. The government had already indicated its adamant stand by rewarding disinvestment minister Arun Shourie with the additional portfolio of IT and communication. It should now be the turn of the trade union movement and the Left forces to respond adequately to the war declared by the government.

President Kalam has also chanted his favourite mantra of 'connectivity'. The other day, Vajpayee too had issued a connectivity revolution in his New Year musings from Goa. The President has stressed four strands of the connectivity network: physical connectivity, tele-connectivity, knowledge connectivity and market connectivity. Of these four connectivities, the last mentioned is really working overtime and it has already spawned an all-pervasive fifth connectivity about which Kalam has been conspicuously silent. It is the connectivity called crisis. It is nothing but a growing crisis which really connects the increasingly globalised Indian economy and the vast majority of India's cheap and unpaid productive labour and impoverished direct producers.

While Kalam and Vajpayee weaved the web of scientific and technological connectivity, the Singhals and Togadias are busy discovering new ploys to divide the people and vitiate the atmosphere with communal venom. From Ayodhya in UP they are now branching out to Bhojshala in Madhya Pradesh and Baba Budangiri in Karnataka. In the Sangh Parivar's scheme of things, the 'scientific' vision of connectivity and the political art of communal divide always go hand in hand.

The CPI(ML) called upon the opposition parties to frustrate BJP's sinister communal design to hoodwink the people and the parliament as it plays the "Ayodhya card" by going to Supreme Court just before the budget session and in a year of elections. Though it has categorically been reaffirmed by the former Chief Justice of India Sri J. S. Verma, that the Supreme Court order of 1994 on the acquisition of land in Ayodhya had specifically forbidden the handing over of any part of the acquired land to any party before the final settlement of the main Ayodhya title suit.

The CPI(ML) Polit Bureau Member Swadesh Bhattacharya has said in a statement on the eve of the budget session of Parliament that the BJP is vitiating the communal atmosphere with an eye on the elections in four states and to divert the attention from the bankrupt economic front. The CPI(ML) strongly feels that the current budget session of Parliament should take up its business in proper perspective. The parliament should uphold the great concern of the Indian nation against Bush's war on Iraq and condemn and oppose unequivocally the Bush-Blair-Israel evil-axis and their faithful disciples here in India, the Sangh Parivar. He further added that it is the demand of the day that the leftist parliamentarians in particular will put the BJP in the dock on the questions of its negligence to drought-stricken states, failure to address the crisis on the agrarian front, disinvestment, etc., and finally on the additional burdens the govt. is likely to impose on the common people through the budget.

A new history was created on Feb 15 when crores of people throughout the globe in 60 countries covering around 600 centres joined in protests against Bush's war hysteria over Iraq. It was the largest single political protest ever conducted and the first truly worldwide demonstration against imperialist war efforts. People in the countries of the world, including Israel, USA, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India, sent a clear message to George Bush that they are against his policies of aggression, hegemony and war.

After the UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and IAEA Director Mohammed el-Baradei submitted their inspection reports at UN headquarters in New York, thousands of anti-war demonstrators packed the streets near the United Nations headquarters next day on Feb 15. The largest of an estimated 150 peace rallies across the US that filled city streets with banners, chanting of slogans and widely participated by people from all walks of life. A number of antiwar veterans, including 83-year-old folk singer Pete Seeger, singer Harry Belafonte and actors Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover, and South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, addressed the protesters. Labor unions, too, took a big role as five major national unions took part in this protest. "We can stop this war. We're using our own power to stop this war," said an activist.

Some 90 US city councils have passed resolutions opposing military actions against Iraq, with many arguing that such a war would devastate their economies.

Bitter temperatures didn't cool the tempers of more than 100,000 peace activists in Montreal, who flocked to the city's core. In Toronto, about 10,000 people hit the pavement in a peaceful march that snarled traffic. "George Bush is a terrorist," the crowd shouted. A march in Quebec City attracted more than 3,000 people and the peace call echoed in 70 other cities of Canada

London witnessed the biggest public demonstration ever held in Britain, surpassing every one of the organisers' expectations and Tony Blair's worst fears. Organisers claimed that around two million had turned out. The protest witnessed participation of large number of ruling Labour Party members and prominent personalities like Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, Human Rights activists Jessy Jackson and Biyanka Jaggar, playwrite Herold Pinter and Liberal Democratic Party leader Charles Kennedy.

As many as 3 million people marched through Rome against the rightist government of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian government had pledged to allow the US army use Italy's roads, railways and ports in the build-up to a conflict.

3 to 4 million took to the streets in more than 50 towns and cities of Spain. Barcelona city officials estimated a turnout of 1.3 million people -nearly equalling the entire city's population of 1.5 million - in the largest demonstration in the city's history. Lakhs of anti-war demonstrators marched peacefully through downtown Madrid.

