Saturday, December 1, 2012

International Conference in Hamburg: the speech by the International Committee to Support the People's War in India

We begin publishing the speeches and messages read at the International Conference in support of People's War in India on 24 November in Hamburg.
Today the main speeches of the organizing forces, the International Committee to Support the People's War in India and the Ligue Against the Imperialist Agression, Hamburg, follow below.

On the next days we will publish all other texts



Speech of the International Committee to Support People's War in India to the International Conference in Hamburg


24th November 2012





The date of today, the November 24, would remain a black day in the annals of Indian revolutionary movement history. The November 24, 2011 the fascist Indian regime that labelled CPI (Maoist) as “the biggest internal security threat” killed Comrade Mallojula Koteswara Rao, comrade Kishanji, after capturing and torturing him alive in a well planned conspiracy.
We learned with rage and sadness the death of that leader of Indian revolution, killed by Indian regime, supported by world imperialism.
We united our hands with CPIm in that bad hour. The struggle of Maoists in India, comrades, is our struggle, their loss is our loss.
The ideological, theoretical and practical contribution of comrade Kishanji to the CPI(m), to the People’s War, to the proletarian and oppressed people’s struggle in India cannot be cancelled.
Instead, it is now more shining and its light reaches all corners in the world.
Since then up today, we redoubled our effort to transform that sorrow into strength!
We redoubled the support to war people in India; we intensified our struggle against imperialism in the world; we worked for proletarian internationalism, we called all the proletarians, revolutionaries, communists in our countries to advance in the revolution.
It was our way to honour comrade Kishenji and all martyrs of the revolution in India and in the world
This Conference is a further step in fulfilling our commitment and, at, first, let’s renew today our salute to comrades Kishanji, Azad and all the martyrs fallen for the revolution in India and all around the world.

Comrades, stand up and observe a minute of silence in honour of all the martyred comrades!

Maoist Comrades in India wrote us:

Comrades,
We extend our revolutionary greetings to the activities of support that with a great effort you promoted.
We read the calls, posters, slogans ... excellent!
The current stage of our struggle has not changed, despite the "Operation Green Hunt" and the murderers of our leading cadres, despite the efforts of the enemy, we grow in strength in the guerrilla areas and expand in new areas. In the course of People’s War, in different places we have reached the stage of mobile warfare.
The Operation Green Hunt unleashed by the government has not achieved its goals. Despite the blows we have suffered, the enemy’s morale is low. The plan of the ruling classes to annihilate our party and deprive the people of their guide and proletarian leadership is doomed to fail, because the people and all those who love freedom in this country support and protect the revolutionary movement and its leadership like the apple of their eyes, because they know that this way they safeguard the future of the country and new generations.
The people and people’s movements generate new revolutionary leaders and want that the New Democratic revolution in India advance to the victory and sweep away imperialists and their lackeys, the landlords and the comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie with all their representatives.
The impact of the global crisis and imperialist policies on workers and the people of our country is heavy. Corruption, unemployment, prices, poverty, migration due to loss of lands, forests, water, are increasing. The living conditions of the working class, oppressed people, peasantry, the middle class itself, has become unbearable and they are turning more and more to the revolution. Workers' strikes and people’s struggles have expanded in unprecedented way and they are adding to the unrests in all sectors of the people: those of adivasi peasants, which intensify and often result in riots; the economic struggles of the proletarians, that turn more and more into political struggles.
The strength of our party consists in integrating this raging river of the mass movement, with the slogans: land, people’s power and democracy, self-reliance.
We bring the consciousness that no fundamental change can be achieved without the complete destroying of the exploiting classes, in India and around the world.
Your effort is a great expression of proletarian internationalism, we support and see it as a part of the action to denounce the crimes of the Indian regime, the barbaric and genocidal Operation Green Hunt, the effort to gather all the friends of Indian revolution.

Let’s dare to fight and the victory will be of the people!


Furthermore, on the current situation in India, they wrote in their documents:

