Friday, January 29, 2010

IS THIS THE DEMOCRATIC SETUP, LETTER TO P.Chidambaram.



To,
P.Chidambaram,
Hon'ble Home Minister,
India.


Sir,
First we would like to congratulate you for starting 'operation green hunt'. India is on the verge of becaoming a SUPER POWER, developed nation in near future. As Prime Minister stated few months before that the poverty will be rooted out from the country, we understand that their is an urgent need to eliminate the poor people and operation green hunt is a romantic idea to achieve it. We can understand that rebellion , that too rebellion by people who find it difficult to have stomach full of food is completely unacceptable.




We would also like to congratulate your obsessiveness for democracy and democratic setup in this era, where everyone is busy bringing their kins and relatives for politics. As you have stated many times violence is not acceptable in democracy; ofcourse it excludes state sponsored violence right?


As humble students of present day political and socioeconomical issues we have few , very few doubts. Recently there was MLC elections in Karnataka. Money ruled it from the beginning. The ruling party itself was a role model which shifted[ abducted] the voters to resorts and bribed. The case was very similar to earlier MLA elections where crores of rupees was distributed. Is purchasing voters and their votes a mandatory step in establishing democratic setup. If so what amount of money should one have to enter politics [ please mention the exact money as we have to arrange it by next elections]

And finally if this is your democratic setup should we [youth of india] accept it or reject it and die in green hunt??
I hope you will answer the above questions.

Your's faithfully,
"MISGUIDED" YOUTH,
INDIA.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Farm suicides: a 12-year saga , P. Sainath


The loan waiver year of 2008 saw 16,196 farm suicides in the country, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Compared to 2007, that’s a fall of just 436. As economist Professor K. Nagaraj who has worked in-depth on farm suicide data says, “the numbers leave little room for comfort and none at all for self-congratulation.” There were no major changes in the trend that set in from the late 1990s and worsened after 2002. The dismal truth is that very high numbers of farm suicides still occur within a fast decreasing farm population.

Between just the Census of 1991 and that of 2001, nearly 8 million cultivators quit farming. A year from now, the 2011 Census will tell us how many more quit in this decade. It is not likely to be less. It could even dwarf that 8 million figure as the exodus from farming probably intensified after 2001. The State-wise farm suicide ratios — number of farmers committing suicide per 100,000 farmers — are still pegged on the outdated 2001 figures. So the 2011 Census, with more authentic counts of how many farmers there really are, might provide an unhappy update on what is going on.

Focussing on farm suicides as a share of total suicides in India misleads. That way, it’s “aha! the percentage is coming down.” That’s silly. For one thing, the total number of suicides (all groups, not just farmers) is increasing — in a growing population. Farm suicides are rising within a declining farm population. Two, an all-India picture disguises the intensity. The devastation lies in the Big 5 States (Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh). These account for two-thirds of all farm suicides during 2003-08. Take just the Big 5 — their percentage of all farm suicides has gone up. Worse, even their percentage of total all-India suicides (all categories) has risen. Poor States like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are doing very badly for some years now.

In the period 1997-2002, farm suicides in the Big 5 States accounted for roughly one out of every 12 of all suicides in the country. In 2003-08, they accounted for nearly one out of every 10.

The NCRB now has farm suicide data for 12 years. Actually, farm data appear in its records from 1995 onwards, but some States failed to report for the first two years. Hence 1997, from when all States are reporting their farm suicide data, is a more reliable base year. The NCRB has also made access much easier by placing all past years of “Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India” reports on its website.

The 12-year period allows us to compare farm suicide numbers for 1997-2002, with how they turned out in the next 6-year period of 2003-2008. All 12 years were pretty bad, but the latter six were decidedly worse.

Reading a ‘trend’ into a single year’s dip or rise is misleading. Better to look at 3-year or 6-year periods within 1997-2008. For instance, Maharashtra saw a decline in farm suicide numbers in 2005, but the very next year proved to be its worst ever. Since 2006, the State has been the focus of many initiatives. Manmohan Singh’s visit to Vidharbha that year brought the “Prime Minister’s Relief Package” of Rs.3,750 crore for six crisis-ridden districts of the region. This came atop Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s Rs.1,075 crore “CM’s relief package.” Then followed the nearly Rs.9,000 crore that was Maharashtra’s share of the Rs.70,000-crore Central loan waiver for farmers. To which the State government added Rs.6,200 crore for those farmers not covered by the waiver. The State added Rs.500 crore for a one-time settlement (OTS) for poor farmers who had been excluded from the waiver altogether because they owned over five acres of land.

In all, the amounts committed to fighting the agrarian crisis in Maharashtra exceeded Rs. 20,000 crore across 2006, 2007 and 2008. (And that’s not counting huge handouts to the sugar barons.) Yet, that proved to be the worst three-year period ever for any State at any time since the recording of farm data began. In 2006-08, Maharashtra saw 12, 493 farm suicides. That is nearly 600 more than the previous worst of 2002-2005 and 85 per cent higher than the 6,745 suicides recorded in the three-year period of 1997-1999. The same government was in power, incidentally, in the worst six years. Besides, these higher numbers are emerging within a shrinking farm population. By 2001, 42 per cent of Maharashtra’s population was already urban. Its farmer base has certainly not grown.

So was the loan waiver useless? The idea of a waiver was not a bad thing. And it was right to intervene. More that the specific actions were misguided and bungled. Yet it could also be argued that but for the relief the waiver brought to some farmers at least, the suicide numbers of 2008 could have been a lot worse. The waiver was a welcome step for farmers, but its architecture was flawed. A point strongly made in this journal (Oh! What a lovely waiver, March 10, 2008). It dealt only with bank credit and ignored moneylender debt. So only those farmers with access to institutional credit would benefit. Tenant farmers in Andhra Pradesh and poor farmers in Vidharbha and elsewhere get their loans mainly from moneylenders. So, in fact, farmers in Kerala, where everyone has a bank account, were more likely to gain. (Kerala was also the one State to address the issue of moneylender debt.)

The 2008 waiver also excluded those holding over five acres, making no distinction between irrigated and unirrigated land. This devastated many struggling farmers with eight or 10 acres of poor, dry land. On the other hand, West Bengal’s farmers, giant numbers of small holders below the 5-acre limit, stood to gain far more.

