Asia

We have just received the news that Chaudhary Munir Ahmed, a member of the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign and younger brother of Manzoor Ahmed, Member of Parliament and President of the PTUDC, has been arrested together with some labour activists and leaders involved in the PTUDC together with other lawyers. We need to raise as wide a campaign as possible in their defence.

There is much talk in the media about the various factors that have led General Musharaff to impose an Emergency in Pakistan. One very important factor that they all seem to conveniently ignore is the rising mood of trade union and working class militancy. This is taking place as the Pakistani economy plunges into the deepest crisis in its history. The scene is being prepared for an almighty workers' backlash.

On Saturday November 3 President Pervez Musharraf declared virtual martial law, imposing a state of emergency throughout Pakistan, suspending the Constitution and replacing superior courts. This amounts to his second coup d’etat after he seized power in October 12, 1999. It is a desperate move that underlines the extremely unstable nature of the regime, which is losing support by the day.

Both permanent and temporary workers at Unilever in Pakistan have come under attack from the bosses, who would like to change their status to contract workers, thereby avoiding the payment of medical and other benefits. In defence of their jobs and livelihoods the workers have launched a struggle and called for union solidarity.

The multi-million reception for Benzir Bhutto last week, and the subsequent terrorist bomb attack, revealed more clearly in one day all the deep contradictions of Pakistani society than anything else could have. The hopes and aspirations of the masses have been aroused, and they want solutions to their problems. No matter what happens in the days, weeks, and months to come, revolutionary storms loom large on the horizon.

We have just received this report from the Pakistani Marxists who intervened massively in the welcoming rally to receive Benazir Bhutto. Their ideas connected with many people on the rally. Unfortunately all this was cut across by the suicide bombings. The comrades turned their attention to helping the wounded. On Monday we will be publishing a lengthier analysis.

The dalits, the “untouchables”, of India are not one homogenous bloc. Within them a bourgeois layer has risen and aspires to be a part of the bourgeois class as a whole. With this aim in mind they promote the idea that the dalits as a caste need their own “dalit party”. To do this they try to isolate the dalit proletariat from the rest of the Indian working class to promote their own selfish interests. Here Rajesh Tyagi explains that what is needed is proletarian unity across the caste barriers.

The long post-war economic boom in Japan explained the relative political stability of the country. But since the 1980s things have changed. Now we are seeing its economic decline emerge as political instability, with the masses looking for an alternative to the status quo. The latest developments confirm this.

This article, written in 1998, looked at the severe crisis that was affecting Japan, with big falls in investment and thus in productivity, rising unemployment and falls in the real level of wages. The Liberal Democratic Party started losing support; the Democratic Party emerged in an attempt to prepare a bourgeois “alternative” to the fall of the LDP, while on the left the Communist Party was doubling its forces.

We often hear of the brutal conditions that workers have to suffer in underdeveloped countries. Here we have an example of a famous multinational, Unilever, which is making huge profits while paying starvation wages and using draconian measures when the workers dare to protest. Send messages of protest and let these workers know they are not alone.

When the CPN-Maoist joined the coalition government in Nepal after the revolutionary events last year, the media, the imperialists and last but not least the Nepali ruling class proclaimed a new era of peace and prosperity. This was never going to be the case and now, not even a year after the formation of the government, the Maoists have left the government and Nepal is heading back down the road of crisis.

More people have been killed in Myanmar (Burma) as the military try and hold back the wave of protest. But pressure is building up on the regime. Whether it will clamp down firmly or move in the direction of negotiations depends on the power of the movement in the coming days.

The sudden steep increase in the price of fuel in Myanmar (Burma) in August pushed the already impoverished masses beyond the limit. Now a mass movement threatens to overthrow the rotten military regime. But the lack of a genuine workers’ alternative has left a vacuum into which the bourgeois opposition are stepping.