The Indian state is relentlessly continuing its extremely brutal attacks on the people of the country, particularly the adivasis, in the last two and half years in the name of Operation Green Hunt. The police and paramilitary forces unleashed by the ruling classes are perpetrating acts of 'encounter' killings, mass murders, sexual assault, torture, burning of villages, destruction of crops and grains, plunder of peoples' property, wanton arrests and forced 'disappearances etc. The objective of this war on people is to uproot the ongoing Maoist movement in the country, particularly in its central and eastern regions.
The comprador bureaucratic bourgeoisie and the imperialists are in desperation to loot and plunder our beloved country which is richly endowed with vast mineral, forest and water resources. From 2008 in particular, in the context of the deepening world economic crisis, they are scheming many a conspiracies to cheaply exploit the natural resources and labour power available in underdeveloped countries like India. After concluding MoUs involving investments worth lakhs of crores with the comprador governments and by undertaking the large-scale destruction of jal-jangal-zameen, these forces are displacing a large number of people from their homes and hearths. The people too have risen up against this aggression.
CPI (Maoist) is leading the people in this struggle and is standing with them. This is the reason why the Maoist movement has become the biggest hurdle before the exploitative ruling classes and their government. However, the threat felt by the ruling classes from the Maoist movement is being propagated by them as 'the biggest threat to the internal security of the country' with an aim to deceive the masses.
The ruling classes are portraying their imperialist-dictated neo-liberal policies of destitution, destruction and death as 'development', and are branding anyone as 'anti-development' who is opposed to such anti-people policies. They have singled out the Maoists in particular as the target of such misinformation campaign carried out through the pliant corporate media which is conducting a widespread propaganda-war against the Maoist movement by terming it as 'anti-development', violent and terrorist. The ruling classes are extremely terrified by the alternative model of development presented by the masses in the Maoist struggle areas, particularly in the Dandakaranya region where the people have destroyed the political power of the local feudal and reactionary forces through class struggle and have established organs of people's power in their embryonic forms. It is under the leadership of this peoples' government and through its initiative that this alternative model of development based on self-reliance and cooperation is taking shape. The ruling classes have undertaken its brutal offensive in order to wipe out this nascent revolutionary society and its path of people-oriented development. The imperialists, particularly US imperialism, are not only guiding this offensive but are also directly or indirectly participating in it. The proposed NCTC (National Counter-Terrorism Centre) too is being set up as per the diktats of US imperialism which is not only a threat to the basic rights of the citizens of the country but also is a severe blow to its so-called federal structure.
As a part of this military aggression, Indian Army was deployed in Bastar a year ago. This is not an issue merely confined to Bastar or Dandakaranya alone. The purpose of this army deployment is to crush the countrywide revolutionary movement. However, this deployment is being done under the garb of 'training' in order to mitigate the protests and opposition to the use of Indian Army against the people of the country - an army meant for confronting enemy forces of foreign countries. The Chhattisgarh government has decided to hand over 750 square kilometres of forest land in the Maad region to the army for 'training' purposes. This is a glaring proof of the manner in which the government itself is the biggest violator of the statutory prohibitions on the transfer of adivasi land to non-adivasi owners - be it the Fifth Schedule, PESA and other laws. The intention of the army, which is presently 'training' at a point between Narayanpur and Kondagaon, is to gradually cross the Narayanpur town and to occupy the interior villages of Maad. The top brass of the army are personally overseeing this 'training' programme.
Raids and attacks under Operation Green Hunt are being conducted for the last one year under the command of the Indian Army in which armed forces are being deployed in brigade-level formations. From 3 to 5 thousands of government armed forces and commandos are being utilised for each such massive attack. In this massive military operation, 19 villages were attacked and 12 villagers were arrested. The government forces beat up many other villagers. They entered many houses and looted them.
Maad region was encircled and simultaneously attacked from three sides - from Bijapur and Narayanpur districts of Chhattisgarh and from Garhchiroli district in Maharashtra - as per a massive military offensive by three thousand armed forces. This operation was named 'Operation Vijay' and 'Operation Haka'.
Nearly three thousand adivasis of Dandakaranya are presently confined in the prisons of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. They have been framed in many false cases as a result of which they are languishing in the dark cellars of prisons without any access to judicial redress or bailout. The condition of many of them is such that even if they were convicted of their crimes after the completion of the judicial process, they would have come out of jail by now after completing their jail terms. Many of them have been able to even engage any lawyer due to poverty and backwardness. Family members are prevented from meeting their relatives in prison, so much so that many of the prisoners are under conditions of mental agony. This is not just the condition of Dandakaranya, but the same situation prevails in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Simply put, the prisons of the country are being filled with adivasis so that the ground beneath the feet of the adivasis can be then handed over to the corporates.
The Central Committee of our Party has given the call for a number of 'Bharat Bandhs' to stop the fascist attacks on the people of the country by the exploitative ruling governments, to prevent the deployment of army in Bastar under Operation Green Hunt, to send back the armed forces camping in the pretext of 'training', to unconditionally release the adivasis and political prisoners confined in the jails of the country, and to demand the scrapping of the proposed fascist NCTC. These Bandhs have been primarily observed in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and in Gondia, Chandrapur and Garhchiroli districts of Maharashtra.