Every suicide has a multiplicity of causes. But when you have nearly 200,000 of them, it makes sense to seek broad common factors within that group. Within those reasons. As Dr. Nagaraj has repeatedly pointed out, the suicides appear concentrated in regions of high commercialisation of agriculture and very high peasant debt. Cash crop farmers seemed far more vulnerable to suicide than those growing food crops. Yet the basic underlying causes of the crisis remained untouched. The predatory commercialisation of the countryside; a massive decline in investment in agriculture; the withdrawal of bank credit at a time of soaring input prices; the crash in farm incomes combined with an explosion of cultivation costs; the shifting of millions from food crop to cash crop cultivation with all its risks; the corporate hijack of every major sector of agriculture including, and especially, seed; growing water stress and moves towards privatisation of that resource. The government was trying to beat the crisis — leaving in place all its causes — with a one-off waiver.

In late 2007, The Hindu carried (Nov. 12-15) the sorry result emerging from Dr. Nagaraj’s study of NCRB data: that nearly 1.5 lakh peasants had ended their lives in despair between 1997 and 2005. Just days later, Union Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar confirmed those figures in Parliament (Rajya Sabha Starred Question No. 238, Nov. 30, 2007) citing the same NCRB data. It’s tragic that 27 months later, the paper had to run a headline saying that the number had climbed to nearly 2 lakh. The crisis is very much with us. Mocking its victims, heckling its critics. And cosmetic changes won’t make it go away.

Campaign Wake Europe up to crimes of Indian State

Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism (CARC) - Italy
Via Tanaro, 7 - 20128 Milano - Tel/Fax 02.26306454
e-mail: resistenza@carc.it – website: www.carc.it


National Direction - International Relations Department
Tel. +39 0226306454 - e-mail: carc.ri@libero.it
25/01/2010


To Democracy and Class Struggle

And, for their information, to the other organizations and parties signatories of the campaign Wake Europe up to crimes of Indian State with Spring Thunder Europe 2010:
Maoist Communist Party of France,
(new)Italian Communist Party,
CARC Party (Italy),
Serve The People (Norway),
Co-ordination Committee of Revolutionary Communists of Britain,
Revolutionary Praxis - Britain.
WPRM Britain

And to all concerned parties and organizations

Dear comrades,
we congratulate you on launching the campaign Wake Europe up to crimes of Indian State with Spring Thunder Europe 2010. We invite other parties and organizations to join this campaign.
We propose the signatories constitute an International Coordination for promoting and spreading the campaign. We are thinking of something like the coordination promoting the campaign BDS (Boycotting-Disinvestment-Sanctions) against Israel (http://www.bds-info.ch), or the one here in Italy promoting the campaign for mobilize immigrants and autochthonous on 1st March “A day without immigrants: 24 hours without us” (http://primomarzo2010.blogspot.cm.
We propose the International Coordination drafts a Call that every signatory will wide spread on international level and that everyone will translate and wide spread distribute in its own country. This Call should be addressed to Communists, vanguard workers, progressive and democratic people. It should shortly but effectively indicate 1. the objectives of the campaign, 2. the reasons why democratic and progressive people and Communists all over the world must demonstrate against the crimes of Indian Union government and against the war (the operation Green Hunt) it launched. We have to proclaim international solidarity with the targets of the criminal war launched by Indian Union government: the tribals (the Adivasis) and the Maoists. We have to indicate some main instruments of the campaign (conferences, local committees, articles and reports on newspapers, television, radio, Internet, initiatives as films, exhibitions, demonstrations, sit-in, etc.).
According to us, in this call we must describe the conditions of misery to which Indian Union government and British imperialism before it reduced Adivasis and backwardness and oppression they suffer more than 60 years after Indian Union independence on 1947, the expulsion of Adivasis from their territories the Indian Union and the federate State gave to the multinationals (nature, size and duration of ongoing operation, that is the source of Adivasis’ resistance, supported and promoted by Maoists), the destruction of (how many?) square kilometers of forest and following deterioration of the planet, the other wars Indian Union government is already waging for years in North Western and North Eastern India, US imperialists and Israeli Zionists’ role in Indian Union government’s criminal deeds, the merits of Maoists, already active in whole territory of Indian Union, who gave a progressive and effective direction to Adivasis’ resistance, etc. All these issues must be dealt synthetically but effectively in the Call.
We propose every one of the signatories indicate to the others 1. the instruments he has for the campaign (interviews, films, exhibitions, websites, blogs, etc.) and maybe the others can use, 2. the international contacts by which he thinks to extend the campaign, 3. the national initiatives (whom to contact for each organism, whom to mobilize, some public initiative we already are planning, etc.) he is going to promote (someway a first draft of campaign planning).

The CARC Party will publish an article on the issue on its monthly paper Resistenza. It is getting in touch with leaders of the movement defending human, civil and political rights in India and journalists in Italy for publishing interviews on Italian national newspapers.
It invites parties and organizations of the International Communist Movement to join the campaign. Particularly we invite to join it MLPD and KOE, which representatives participated in the meeting we held on the end of November 2007 in London, where many exponents of the international communist movement defined the lines of development of the campaign that there your organization Democracy and Class Struggle launched.
It proposes the coordination with the many initiatives already developing about the matter on European level. Firstly, we propose to contact ILPS that already launched an initiative of protest at La Hague, and plan to organize another one on March.
It proposes to invite an exponent of the movement of defense of human, political and civil rights of Indian people for a tour in many European nations.
It plans to deal with the matter in the international aggregations it participates in.
It plans to organize initiatives in coordination with other forces concerned or already operating here in Italy. First of all, the Proletarian Solidarity Association participates in the initiatives planned or to be planned, as it is particularly interested in the matter of repression and of political prisoners, as the repressive action of the Indian State is one of the cruelest and most barbaric of the whole world.
We also inform that the Anti-Imperialist Camp, whose Italian section we are in touch with, will send a delegation in India in the first days of February, as in next summer it plans to organize an intervention that gathers many people from our countries and sends them to India for some weeks in the areas the Indian Union government wants to attack.

This is a first draft of work plan s regards our Party on national and international level. We shall be glad to know as soon as possible what you think about our proposals.
With comradely greetings,

Paolo Babini

CARC Party – International Relations Department

Monday, January 25, 2010

Haiti's Story must be told

Haiti was the scene of the only successful slave revolution in history when the heroic descendants of African slaves drove out the strongest army in the world at that time, the French.