Paris, in France, saw some 2,00,000 people marching, while hundreds of thousands rallied in regional demonstrations held in over 80 other cities. The Paris march was called for by some 70 leftist political parties, trade unions, pacifist associations and human rights groups under the slogan: "Together, we can prevent this war." About half a million protesters marched through Berlin, and in other cities and towns across Germany, to demonstrate against a war with Iraq, underscoring Germany's strong anti-war stance. Protesters carried signs saying "No blood for oil." People took part in huge numbers in Dublin, Belfast, Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen, Athens, Moscow, Zagreb, Osijek, Vukovar, Knin, Zadar, Sibenik, Split and Dubrovnik. "I am here against the war because of the values that I was taught in the US. Bush is anti-American," said Reverend Donald Mader, a US citizen who joined in a protest march in Amsterdam. Also in Canberra, Sydney, Darwin, Perth, and Melbourne in Australia. People marched through Brisbane bearing banners with slogans such as "Axis of Idiots". In New Zealand tens of thousands demonstrated in Wellington. In a rare sign of unity in Israel, 3,000 Jews and Arabs marched together in Tel Aviv. Peace marches were held also in Damascus, Bangkok, Cairo, Tokyo, Manila, Seoul, Koalalampur, Hongkong, Taipei and Singapore. Marchers displayed slogans like "Axis of Evil: America, Britain, Israel", "Drop Bush, Not Bombs", "No to war! Yes to Peace!", "No War for Oil", "The United States is the biggest terrorist country", "Save the World" and "No to the imperialist war!" on banners and placards. In Asia, demonstrations were held in Kathmandu, Bombay, New Delhi, Srinagar, Madras, Bangalore, Dhaca, Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Multan, Khanewal, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Khairpur and Colombo. Unprecendented demonstrations were witnessed in countries like Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Guatemala and Peru in Letin America and South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Rwanda, Morocco and other countries in Africa.

On the eve of these protests UN weapons inspector Hans Blix had accepted in the UN that regarding weapons of mass destruction, he did not found any, "only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed" and "many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for one must not jump to the conclusion that they exist". Moreover, he told to the Security Council that Iraq had cooperated in the inspections process. Director of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed el-Baradei reported that he did not find any proof of a nuclear programme going on in that country. These reports have boosted those Security Council member countries' efforts who are opposing US war plans as well as the people all over the world.

When Blix was presenting his report, George Bush continued his war rhetoric on board USS J F Kennedy, and declared to the world, the "Washington would use every ounce of its power" and "if Security Council did not rally behind it, Washington would go along" with the so-called "coalition of the willing".

Although Colin Powell has asked for more time to reiterate his case, the US now is weakened in the Security Council and it is clear that majority of the nations are against war. Russia, France and China are strongly opposing US and pleading for the continuation of the inspection process. Mexico, Chile, Angola and Bulgaria will not support US resolution till there is an unanimity among all five permanent members of the Council, which is quite unlikely.

In the mean time, America has ordered expulsion of an Iraqi journalist who was deputed at UN and two Iraqi positions were bombed on Feb 14 on the pretext of installation of missile systems in the so called 'no fly zone'.

Though, the unprecedented global protests of Feb 15 have created pressure on US to some extent, it is still reiterating that America does not need any permission from the UN to attack Iraq. The massive military deployment in the gulf should not be ignored and danger of war is still looming large. This anti-war campaign needs to be further strengthened till the American war designs and its sinister intentions to hegemonise the world, particularly the third world nations, be defeated.

Imperialist war brings destruction but not the ultimate end. Either the people's resistance will prevent war or the war will give rise to the revolutionary war of the people. People, and people alone, not the weapons, will have the last say.

The UN Sanctions: Ongoing Attacks

The ongoing collateral damage of the last war and sanctions on Iraqi civilians has totalled more than 1 million deaths, half of which are children younger than 5, according to UNICEF and World Health Organization reports.

UNICEF confirms that 5-6 thousand Iraqi children are dying unnecessarily every month due to the impact of the sanctions, and that figure is probably modest.

During the first eight months of 1991, nearly 47,000 more children than normal died in Iraq, and the country's infant- and child-mortality rates more than doubled, to 92.7 and 128.5 per 1,000 live births respectively. A 1999 UNICEF study showed a continuing trend: In 1998, the infant- and child-mortality rates were 103 and 125 per 1,000, respectively.

In a January 1991 a document titled "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said the bombing of Iraq coupled with an embargo of chemicals and supplies could fully degrade Iraq's civilian water supply. "Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur," read declassified portions of the report.

Massive new irrigation systems stretching across the breadbasket regions of rural Iraq would normally be cause for celebration. In a nation where nearly a quarter of the children suffer chronic malnutrition, abundant crops of wheat and barley would signify hope and progress. But when Hans von Sponeck, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, visited Iraq last month he found neither: The spigots were turned off. Although the sophisticated sprinkler systems had survived the exhaustive screening of U.N. trade sanctions, the water pumps had not.

Desperation for Oil

US represents "the most colossal imbalance in military power ever seen of this earth"

"Controlling Iraqi oil is at the heart of the Bush campaign to replace Saddam with a more compliant regime." - Oil and Gas International, a Petroleum Industry Journal, Oct. 30, 2002.