 Why have we promoted an International Committee in support of the People’s war in India, how did we reach this Conference?

In India an impetuous people’s war against the Indian bourgeoisie and the imperialism is developing and spreading more and more in nearly one third of the districts of the country.
It is not simply a guerrilla made by few thousands of fighters coming from the castes and tribal areas of the country. It is a real people’s war, led by the party of the proletariat of India, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), in which are involved – or is supported by – millions of poor peasants, women, “untouchables” fighting to free themselves.
The people’s war began where the root of the riot, the poverty, the tribal and capitalistic exploitation, the caste oppression, the plundering of the natural resources, were deeper and, therefore, the contradictions brought by the Indian capitalism ruled by the imperialism were sharper.
The people’s war won masses of young people, students, democratic and revolutionary intellectuals also in the cities and gained attention and support over the world.
Against the people’s war the Indian State, supported by the imperialists, launched a giant repressive offensive called “Green Hunt”, a real manhunt that hits the poor masses in India as animals to exterminate. The Indian State launched an internal military offensive against the people, waged by hi-tech-armed troops, police units and paramilitary militias, in order to spread terror and genocide in the villages, with raids, crop destroying, massive rapes and killings, selective murders, mass detentions and disappearing. In particular they aimed to behead the leadership of the people, targeting the leading comrades of the CPI(Maoist).
All this with the illusion to drown in blood the struggle of the people for their liberation.
With the silent/consent of the imperialist governments of US, Europe, Russia, and their mass-media, the crimes of the Indian State found the internal opposition of a wide front of prominent intellectuals. In all countries of the world political activists denounced those crimes and mobilized to stop “Green Hunt”.
A world campaign of information and solidarity has been launched by ICAWPI.
But in our opinion, we need something more than the condemnation of the crimes of the counter-revolution in India.
The masses led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) are writing a historical chapter of the class clash in the world between, on one side, imperialism and the reactionary bourgeoisies and, on the other side, the proletariat and the people of the world.
The development of the people’s war in India is a new proof that the revolution is the main tendency in the world today.
It shows again that the Maoism, the Marxism-Leninism of our era, is the command and guide of the world revolution against the imperialism in crisis.
The vanguard proletarians must understand that the advance of the people’s war in India seriously questions the strength balance, not only in the South-Asian region but on a world scale.
That is why we launched the proposal to form an International committee and organize world-wide campaigns of support to the People’s war in India, particularly in the belly of the imperialist beast, the countries where most of us operate.
The International Committee was born based the call launched from the international meeting in Paris on January 2010. Comrades from different countries have joined.
Since the very beginning it was made clear that the Committee was not to be built as a “cartel of groups” but as a centre of actions and propaganda of which proletarians and masses are the main subjects and players.
In each country, the committee was built as an autonomous organization that can collaborate with all those who bring support to the People’s Wars and the liberation struggles of the countries oppressed by imperialism, while maintaining its autonomy in the program and actions.
We always rejected any attempt to misuse our initiatives as a place for a general debate, forgetting that it is the support to the PW in India that unites and mobilizes.
Having adopted this approach, on 2 to 9 April 2011 the first International Week of mobilization in support of PW was called and took place, involving a lot of countries in all the continents.
With that, thanks its wide extension reached by the campaign, the Committee has shown its international dimension and the ability to play its role in promoting information and support for the People’s War in India, in the general context of the more general situation of the class struggle, the situation of imperialism and the struggle of the proletarians and oppressed peoples.
Drawing on the experiences of the first campaign, we stressed even more that we aim to reach the proletariat and the masses. Where we applied this, the campaign got a mass participation, where there was an attitude to seek the agreement between groups first, it was not successful.
Then, in the framework of a protracted campaign we decided, handling the contradictions in the different countries, to launch a new international week of action from 14 to 22 January 2012 with the slogans: "the repression by the Indian government does not stop but feeds the People's War" "may the wind of the People's war reach the proletarian masses all-around the world".
Finally, in particular in the imperialist countries, we called to mobilize particularly against Indian transnational companies, that expand their assets and profits even in the imperialist countries.
About one hundred of actions took place all around world during the second international week. New committees were formed, many other revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces joined the campaign. The posters with Kishenji and Azad have been on the walls in many countries and their heroic example live in the struggle of proletarians and oppressed peoples.
Colombia, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Spanish State, France, Germany, Turkey, Italy etc., in about 30 countries the posters of campaign, very appreciated by Indian comrades, have marked the march of the internationalist support !
The line and method of the International Committee, its united approach to support won against splitting positions and also against those who wants to shrink the support only to struggle against the Operation Green Hunt.
This second campaign opened the work that led to the international conference of today.