The French government forced Haiti to pay reparations of millions of dollars for daring to rebel.

FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES WANTED AN EXAMPLE MADE OF THIS AFRIKAN NATION TO SHOW WHAT WOULD LIE IN STORE FOR ANY OTHER REBELLIOUS AFRIKAN NATION

Tthe U.S., also at that time feared the influence of Haiti on the slaves in the USA, and with France embarked on a policy of isolating and impoverishing Haiti.

This established, Haiti's destructive patterns of political violence and economic chaos continuing from then up to the present time.

Between 1915 and 1934 U.S. marines occupied Haiti, suppressing a liberation struggle and implanting puppets. The U.S. backed the infamously cruel tyrant Papa Doc Duvalier, and then his son Baby Doc in the middle of the century..

The US and French governments conspired to overthrow the popular president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the 1990's and then again just a few years ago in 2004.

In Haiti's hour of need the past must be remembered and the people of Haiti freed from the destructive power of Imperialism in the 21st Century.

Statement of the George Jackson Socialist League and Democracy and Class Struggle

The revolutionary movement led by the CPP-MLM will continue fighting till victory

"Failure is what the Oplan Bantay Laya 2 achieved thru the implementation of the 61st IB PA in southern Negros," a statement from the Ka Roger Mahinay Command (RMC) said.

"The repeated statement of victory against the revolutionary movement by the military especially from the notorious 61st IB is an old broken record that even their shadows laugh over their wildest dreams thru recycled surender, intrigues, psywar activities and lies," the RMC added in the statement.

According to the RMC they have preserve their forces and have initiated an ambush on fascist troops of the 61st IB PA in Sitio Indangawan, Brgy Manlocahoc, Sipalay City last December 9, 2009. The said ambush resulted in the deaths of three elements of the military in the first volume of fire by the Red fighters and the wounding of another who later died in the hospital. The bodies of the dead soldiers were hidden from public view by concealing it under the seats at the back of the Rio-truck used by the military in responding to the ambush in the area. These were brought to the Barasbarasan HQ, Brgy Manlocahoc, Sipalay City while a civilian woman was wounded by rock splinters far from the ambush site.

The RMC also pointed out primary gains like raising the levels of its mass organizations, increase membership of revolutionary mass organizations of peasants, women, youth and cultural activists, boosting prices of peasants products, wage increase for the farm workers, defending the peasants against landgrabbing and opposition against destructive foreign owned mining companies and also promoting anti-fascist mass movements in the area. They also serve punishments handed down by the revolutionary peoples' court against criminal and bad elements in the area.

"Despite military operations, the RMC was able to accomplish the holding of the 41st anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines- Marxism-Leninism- Maoism (MLM) ceremonies inside a guerrila camp attended by more than 200 guests from the cities and the interior areas," added the RMC.

"This 2010, the RMC will do it's best in contributing to the national call of elevating the armed struggle to the strategisc stalemate in five years and victory in the next ten years," concluded the RMC statement.

Reference :
Ka Roger Mahinay Command statement
Southwest Guerilla Front
Negros Island

The Youngest Maoist, two years old Madvi Mukesh nabbed!

Breaking news! Youngest Maoist nabbed!
Check out the murderous rage on his face!
Check out the hand that has bludgeoned many heads!
Check out the strained forehead that explain his years committed to bloodshed!
© Javed Iqbal
When Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh referred to Maoists as being the “single largest threat to the nation”, did he mean this child, whose fingers were brutally chopped off while his family was massacred?
Now, even before this ‘Maoist’ could be sent in for a narco-analysis, let’s understand where he comes from.
Name: Madvi Mukesh
Age: Two years old
Tribe: Muria
Residence: Gompad village, police station Konta, district Dantewada (on the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border)
Family: Maternal grandfather Madvi Barjar (50) – dead; grandmother Madvi Subhi (45) – dead; mother Kartam Kunni (20) – dead; maternal aunt Madi Mooti (8) – dead; father (21).
Mukesh was with his family on the morning of October 1, 2009, when something unusual happened. Several men wearing military fatigues – SPOs (special police officers), police and other security forces – pointed their guns at these ‘Maoists’ and shot at them. Mukesh’s neigbours were killed – Muchaki Handa, Markam Deva, Tomra Mutta, newly-married couple Soyma Subba and Soyam Jogi.

Mukesh’s family was wiped out. He was found to be crying near a pool of blood, oozing from the chopped body of his aunt. His wails were uncontrollable – did he understand the meaning of the loss of his family, or was it because his three fingers were chopped during the carnage?
His ‘Maoist’ father wasn’t at home at that time. He was saved.
Houses were burnt down. Paddy, pulses, brass pots, poultry and cash were taken away. In all, the villagers found that 10 of their people were dead. Some youths were missing. Mukesh Madvi, the ‘Maoist’, disappeared into the jungles with his father.
About 200 kms north of Gompad, news about an encounter was being circulated in the press. Operation Green Hunt had officially begun on October 1, 2009, and it was declared that some Maoists were killed near the Andhra border. When questions were raised by some sceptical journalists about the bodies of the Maoists, they were told that the villagers had disposed them off.
On January 3, 2010, when I met Amresh Mishra, Superintendent of Police (SP) of Dantewada, and had asked him about the Gompad massacre, he clarified that it wasn’t a massacre. “There was only a firing from both the sides. There was no casualty; only some explosives were found.”
January 7, 2010, would have been the day when, like Mukesh, many other ‘Maoists’ would have come to Dantewada for a Jan Sunwai (public hearing), so that they could put forth their case. Home Minister P Chidambaram had promised Himanshu Kumar of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, who had planned the Jan Sunwai, that he would be present to hear the unending woes of the people. However, the Governor of Chhattisgarh ESL Narasimhan prevented the Home Minister from making that visit. The Jan Sunwai was bound to have opened a can of worms before the national media, if the Home Minister had attended the meeting.
Mukesh did arrive for the Jan Sunwai along with his father, and several other optimists, on January 5. They were about 25 of them. No sooner did they arrive at Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, they were surrounded by SPOs. About 30 minutes later, they were all packed into three Boleros which bore no number plates.
It has been 10 days since those ‘Maoists’ were taken to an undisclosed location and there has been no news about them.

