Solidarity with DPRK, no sanctions

Following are excerpts from two statements in solidarity with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea following that country’s first nuclear test Oct. 9. The first is from the Socialist Party of India (SUCI), which also organized an Oct. 17 demonstration in Kolkata. The second is a statement from Jose Maria Sison, as chairperson of the International Coordinating Committee of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) in the Philippines.

Socialist Party of India

The SUCI statement is in the form of a memorandum to U.S. President George W. Bush:

While extending full support to the nuclear test conducted on Oct. 9 by North Korea, which gave due prior indication and ensured no radioactive fall-out, we, on behalf of the democratic-minded peace-loving people of India, would like to emphasize that the socialist government there had no other option but to carry out this test in order to confront the sustained as well as escalated threat of your government and its allies to subvert the socialist system in that country, either by engineering counter-revolution from within or mounting external aggression in the form of armed intervention and creating an economic blockade.

It is the U.S. government that persistently refused to sign a non-aggression pact with North Korea and thereby guarantee her sovereignty and territorial integrity, and instead encircled her with a naval armada of guided missiles, destroyers, bombers and fighter squadrons, nuclear weapons and 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea, that is solely and squarely responsible for pushing North Korea to resort to this otherwise avoidable course of action in self-defense.

We severely condemn the most atrocious economic and military sanctions imposed on socialist North Korea by the UN clearly at the instigation and insistence of the U.S. This once again showed that the UN has virtually become a rubber stamp of the U.S. regime which is found to pursue international gangsterism with alacrity, trampling underfoot all international laws, norms and practices and flaunting brute military might as if it were licensed to arrogate to itself the right to commit foul play with any country that refuses to kneel down before its dictatorial fiats and be pliant with its brigandage and hegemonistic design. ...

We want you to immediately desist from plotting conspiracies against North Korea, revoke all sanctions on her, remove the military encirclement around, diffuse all war tensions being precipitated by you centering around the issue, honor her inalienable right to freedom, sovereignty and preservation of socialist system, and respond to her call for settling all differences through peaceful meaningful rational bilateral talks.

From Jose Maria Sison

“The Korean people and the DPRK have the right to defend their national independence.”

The Korean people and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have all the right to defend their national sovereignty and independence, to develop the means to protect themselves, to pursue economic development and seek the peaceful reunification of Korea against the hostile policy of U.S. imperialism and its rabid followers.

It should never be forgotten that Japan colonized the Korean people. Then the U.S. subjected them to massacres in the aftermath of World War II and during the full-scale U.S. war of aggression in 1950-53. It exacted the death toll of more than 4 million Koreans in its failed attempt to control the entirety of the Korean peninsula.

While keeping Korea divided into North and South along the 38^th parallel, the U.S. chiefly has used all kinds of methods to contain and subvert the DPRK. These include military encirclement, economic blockade, climate manipulation, espionage and intrusive surveillance, plans and threats of nuclear bombing and countless provocative acts.

The Korean people and the DPRK have therefore a great cause for rejoicing over the successful testing of its nuclear weapon capabilities. They regard these as means of self-defense against the relentless threats of the U.S. and its cohorts in the Asia-Pacific region. In this regard, the people of the world congratulate the Korean people for the upgrading of their defensive capabilities.

More than ever the U.S. and its cohorts cannot trifle with and bully the Korean people and the DPRK because these are now armed with nuclear weapons. The U.S. and the UK were able to pummel Iraq with bombs for more than 12 years and to launch a fullscale war of aggression in 2003 because they knew that Iraq had no nuclear weapons even as they drummed up the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and had links with al Qaeda. ...

We hope that the now given the fact of DPRK’s possession of nuclear weapons will help to reinforce the national sovereignty and independence of the Korean people and the DPRK, to weaken U.S. hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region, to counter the U.S. primacy in nuclear weapons, to strengthen the anti-imperialist movement of the people, to advance the movement for the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons and to attain a just and lasting peace in the world.