The People’s War in India in the international context and the world situation
The imperialist system is going through the most severe crisis since the 1930s. The current attempts to address and overcome the crisis only serve to deepen and extend it.
The crisis has its origin in the laws of running of the capitalist system itself. It is the expression of the limits of production for profit, and the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production, including the general and global nature of the production and private appropriation. In the world scene this means an ever growing gap between the wealth of a handful of imperialist countries and the poverty of three quarters of human beings in the countries oppressed by imperialism, between the wealth in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the relative and absolute impoverishment of proletarians and masses in the imperialist countries , between the overflowing richness of a parasitic and comprador bourgeoisie and the living conditions of misery and hunger of the proletariat and broad masses in the countries oppressed by imperialism.
The world is still faced with two possibilities: the exit from capitalism or a painful temporary recovery from this crisis by strengthening, enhancing the mechanisms of capital and thus prolonging the misery of the masses.
The imperialist bourgeoisie all over the world take advantage of the crisis to restructure imperialism on a global scale and save the interests of their class for their profits.
This leads to unloading the vicious weight of the crisis on the workers and masses. In both the oppressed countries and imperialist countries, unemployment, job insecurity and the cost of living increase, exploitation is ratcheted up to modern forms of slavery, workers' rights are reduced, social achievements won through years of struggles are erased, factories are closed with massive layoffs, peasants are ruined and driven to suicide, cuts in social expenditures and privatization of education and healthcare grow, the logic of commodification and profit is extended even to primary goods, such as water, air, sun, etc..
In the countries oppressed by imperialism, the protests, rebellions and liberation struggles have found in the revolts in Arab countries and in the Persian Gulf a new height and a new dawn. Young people, proletarians and the masses and, in some cases, organized sectors of workers, attacked and overthrew dictatorial regimes subservient to imperialism that seemed permanent. This has paved the way for new anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, anti-feudal, new-democratic revolutions.
In this new wave of struggle and resistance we must support and strengthen the struggle for the liberation of peoples and for new democracy, towards socialism and communism.
This is the context in which a potential new wave of the world proletarian revolution develops and emerges. It has as its reference points and strategic anchor the people's wars led by Maoist parties.
In this context, the people's war led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) successfully withstands unprecedented attacks by the enemy and is able to expand and advance.

The kind of support to the People's War in India, that we need
As we said before, on one hand, we formed the International Committee to go over the simple struggle against the war on people waged by the Indian regime and its crimes, and, on the other hand, in each country we built the Committee not as a cartel of groups, but as mass organization aimed to unite and mobilize proletarians and masses around the support to the PW, rejecting any attempt to turn the activities of support into an occasion of self-propaganda or to criticize and discuss other positions existing in the revolutionary and communist movement or even the those of the CPI(Maoist). Often, both these narrow or “leftist” tendencies, in the name of different pretexts, had the same effect to desert the campaign and the national chapters of the Committee. But these problems could not stop the development of our work and the process that has lead to the Conference today, where we all together are make clearer and stronger our internationalist solidarity.
While the criticism to the statement or international relationships held by single forces participating the International committee is legitimate, to break the unity of the International Committee in support of PW because of that criticism is unacceptable. First, because this Committee has a limited task, the support to the PW in India; secondly because the CPI (Maoist) itself appreciates the International Committee of support; thirdly because the International Committee includes forces from different countries and therefore it moves in a context in which the different positions existing at national level are not the decisive factor for the work of the Committee.
For all these reasons, those who desert the struggle of the International Committee, no matter what they argue, support in the speeches the PW and boycott in the facts this support. They agree with the Committee only if it has their positions and not to develop the widest possible support.

The Committee calls workers:
We call the workers, temporary workers and unemployed people, to hail the struggle of the masses against the reactionary regime of India and the imperialist powers that support it.
It is important to realize that the masses in India are fighting against the bosses, who sack and exploit them, against high prices, corruption and state terrorism. They are waging big demonstrations and strikes, occupations of factories and other actions against the bosses.
In India, the government has decided to sell the natural and human resources to Western imperialist transnational companies joint with the new monopolies that own the big steel and automobile industries like Tata, Essar, Jindal, Mittal, etc., which extract profits from the fierce exploitation of workers – often women and children; profits that allow them to become purchasers and share-holders of the great international monopolies in those sectors, in alliance with the bosses in imperialist countries.
The struggle for the rights of working people, for jobs, wages, better living conditions; the fight for freedom, for democracy; the struggle to topple the power of the bosses and put the power in the hands of the workers and the broad masses: those struggles have an international character and they unite us all over the world.
For those reasons, we call the workers to express our outmost solidarity to the Indian masses and the party that leads them; we congratulate them for fighting against the enemy’s attacks and advancing towards victory.