© Javed Iqbal
So that is the government’s definition of a ‘Maoist’, whom I encountered personally – the tribal carrying logs of firewood who starts walking through jungles since 3 am, and reaches the nearest town by 7 am, to sell the firewood for Rs 60. The tribal who walks about 50 kms to reach the police station, to complain that the forces stationed in his village killed the only hen that he had, is a Maoist for the government. The two-year-old Suresh is a Maoist for the government.

Veteran questions Maoist fight

October 4, 2009
SANKARSHAN THAKUR
Kumawat, the former BSF chief
New Delhi, Oct. 3: One of India’s topmost anti-Naxalite strategists has questioned the Centre’s new “crackdown-first development-later” credo and warned that any use of air power against Maoists could saddle the nation with “Afghanistan and Iraq-like” security liabilities.
“Development must go hand in hand with the fight against Naxalites; deprived people in the heartland cannot be expected to wait on their misery until the government is done with its long-haul campaigns,” Mahendra Kumawat, who retired as director-general of the BSF last month, told The Telegraph today.
“The government is going to lose more hearts and minds to the Maoists if it forges ahead with a strike policy that brings nothing but bloodshed and disruption to people in the affected zones. That is going to multiply our problems, not solve them. I wish the government all the best, but it isn’t going to work.”
The scorch-then-salve policy, advocated for long by hardline think-tanks, has found favour with home minister P. Chidambaram, but it has also alarmed sceptics within the security establishment who believe strictly police solutions are a “counter-productive half measure”. Recently unshackled by retirement, Kumawat may be articulating their concerns.
Kumawat speaks from a decade’s “on ground” experience of dealing with Naxalites in the Andhra-Orissa-Chhattisgarh triangle. Before assuming command of the BSF, he was also chairman of the national anti-Naxalite task force in the Union home ministry during Shivraj Patil’s tenure as internal security boss.
Kumawat wouldn’t take names, but he made it apparent that his experience as head of the national co-ordination desk in North Block did not inspire too much optimism over the anti-Naxalite offensive in the works under Chidambaram.
“We may think nationally but we do not act nationally,” he said. “There is little or no co-ordination between states which are actually as big as countries. West Bengal, for instance, would not share information with Jharkhand. There are debilitating turf battles between various agencies, intelligence is routinely held back or delayed, and most of the intelligence and documentation we have is poor in any case. All that needs to change if the government is to have half a chance of success.”
The retired top cop was critical of the manner in which governments approached the “very alarming” Naxalite challenge, saying: “We don’t prepare well enough. Information is critical and it is not available in the market, it has to be gathered and analysed all the time and over a long period of time. How many of our states have done that? Probably Andhra Pradesh, and they have had some success to show for homework done. But the same cannot be said for the rest. We are ill-prepared.”
Asked whether there was virtue to Chidambaram’s argument that Naxalite-dominated areas first needed to be “cleansed” of their “disruptive dominance” before development initiatives can be effectively mounted, Kumawat said: “Well, the home minister has himself said this will be a long battle, how long are people to wait for the welfare state to come to them? The challenge and the ingenuity of governance lies is doing both at the same time, the security component will have to be built in to development projects, as has been successfully done in parts of the Northeast. It may be tough to do, but that is what governments are about.”
Cautioning against using too hard a hand, Kumawat said: “We are hearing things about the use of the Indian Air Force, but the government should be extremely careful it is only logistical use, nothing else. And even so, the Naxalites are very capable of trapping the air force in ugly situations where they will have no option but to retaliate. Once that begins to happen, there will be the huge risk of collateral damage to populations and further alienation. The Naxalites are clever tacticians, they will engage and scoot, innocent people will get killed, you will have mess on your hands. Look at what the drone attacks are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
He sounded utterly unsurprised by indications emerging from Naxalite circles that they plan a bloody cat-and-mouse with security forces in the weeks and months to come.
“If they are talking of encircling the government rather than getting encircled, it is nothing to scoff at or be smug about. That is classical Maoist tactic — you go looking for them in their strongholds and you find they have melted away, their mobility is an advantage they employ to the hilt,” Kumawat said, adding that this Naxalite tactic, too, bedevils government plans.
“They will melt away, or just merge with populations. An operation, even if it is based on good and specific tip-offs, can end up hurting innocent people and creating greater disaffection against the state.” TT

Sri Lanka: UN Official Calls for Investigation of Executions of Tamil Rebels

Posted by Ka Frank on January 17, 2010

This article was published in Al Jazeera on January 8, 2010.

UN official urges Sri Lanka inquiry

A UN human rights official has urged Colombo allow an impartial investigation after he concluded that video footage allegedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing Tamil Tiger fighters last year is authentic.

 Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told Al Jazeera that Sri Lankan arguments used to dismiss the video, aired on Britain’s Channel 4 in August 2009, were flawed.

Sri Lanka has consistently denied the authenticity of the footage, but two of their investigators were members of the Sri Lankan military,” Alston said on Thursday. ”That is why I decided to commission an independent report by experts with no connection to the conflict.”

The mobile phone footage was shot during the final stages of the Sri Lankan army’s conflict against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Independent inquiry

Alston said three US-based independent experts commissioned by him to conduct an impartial evaluation, established the authenticity of the video after four Sri Lankan specialists had concluded that it was a fake. He named the three as Daniel Spitz, a prominent forensic pathologist; Peter Diaczuk, a firearm evidence expert; and Jeff Spivack, a forensic video analyst.

“The independent experts’ analyses also systematically rebutted most of the arguments relied upon by Sri Lanka’s experts in support of their contention that the video was faked,” Alston said. ”In light of these conclusions, I call for an independent inquiry to be established to carry out an impartial investigation into war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian and human rights law allegedly committed in Sri Lanka.”

Colombo should ask the UN to set up an independent commission of inquiry, he said.

Martin Nesirky, a UN spokesman, backed the call for an inquiry, saying that Alston’s conclusions show “the need for a credible, independent and impartial investigation into allegations of violations of human rights and international law by all sides in the conflict in Sri Lanka”.

Disturbing pictures

The footage shows a man dressed in army uniform shooting a naked, bound and blindfolded man in the back of the head, while eight other bodies can be seen nearby in a muddy field.

Alston said Spitz found the footage appeared authentic ”especially with respect to the two individuals who are shown being shot in the head at close range”. And he said that Spivack’s forensic video analysis “found no evidence of breaks in continuity in the video, no additional video layers and no evidence of image manipulation.”

