Around the world
U.S. dirty war is condemned
By John Catalinotto
As the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan ended its fourth week,
opposition to this slaughter of the Afghan people grew
worldwide. Not only Islamic forces, but working-class parties
and unions as well as renowned intellectuals, took public
stands against the bombing.
In addition, commentators in the media from Britain to India
broke ranks with the regimes in those countries and began to
criticize the U.S. intervention.
And as the governments in Germany and Italy prepared to send
troops and weapons against the people of Afghanistan, anti-war
forces in those countries stepped up their resistance. A
showdown between right and left is expected Nov. 10 in
Rome.
In India on Oct. 27 in the town of Malegon, police fired on
a demonstration of Muslims protesting the war on Afghanistan.
They killed seven people. Many local police tried to prevent a
small group of Muslims from distributing leaflets calling on
people to boycott U.S.-made goods and oppose the U.S. air
strikes on Afghanistan, according to the BBC.
There were also demonstrations in Indonesia and
Bangladesh.
Earlier, on Oct. 25, the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) and
its youth organization organized a combative hour-long
demonstration in Santander Park in Bogotá against both
U.S. military aggression in Afghanistan and U.S. intervention
in Colombia.
According to a PCC release, the demonstration "joined young
students, union workers, ordinary citizens and activists and
leaders" of the two groups, "who carried the red banners of
their revolutionary organizations.
"We don't want to be a U.S. colony," they chanted, "we want
a free and sovereign Colombia." They burned the U.S. flag while
chanting, "Yankees out of Afghanistan and Colombia."
In Colombia's neighbor, Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez and
some of his cabinet members have spoken out decisively against
the U.S. bombing, arousing anger in Washington.
Chavez called for an end to "the killing of innocents" in
Afghanistan. He described the U.S. bombing as "responding to
terror with terror." Defense Minister Jose Rangel and Deputy
Foreign Minister General Arevalo Mendez both recently condemned
the U.S. bombing campaign, and Interior Minister Luis Miquilena
said he had yet to see evidence that al-Qaeda was involved in
the attacks.
In Lisbon on Oct. 29, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP)
organized the first mass demonstration in Portugal against the
U.S. war. Held in the early evening hours after work, the
protest drew 5,000 people. PCP members said that was more than
had come out during the U.S./NATO aggression against Yugoslavia
in 1999.
PCP members told Workers World that though the media tried
to play down the importance of the protest, in Portugal--as
elsewhere--they must be realizing that opposition to the war is
much greater than they want to admit.
In Britain on Nov. 2, at least 20 anti-war protesters
barricaded themselves in a Royal Navy office at the University
of Sussex. Outside, 200 students threatened to storm the campus
building at Falmer, near Brighton.
No one was injured in the takeover, but police arrested 20
people on suspicion of false imprisonment--claiming they
prevented a naval officer from leaving--and criminal
damage.
Criticism of the U.S. war and of Prime Minister Tony Blair's
up-front role in selling it worldwide has grown in newspapers
like the Mirror, the Independent and the Guardian.
The government of right-wing media magnate Silvio Berlusconi
in Italy is pushing for a parliamentary vote Nov. 7 to send
2,000 troops, the aircraft carrier Garibaldi, other ships,
Tornado jet bombers and other resources to join the U.S. war
against Afghanistan. The parliamentary opposition known as the
"Olive" is split over how to vote. Politicians like Massimo
d'Alema, who led Italy's participation in the war on
Yugoslavia, are pushing to join the U.S. war.
With this challenge before them, the anti-globalization
movement, the Refoundation Communist Party and other anti-war
forces are joining for three days of action set for Nov. 8, 9
and 10 in Rome. This includes two days of public debate on
"War, Imperialism, Globalization and Terrorism" and a national
march through the capital, ending with a mass concert. This may
well turn out to be the largest single protest yet against the
new war.
On the same day the governing majority, together with the
"Olive" coalition, is holding a national public meeting in Rome
to support the United States.
In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who led Germany's
participation in the war in the Balkans, has been actively
seeking to put German soldiers at risk in Afghanistan.
This pro-war position has begun to arouse opposition in the
labor unions. Most union leaders come from the Social
Democratic Party and are usually willing to go along with the
foreign policy of the party's political leaders. But on Oct.
31, the large IG Metall union criticized Schroeder's "blind
servility to the USA" and called the new anti-terror laws a
threat to constitutional rights at home.
This challenge from the party's base so angered Schroeder
that he said the unionists should stick to bread-and-butter
issues and not mess in foreign policy. The union leaders
answered, "War and peace were and remain a central theme of the
workers' movement."
By Nov. 5, the German government made it clear it was
looking for a blank check from the Bundestag in a vote the
weekend of Nov. 10 to send German troops and planes into
battle. In the parliament, only the Party of Democratic
Socialism planned to vote against, but the anti-war movement
was mobilizing to protest in the streets.
Intellectuals speak out
More of the world's prestigious intellectuals, some of whom
had reacted with sympathy and understanding to the victims of
the Sept. 11 attacks, have now begun to criticize the U.S. for
its response.
The Communist Party of Greece released a statement by
world-renowned composer Mikis Theodorakis and by Manolis
Glezos, famous for tearing down the Nazi swastika from the
Acropolis in 1941, an action that signaled the start of the
resistance to German occupation.
The statement reads in part: "The whole of mankind is
experiencing the cruelty of the new war that NATO and the USA
let loose against Afghanistan's people, with the pretext of a
reply to terrorism, using as an excuse the terrorist attack on
New York and Washington. They hypocritically claim that they
are going after the Taliban but in reality they are going after
all the people in Afghanistan."
Arundhati Roy, the Indian author, activist and fighter for
women's rights who is currently in a struggle with the Indian
Supreme Court over the building of a dam, recently published an
article in Outlook India.com criticizing U.S. policy. Not one
U.S. journal will publish it.
Roy, author of the critically acclaimed novel "The God of
Small Things," wrote in part: "The September 11 attacks were a
monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong. The
message may have been written by Osama bin Laden (who knows?)
and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been
signed by the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars.
"The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the
17,500 killed when Israel--backed by the U.S.--invaded Lebanon
in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Desert Storm,
the thousands of Palestinians who have died fighting Israel's
occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who died, in
Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the
Dominican Republic, Panama, at the hands of all the terrorists,
dictators and genocidists who the [U.S.] American government
supported, trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms."
Reprinted from the Nov. 15, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page