We particularly call women to support the people's war in India
The international press has found that women are at the forefront, leading the revolution in India.
Reports referred that among the Maoists operating in the areas of people's war in Maharahstra, many are women, and women are members of the Committees of division, Commanders. Women are even more than men are among the cadres and added commander. Women are the first to attack repressive foundations of the State.
The state and its repression are particularly fierce on women, using even the rapes as weapon. At the same time, the class and sex oppression on women is long lasting. But that is why the protracted people's war and attracts and helps the participation of many oppressed women and this actually makes the people's war a war of masses.
This makes the is people's war an international phenomenon of the struggle for women's liberation and the revolution in the revolution, to fight on two fronts, the class struggle and the struggle of gender, that masses of women need to impose their path and bring a general view, transforming the revolutionary struggle.
As the writer Arundhati Roy, prominent personality of the anti-globalization and women's movements, said, these comrades come form long years of struggle of women within the party, not only for their rights, but to convince the party that equality between men and women is at the center of an ideal of just society.
These women come from rebellion against feudal legacies, the traditions of forced marriage, abduction of women, violence and the brutal mutilation. They have not won all the battles, but - adds Arundhati Roy - "Which feminists have won?"
that is why The struggle of the Indian comrades is an example and inspiration for the women's movement in all corners of the world.

To the Youth we say:
In India there is an ongoing People's War waged by the heroic People's Liberation Guerrilla Army and led by the glorious Communist Party of India (Maoist) that is changing the face of the second most populated country in the world.
In the "largest democracy in the world", where indeed the majority of people live in poverty and are dispossessed of their fundamental rights to increase the profits of Indian capitalism, servant of imperialism, in the liberated areas the people’s democracy is growing for the poor masses, peasants, adivasi and tribal people, women, a real embryo of the state of new Democracy prelude to socialism. The reactionary Indian state wants to nip in the bud all this.
With genuine internationalist spirit, young revolutionaries have to support the People's War in India as it is decisive for the advance of world revolution, for the young revolutionaries in the imperialist citadels and metropolises, the People's War in India is a source of inspiration and encouragement in the revolutionary work.
Therefore it needs to inform and mobilize young people in support of People's War in India in schools, universities and working-class neighborhoods.

To all the communist, revolutionary, anti-imperialist, internationalist solidarity forces, we say:
The International Committee of support to the People’s war in India invited to participate and support the International Conference in support of People's War in India and the following decisions.
The international conference deals a hard blow to imperialism and Indian regime in the world and to the Indian expansionism, and is a major step to support to the people's war in India, to establish the road of People's War and revolution, the proletarian internationalism in the world.
The International Committee calls, in order to inform and discuss as best as possible about India and the People's War in India, the line and the action of the CPI (Maoist), the development of the Indian revolution in the international context, how to support it, to organize everywhere is possible of initiatives, in most cities, towns, workplaces, neighborhoods.
These initiatives, autonomously called by each force, should be coordinated with the International Committee, having as reference the international calls issued.

Comrades,
The International Committee of support to People's War in India, with its history, its trajectory, the difficulties it found, is a work in steps, of networking, of finding the real forces that actually can be united.
It is a revolutionary mass work.
It is a work to be fused with the proletarian struggles and the revolutionaries experiences of the class struggle.
It is the opposite of a dogmatic and sectarian approach.
It is a work that goes beyond the democratic mobilization against the State repression in India, because if we focus only on this aspect, we will end to make imperialism to appear strong and unbeatable, while in India the State and imperialism defend themselves and the People's War successfully withstands and grows.
In this work we appreciate the commitment of brave intellectuals, like Arundhati Roy, Ian Myrdal and others, but our aim is to mobilize base comrades, those who live in direct contact with masses, to build a real, international and internationalist movement.

To say so, the International Committee, with its formation, its life, its campaigns, has passed through the “strategic defensive”. After the International Conference in Hamburg, it enters a stage of “strategic equilibrium”, in which it cannot be cancelled but yet cannot win and pass to the offensive.

We call all the forces that have contributed to this work to advance together, to continue this work in every country, to use all the forms of struggle, from the propaganda, to spread information and unite masses, to the actions to hit the symbols of the Indian Regime and imperialism.

Let’s support the People’s War in India, until the victory!

International Committee of Support to People’s War in India,
November 2012
 

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