“While there are some unexplained elements in the video, there are strong indications of its authenticity,” Alston said. ”In addition, most of the arguments relied upon by the government of Sri Lanka to impugn the video have been shown to be flawed.”

Rejection

The Sri Lankan military has said the video was faked in order to discredit the security forces. Sri Lankan authorities have resisted international calls for a war crimes investigation after the UN alleged that more than 7,000 civilians had been killed during the first four months of 2009 alone.

The Tamil separatists were finally defeated in May after nearly four decades of ethnic bloodshed that left between 80,000 and 100,000 people dead. The government victory ended the LTTE’s four-decade struggle for an independent Tamil homeland in the island’s northeast, one of Asia’s longest-running ethnic conflicts.

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Communist Party of the Philippines Calls for Advance to Strategic Stalemate in Five Years

In this statement, the CPP leadership lays out an ambitious plan to increase the number of NPA guerilla fronts from 120 to 180, expand party membership from tens of thousands to 200,000, and move from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate within five years.

Strive to Make a Great Advance in the People's War for New Democracy

Communist Party of the Philippines, Central Committee, December 26, 2009

We celebrate today with utmost joy the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines as the revolutionary advanced detachment of the Filipino proletariat under the theoretical guidance of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism.

We are deeply gratified by the long-accumulated as well as recent victories won by the Filipino proletariat and people under the leadership of the Party in the course of the new democratic revolution through protracted people's war. We salute and congratulate all our cadres and members and we pay the highest respects to our revolutionary martyrs and heroes for making our victories possible.

We have long proven that, by pursuing the strategic line of protracted peoples war, we can build in stages the strength of the revolutionary forces of the people and overcome the brutal campaigns of suppression unleashed by US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords. In the process, we have so far built the largest and strongest revolutionary movement of the Filipino people in the entire history of the Philippines since the revolution of 1896.

We have grown in strength and advanced precisely through resolute and fierce revolutionary armed struggle against every regime of counterrevolutionar y violence directed and supported by US imperialism. We have prevailed over the 14-year Marcos fascist dictatorship and all the succeeding regimes that have pretended to be liberal democratic but have been so brutally antinational and anti-democratic.

The current Arroyo regime is going down in history in complete ignominy for its grave crimes against the people. It has utterly failed to realize its pipe dream of destroying or reducing the armed revolutionary movement of the people to inconsequentiality. Not only have we prevailed and preserved our forces against the enemy campaigns of suppression, we have also gained strength and scored resounding victories.

After more than 40 years of successful peoples war, we consider it of highest importance today to declare our determination to strive within the next five years to make the great advance from the stage of the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate, fulfilling all the requirements and without skipping any necessary phase. We can look forward to still greater revolutionary possibilities within the next ten years if we carry out successfully the tasks and plans for the next five years.

Our revolutionary optimism is based on three factors. First is the ever worsening crisis of the world capitalist system, which is now in the throes of its worst crisis since the Great Depression. Second is the accelerated worsening crisis and rotting of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system. Third is the revolutionary forces of the people led by the Party that have far more strength now than at the start of our people's war in 1969 and have the sufficient strength and critical mass to carry out the tasks and plans for advancing from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate of the people's war within the next five years.

World capitalist system in the throes of depression

The world capitalist system is in a state of economic depression. The economic and financial crisis has spread throughout the world like a plague from the imperialist countries. The most devastated economically and socially are the underdeveloped countries. But the imperialist powers and their followers keep on euphemistically calling the situation a mere recession and keep on referring to any spike in the financial market as a sign of recovery.

The crisis of overproduction runs unabated and continues to be aggravated by the financial crisis. Factories continue to scale down production or to close down. The toiling masses of workers and peasants and even the middle social strata continue to suffer the loss of jobs and homes, the reduction of income, the soaring prices of basic commodities and social services and the deterioration of the social infrastructure. The level of exploitation and oppression is escalating on a global scale.

The US and other imperialist states are using public money in the trillions of dollars to bail out the big banks and corporations in the military-industrial complex and in the service sector. New and bigger financial bubbles are being generated with the use of state funds for lending and subsidy to the monopoly bourgeoisie, especially the financial oligarchy. The money is being used merely to raise profits in the balance sheets of big financial and industrial corporations and has not resulted in real economic recovery in terms of generating employment and increasing production and consumption.

The current economic and financial crisis of the world capitalist system has been the outcome of the recurrent, accelerated and cumulative crises since the monopoly bourgeoisie and its economic policymakers were confronted by the phenomenon of concurrent stagnation and inflation as a result of the reconstruction of the imperialist countries ruined by World War II, intensified inter-imperialist competition, rising costs of the cold war and wars of aggression and the growing severity of the crisis of overproduction in the world capitalist system.

Since then, the imperialist states headed by the US have blamed the working people for having caused the stagflation due to what they have termed as wage inflation and excessive social spending by government. At the same time, they have obscured the costs of the Cold War, especially those of military production, overseas deployment of military forces and wars of aggression.

In the succeeding decades, they adopted and implemented the policy of freezing wages, reducing social spending, privatizing public assets, liberalizing investments and trade, doing away with regulations and denationalizing the economies of underdeveloped countries. They let loose the unbridled greed of the imperialist banks and firms to prey on the people of the world. Thus, they undercut and constrict the global market far beyond what debt financing can cover and conceal.

Having run for several decades, the policy of neoliberal or free market globalization is deepgoing and has caused widespread social ruin on a global scale. It continues to dominate the thinking of policymakers of the imperialist states. It serves first of all the big banks and corporations against the demand of the people for economic recovery, employment, social relief and rehabilitation. Thus, the current grave crisis of the world capitalist system continues to worsen and is bound to persist for a long while.

The monopoly bourgeoisie seeks to pass on the burden of the crisis to the working people in the homegrounds of imperialism but much more to those in the underdeveloped countries. The imperialist powers and their puppets continue to extract further superprofits from those already laid low by the crisis. We therefore witness today the initial manifestations of the peoples' resistance in both the imperialist and the underdeveloped countries.

In the imperialist countries, the monopoly bourgeoisie wages a ferocious class struggle against the proletariat and is pushing the proletariat to fight back by waging the just side of the class struggle. It seeks ever more to divide and confuse the working people by whipping up anti-terrorist hysteria, chauvinism, racism, fascism and religious bigotry and pitting the host people against the migrants. However, revolutionary parties and movements are arising to expose the roots of the crisis in monopoly capitalism and rouse the working people to wage class struggle.