At 112 billion barrels, Iraq's proven oil reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia's (262 billion barrels). An October 2002 assessment by the US Department of Energy estimates that additional "probable and possible" Iraqi oil reserve could amount to 220 billion barrels.

The standoff over Iraq has more to do with domestic crisis in the US than with the Baghdad regime. Washington is adamant to attack, despite Iraq's readiness to cooperate, makes one wonder whether Iraq is not just a pretext for the US to build "a new world order based on crude force rather than International Law.

When the world vehemently says no to war, the Prime Minister of India has 'advised' the 'super power' to show "great restraint" simultaneously telling people that he was not aware whether the 'super powers' are really thinking on these lines. He even avoided directly mentioning name of United States in his statement. RSS chief also expressed similar views. Whatever be the political compulsions for the government of India for taking such a feeble position, the real intentions of the Sangh Parivar, whose ideology ultimately runs the NDA govt., were explicit in VHP's Pravin Togadia's statement. Supporting the American war plans, he said "What if there is no proof of Iraqi complicity in terrorism, we are not talking about justice ... we are talking about the clash of civilisations". Togadia shamelessly added that the India businessmen and traders could make money in the post-war construction boom in Iraq.

Dr. Jayanta Rongpi representing the Hill Districts of Assam in the parliament staged a dharna in front of the main entrance of the parliament on the eve of the first working day of the current budget session after the President had addressed the joint sitting of both the houses. By displaying posters and placards depicting slogans like "No Autonomous State No Rest", "Create Autonomous State For Karbi Anglong & N C Hills", "Implement Article 244(A)" etc. Dr Rongpi wanted to draw the attention of the fellow MPs and the nation as a whole towards the popular demand of the Hill areas of Assam. Dr. Rongpi also expressed his deep anguish at the fact that the genuine and constitutional demand for an Autonomous State by the people of Assam Hill areas has been ignored just because the people remained confined to peaceful and democratic methods of movement. The complete silence on the issue maintained by the President in his speech yesterday has emitted a wrong signal to the people of North East that the Central Government understands only the language of AK56 rifle of the extremists and not the voices of democratic movements. The agitating MP said that he has already moved amendments to the motion of thanks to Presidents address. While reiterating the urgent need to implement the special provision of Article 244(A) which is a solemn national commitment to the people of the two hill districts and thereby to create an Autonomous State within the State of Assam, the MP also announces that his party CPI(ML) along with movement organisations like Karbi Student Association(KSA) and Karbi Nimaso Chingthur Asong (KNCA) and other fraternal organisation shall launch vigorous mass movement to compel the Government to concede their demand.

The 29th Karbi Youth Festival started in Taralangso, Diphu from February 16. Thousands of artists and other Participants are marching to Taralangso for the Festival. A cultural troop from Jharkhand has also reached Taralangso. Eminent poet and intellectual Nilamoni Phukan will participate as the chief guest in the closing session of the Festival on February 19.

The CPI(ML) has strongly condemned the killings of seven people in Warsaliganj of Nawada district in Bihar on Feb 12 and retaliatory killing of five people on Feb 16 and has described it a result of growing police-criminal nexus. The day-long Warsaliganj bandh called in protest on Feb 15 evoked a massive response. Protest demonstrations were also held in all blocks of the district.

A team led by Prabhat Kumar, Central Committee member of the Party, visited the site of the killings and met the family members of those killed as well as the villagers. The CPI(ML) investigation team has exposed that the police is also taking sides with either of the gangs and when killings were going on police remained aloof, though its camp was only one kilometer away from the scene of the murders and managed to reach the spot only after a gap of 14 hours.

Of late, Warsaliganj came into limelight for attacks and counter-attacks by two warring gangsters, who enjoy political patronage from RJD and NDA leaders, over efforts to establish hegemony on sand mining from the river-bed. Akhilesh Singh, who used to have monopoly over the sand-mining on the river-bed, is now being challenged by Ashok Mahato gang, and this has triggered a series of killings and counter-killings.

Hundreds of Pan (betel) growers of Islampur block marched through a stretch of 12 kilometers to block office under the banner of Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha (BPKS). They were demanding compensation for the losses accrued due to bad weather, loan without interest, and establishment of a Betel Research Institute in the region.

Eight parties of Assam gave a joint call to resist the proposed communal rath Yatra in Assam. On February 10, these parties organised a protest demonstration at Judges Field, Guwahati against the conspiracy to create communal division in the state. Leaders and supporters of CPI(ML), CPI, CPI(M), SUCI, RSP, RCPI, Janata Dal(S) and Samajwadi Party participated in the demonstration.

A Chhatra-Yuva Yatra (Student-Youth March) is being taken out from four different centres of the state. After covering several districts and important centers and campuses, these marches will reach Patna on Feb 23 to join the "Naya Bihar Banaao Jan Sammelan".

CPI(ML) condoles the death of veteran socialist scholar and leader Prem Bhasin, who passed away on 5 February at the age of 86. Prem Bhasin was one of founding fathers of Indian Socialist movement and had been general secretary of Socialist Party for many years. At his demise Party shares the grief with all socialist, progressive and democratic ranks of India.