The peoples subjected to ever rising levels of exploitation and oppression are waging various forms of resistance against the imperialist powers and their local puppets. Those who are victimized by imperialist aggression are waging armed resistance for national liberation, as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Lebanon. National liberation movements led by Maoist and other revolutionary parties are gaining strength and are advancing as in India, the Philippines, Nepal, Turkey, Peru and Colombia.

Some governments as those of North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia have taken anti-imperialist positions and invoked national independence in response to the clamor of the people for resistance to imperialism and its worst reactionary agents. Such governments as those of China and Russia try to collaborate with the US-led alliance of imperialist powers while at same time cooperate with Iran and other governments that are subjected to sanctions and embargoes by the US and its imperialist allies.

The imperialist powers are still united in oppressing peoples and nations of the world and in passing on the burden of crisis to them. But they are also driven by imperialist greed and by the crisis to compete and contend with each other in a struggle to redivide the world for sources of raw materials and cheap labor, markets, fields of investment, spheres of influence and strategic points of control.

The complete restoration of capitalism in countries previously ruled by revisionist regimes has added Russia and China to the ranks of big capitalist powers and has made the world ever more cramped for inter-imperialist competition. The US has pushed the NATO to expand to the borders of Russia and threaten and seek control of this huge source of oil, gas and other strategic raw materials. Although China is acknowledged as the biggest partner of the US under the policy of "free market" globalization, contradictions between them over major issues are growing.

The betrayal of socialism brought about by the rise of modern revisionism and the full restoration of capitalism in the former revisionist- ruled countries have contributed in a big way to intensifying inter-imperialist contradictions and generating the conditions for wars of aggression and the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. The threats posed by imperialism to the very existence of humankind seems unstoppable. But they can be effectively countered by the people's revolutionary mass movement, revolutionary civil wars and people's wars for national liberation.

The US and the NATO are so aggressive that China and Russia consider themselves threatened and are thus developing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into a potent security bloc. Almost all global regions, such as the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa are fraught with the danger of war.

The intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions has already resulted in wars of aggression and military intervention, such as those in the Balkans, Africa, Central and South Asia and the Middle East. These have been carried out under the initiative of the US, its NATO allies and its major partners in the UN Security Council. The insatiable drive of the US and its closest NATO allies to monopolize the sources of oil and other raw materials and to subordinate Russia and China is upsetting the balance of forces among the imperialist powers.

The imperialist powers are frenziedly engaged in wars of aggression and plunder of natural resources, causing both social and environmental disasters. The wars of aggression have resulted in heavy casualties among the people, in the destruction of the social infrastructure and pollution of the environment from the use, among others, of radioactive and toxic weapons of mass destruction. The wanton plunder of natural resources by the profit-driven monopolies has been a major factor in ecological destruction that has caused ever more destructive typhoons, floods, droughts and other disasters.

The imperialist powers are the biggest destroyers and polluters of the environment as they wantonly plunder and misuse the world's natural resources. They pretend to be concerned about environmental destruction and the problem of global warming in order to deflect attention from the problems of social exploitation, manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and wars of aggression. They manipulate the issue of environment and global warming in order to justify further imperialist control and exploitation of the world's resources.

Greater social turmoil and political disorder in all continents and in nearly all countries are in the offing. From year to year, the US will continue to be afflicted by economic crisis and will be sucked into new quagmires of military aggression and intervention. These are conditions favorable to the revolutionary forces of the Filipino people in advancing the people's war for new democracy from the stage of strategic defensive to that of strategic stalemate.

Accelerated rotting of the domestic ruling system

Under the weight of the crisis of the world capitalist system and due to its own internal weaknesses, the rotting of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system is accelerated in economic, social, political and cultural terms. The rotten unjust ruling system in chronic crisis is overripe for overthrow and replacement by the people's democratic system.

The imperialist policy of free market globalization has grossly distorted and made the Philippine economy more lopsided than ever. The economy is mainly agrarian and semifeudal and yet does not produce sufficient food for the people. This is the result of the dumping of agricultural surpluses by the imperialist countries and some neighboring countries. It is compelled to reduce food production to make way for the production of certain commercial crops for export and to serve the purposes of imperialist control.

The agricultural, mineral, forest and marine resources of our country are being exploited for export at a rapid pace and at lower prices. There is no economic development through national industrialization and land reform. The unequal exchange of raw material exports and manufactured imports persists. The natural resources of the country are plundered even as the imperialists and the local reactionaries shed crocodile tears over the lack of development and the destruction of the environment.

Incomes from the reexport of low-value added semi-manufactures and the export of cheap labor have not been enough to cover the growing balance of payments deficits. Thus, the foreign debt continues to mount. The reduced demand for raw materials, semi-manufactures and overseas contract workers is inflicting economic ruin and social devastation on the Philippines.

The toiling masses of workers and peasants and even the middle social strata are suffering from a rising rate of unemployment, drastic fall of incomes and the soaring prices of basic commodities and social services. The tax burden is mounting, even as the economy is depressed and the social infrastructure and social services are deteriorating. Debt service (interest payments and amortization of the principal) and military expenditures gobble up most of the government budget. Social misery and discontent are fueling legal mass protests and the people's war against exploitation and oppression.

The US-directed Arroyo regime has followed the US policy of global war of terror and carried out Oplan Bantay Laya since 2001 in order to intimidate and attack the broad masses of the people, especially the legal opposition forces and the revolutionary forces. It has perpetrated gross and systematic human rights violations, victimizing workers and peasants as well as social activists from the ranks of the women and youth, the professionals and religious. As a consequence, the regime is isolated domestically and globally by its own crimes and by the outrage and resistance of the people.

US-supported state terrorism has been unleashed with a combination of the military, paramilitary and police agencies and the private armies and security agencies in order to bust labor unions and strikes and to displace millions of peasants and national minorities from their homes and farms. The Ampatuan massacre of 58 persons in less than an hour is emblematic of the crimes committed with impunity on a large scale by the combination of military, police and paramilitary forces in the service of the violent and corrupt regime and is indicative of the growing violence of political rivalries among reactionary politicians at the national and local levels.

The broad masses of the people and a broad united front of opposition forces are ranged against the Arroyo regime. The outcry for the ouster of the Arroyo ruling clique has been going on for years against its puppetry, corruption, brutality and mendacity. But the clique has increasingly used the coercive apparatuses of the state to suppress its critics and the people's resistance. Many of its opponents can only hope to obtain justice after the clique is removed from power.

However, in trying to preempt prosecution for its grievous crimes against the people, the Arroyo clique is desperately using the resources of the state to engage in electoral fraud and terrorism. Fears are widespread that it intends to declare martial law nationwide or in a number of key regions by claiming a failure of elections and thereby perpetuate itself in power. It can only inflame the peoples resistance by treading the Marcos path of fascist dictatorship.

At any rate, the political crisis of the ruling system is worsening as a consequence of the economic and social crisis. The contradictions among the reactionaries are becoming ever more bitter and violent. Whichever reactionary clique gains power would tend to monopolize the bureaucratic loot and use the instruments of state violence in suppressing the intrasystemic opposition and the revolutionary movement of the people.

The major political parties and coalitions vying for offices in the 2010 elections, except Makabayan, avoid or even oppose the people's demand for national indpendence and genuine democracy and do not criticize and repudiate free market globalization and the US-instigated policy of terror against the people. The Lakas-Kampi party of the ruling clique clings to its discredited antinational and antidemocratic policies. The major opposition parties, like the Liberal Party and the Partido ng Masang Pilipino concentrate on pretending to be for good governance to dissociate themselves from the scandalous corruption of the Arroyo regime.

Whichever reactionary clique takes power through the electoral process is predisposed to follow the same path being trod by the Arroyo regime. It will keep power under the dictates of the US and the local exploiting classes and will use its power to enrich itself and deploy the coercive apparatuses of the state to suppress opposition.

Among the four major presidential candidates, former Senate president Villar seems to be the most patriotic and progressive insofar as he advocates the interests of Filipino businessmen, expresses sympathy for the workers and peasants and condemns human rights violations. However, it remains to be seen whether he can win and prove himself any better than his major political rivals who have bloodstained records of opposing the demands of the workers and peasants, like Aquino of Hacienda Luisita notoriety, Teodoro of being the mad dog defense secretary of Arroyo and Estrada of having a bellicose record during his failed presidency.

So far, in the history of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system, every president has kowtowed to the power of US imperialism and has sought to amass wealth and power for self-aggrandizement against the rights and interests of the people. No president ever has had the political will to undertake significant reforms that respond to the people's demand for national independence and genuine democracy nor has used peace negotiations in order to forge agreements with the revolutionary movement on social, economic and political reforms as basis for a just peace.

We can anticipate that whichever new reactionary ruling clique arises from the 2010 elections, it would continue to apply draconian measures by legally misrepresenting revolutionary acts as common crimes, as acts of terrorism or as rebellion punishable by reclusion perpetua and therefore nonbailable. It would carry out campaigns of military suppression against the revolutionary forces of the Filipino people including those of the Bangsamoro. It would merely pretend at being for peace negotiations and try to use these not to arrive at agreements on basic reforms with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines but merely to deceive and confuse the people and destroy the revolutionary movement.

A new ruling clique is bound to continue allowing the US to deploy military troops in the Philippines under the US-RP Mutual Defense Pact and the Visiting Forces Agreement and under various pretexts, including so-called anti-terrorism, anti-drugs, humanitarian intervention, civic action, disaster relief, medical mission and the like. The ground is being laid for ever increasing military intervention and outright aggression, mainly under the pretext of combating terrorism as they label the Filipino and Bangsamoro revolutionaries as "terrorists. "

The worsening crisis of the ruling system would compel the prospective ruling clique either to escalate counterrevolutionar y violence or to seek truce and alliance with the revolutionary forces against the US and the worst of the local reactionaries if in the first place the armed revolutionary movement grows in strength, delivers lethal blows on the weak points of the ruling system and advances to a new and higher stage of development.

We can take full advantage of the socio-economic and political crisis of the ruling system in order to strengthen ourselves, wage all forms of revolutionary struggle and make great advances in our people's war. We can hope for national and social liberation only if the people gain the power for its realization. The people's power can arise only through revolutionary struggle against US imperialism and the local exploitating classes.

Current basis and tasks for the great advance

At its founding in 1968, the Communist Party of the Philippines had only a few score cadres and members and a few thousands of activists in various types of mass organizations. But since then we, as a Party, have been able to lead the revolutionary mass movement and make it grow in stages from small and weak to big and strong because we have availed of the favorable objective conditions for making revolution and have adopted and implemented the correct line in ideology, politics and organization.

We have pursued the ideological line of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism, the political line of new democratic revolution through protracted people's war and the organizational line of democratic centralism. We have accumulated rich experience and reliable knowledge, gained ideological, political and organizational strength and won great victories in the course of waging all forms of revolutionary struggle.

Our current all-round strength as a Party is our basis for carrying out our tasks and plans for advancing the new democratic revolution and the people's war from the stage of strategic defensive to that of strategic stalemate within the next five years.

We have thousands of Party cadres and members with the capability to do work in theoretical and political education. They can propagate the theory of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism and our works on Philippine history and current circumstances. They can run the basic, intermediate and advanced levels of Party education everywhere possible in the urban and the rural areas. They can ensure that our Party members grasp the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint and method. They can develop cadres to lead work at various levels of our Party organization and in various fields of our work.

We must put forward and carry out an educational plan to produce sufficient Party cadres and members who can lead the work from grassroots level and upwards and who have the determination to establish and develop the Party and the mass organizations where these do not yet exist. The multiplication of our Party cadres and members who are schooled and steeped in Marxism-Leninism- Maoism makes our Party ever indestructible and victorious.

We must have a comprehensive political plan for expanding and consolidating the revolutionary mass movement in both urban and rural areas. For this purpose, we have tens of thousands of Party cadres and members to lead mass work. Their duty is to arouse, organize and mobilize the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the rest of the people along the line of the new democratic revolution through protracted people's war. We have a wide and deepgoing mass base running in the millions of the people nationwide.

We can advance wave upon wave from our existing mass base. The local branches and leading committees of the Party lead the mass organizations. These can be built much ahead of the expansion of the NPA. They prepare the way for the NPA and the establishment of the temporary and then the regular organs of political power. At any rate, the Party within the NPA can deploy teams of Red fighters for mass work.

Our Party has the New People's Army as its main organization for fighting the enemy, building the mass movement in the countryside, establishing the organs of political power and strengthening the basic alliance of the working class and the peasantry. We have thousands of Red commanders and fighters capable of achieving immensely far more than could the original 60 Red fighters we had in 1969.

Our Party is at the head and the core of the NPA. It grows with the expansion of the NPA and ensures the consolidation of the NPA. We draw our Party recruits from the ranks of the Red fighters and from the mass activists. We must intensify the recruitment and the politico-military training of the Red fighters under the leadership of our Party.

We must have a plan to increase the number of Red commanders and fighters, units of the NPA and guerrilla fronts from around 120 to 180 in order to cover the rural congressional districts and gain the ability to deploy armed city partisan units in the urban congressional districts. The increase in guerrilla fronts can be made in a manner and at a pace at which the seed units of the NPA (be these teams, squads or platoons) can draw strength from the mass base in the areas of expansion.

The process of expanding towards the goal of 180 guerrilla fronts will result in strengthening the Party and the NPA command at the levels of the guerrilla front (district), province and region. Relatively stable base areas will arise on varying territorial scales, depending on the growth of the Party, the NPA, the mass base and the organs of political power and of course on the actual destruction and disintegration of enemy political power in the localities.

We must continue to carry out extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. We must intensify our tactical offensives as we widen and deepen our mass base. As a matter of course, the enemy forces will react to our offensives by concentrating on those guerrilla fronts where we are estimated as being strong and by unleashing vicious campaigns of suppression. But as the enemy forces are extremely limited on the national and regional scale, we can maintain our initiative by employing flexible tactics of concentration to go on an offensive, shifting to evade a superior enemy force and dispersal to conduct mass work.

The Military Commission of the Central Committee is responsible for deciding and issuing the most strategic guidelines and plans. Every level of operational command must provide the necessary information and recommendations as well as feedbacks to their respective higher organs. Within their respective territorial scopes, they can formulate and issue specific guidelines and operational plans for tactical offensives aimed at attacking the weakest points of the enemy and seizing weapons in the process.

The weapons for arming new units of the NPA at the levels of the district, province and region must be obtained mainly from the enemy through ambuscades, raids and other operations. The seizure of weapons from the enemy would accelerate upon the increase of initiative, coordination and cooperation of NPA units at the provincial and regional levels.

To enable the NPA to engage in offensive campaigns with short rest periods from battles, there must be an ever expanding mass base in which the mass organizations and local organs of political power can engage in campaigns and specific activities to improve the people's social, economic, health and cultural concerns.

The campaign for land reform must be carried out well in order to win the steadfast support of the poor peasants, farm workers and lower middle peasants. The minimum land reform program can be raised higher towards the level of the maximum, depending on the strength of the NPA and the peasant movement. The campaign of mass organizing, public education, raising production, health care, defense, cultural work and settling disputes among the people must be pursued well.

The people's militia must perform police duties and the mass organizations must train units in charge of self-defense. The NPA can strengthen itself only by having a far bigger number of people in the militia and self-defense units that can serve as auxiliaries and as reserve forces. The front, provincial and regional units of the NPA, which serve as centers of gravity and/or as strike forces, can move faster and become more effective with the assistance of the organs of political power, the mass organizations and the local guerrilla units, the people's militias and the self-defense units within their respective areas of responsibility.

As well exposed in the implementation of Oplan Bantay Laya and previous national operational plans of the enemy, the number of enemy forces available for campaigns of suppression against the NPA in the countryside is limited relative to the population and the entire country. It cannot cover more than 10% of the terrain at every given time. Conversely, the NPA can move freely in more than 90% of Philippine territory. The number of enemy combat effectives can be further limited by the growing militancy of the urban mass movement and by the internecine fighting among the reactionaries in the form of coup and counter-coup threats against each other.

The NPA can take the initiative of developing armed city partisan warfare and launching special operations against enemy facilities and antipeople enterprises in order to force the enemy forces to go on guard duty and put more of its troops on the defensive. The movement of enemy units can be hampered by sapper operations, mine warfare, sniping and other small team operations. These appear to be mere pinpricks but have far reaching demoralizing effects on enemy troops.

The NPA must target for arrest and trial violators of human rights and international humanitarian law and the penal code of the people's democratic government. It must move to dismantle extremely exploitative plantations, logging-for- export enterprises, mining and other operations that grab land from the people and destroy the environment. The dismantling can be accomplished by disabling equipment, discouraging management personnel and launching tactical offensives against the armed guards. More land must be made available for land reform and food production.

In our first decade of Party expansion from 1968 to 1977, our Central Committee created and used the regional Party committees as the key instrument for organizing the Party, the NPA and the armed revolutionary mass movement nationwide. The current regional Party committees must strengthen themselves and the provincial committees directly under them. In turn, the district committees must strengthen the municipal or section committees directly under them. We must keep in mind that when a higher level of Party leadership works hard to strengthen the next lower level, the base of the Party is ultimately strengthened.

We must have an organizational plan for increasing the number of Party cadres and members for the purpose of achieving the great advance from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate. We need at least 200,000 Party members for this.

We need to be at the core of the peoples army and to lead the work in the localities from the barrio level upwards and in the mass organizations, economic enterprises and cultural institutions. The organizational strength that we wish to develop for the great advance in the next five years will be the foundation for still greater advances in the next five years after.

We have a wide range of sources for our Party recruits. This includes the people's army and the mass organizations. From these sources, our Party must put emphasis on recruiting the advanced mass activists of the working class, peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie. In wave upon wave of advances, we must ensure that we have the mass strength and various types of cadre capabilities necessary for winning the revolution.

We must remould and temper all our Party cadres and members through revolutionary education, hard work and arduous struggle in both rural and urban areas. We must encourage the workers and the educated youth to serve in the people's army and in the countryside. We need the most conscious and competent proletarian revolutionaries in the countryside in order to advance the people's war and at the same time prepare for the ultimate seizure of political power.

We are confident of fulfilling the ideological, political and organizational requirements for our Party to achieve the great advance from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate in the next five years. We must seize every minute, every day and every week for carrying out plans and the tasks assigned to us.

The crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system, and the people's suffering and outcry for advancing the new democratic revolution in the direction of socialism and communism are urging us to do our best and achieve our utmost at every phase and stage of the struggle.

ChatBox

Related Posts with Thumbnails