LALIT sent letter of Solidarity to Anti-War Movement in Japan
06.08.2023
On 6th August 1945, people all over the world were shocked by the atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima in Japan by USA, killing more than 70,000 civilians. Three days later USA dropped another atomic bomb on the city Nagasaki killing more than 40,000 civilians. Many more people later succumbed to burns, injuries, and radiation poisoning.
To mark this tragic event, every year, the Anti-War movement in Japan organized assemblies in Tokyo and 6 other cities, to address workers and students on the need to oppose imperialist wars and military bases and for peace in the World.
For the interest of our visitors, we are publishing below the message that LALIT sent to the Anti-War Movement for the assemblies held today, 6th August.
Message of solidarity from LALIT to Anti-War Movement in Japan
Comrades, colleagues in the anti-war movement, friends who work for peace,
On the occasion of the 61st International Antiwar Assemblies, LALIT (meaning “struggle” in the Mauritian language) is pleased to send our revolutionary greetings to Japanese workers and students attending the anti-war assemblies being held in different regions in Japan .
At the very outset, we all see the International Antiwar Assemblies taking place at the very moment when the Russian-Ukraine war has surpassed 500 days, causing thousands of deaths, thousands of war injuries, and millions of people displaced, as well as the destruction of much of Ukraine.
While African leaders, to their credit, are looking for a peaceful solution to stop the war, to ensure that poor people in the African Continent are not afflicted by rising prices and food scarcity provoked by the war, the US imperialists are acting for the escalation of the war, i.e. doing exactly the opposite. The UK and USA even managed to sabotage a cease-fire agreed in March last year, even when Ukraine had agreed, arguing that Russia was not weakened enough for the liking of the West. Imagine how different life would be in Ukraine, had that cease-fire led to peace negotiations? President Biden has now unilaterally decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, adding even more danger of severe humanitarian consequences and unacceptable harm to civilians (Convention on Clusters Munitions, 2008). In retaliation, Putin is threatening to use same kind of bombs. More than 100 countries, even a majority of countries in the NATO alliance, are against the use of these unconventional arms.
LALIT demands that the war be stopped. There needs to be an immediate ceasefire, and negotiations opened. The Russian army must immediately withdraw its troops from Ukraine. The NATO countries, led by US imperialists who totally control Europe now, must immediately stop sending arms to Ukraine. This new form of proxy war, where the USA arms Ukranians, will only lead to further escalation, and death and destruction. NATO must be disbanded, as the Warsaw Pact was. It is as simple as that. The USA’s undertaking not to expand NATO eastwards has, unfortunately, just been flaunted, time and time again, until encirclement of Russia is now well-nigh complete. And now NATO starts to encircle China, openly aiming to set up desks in Japan and South Korea. The USA is putting inordinate pressure, as you know, on these two Eastern countries, to spend on arms, i.e. like Europe, in reality on American arms.
In Mauritius, we in LALIT are, for our part, continuing to mobilize to close down the UK-USA military base on Mauritian territory, i.e. Diego Garcia which is part of the Chagos Archipelago region of the Republic of Mauritius. Our struggle moved forward, as you know, after the UN General Assembly 2019 resolution told the UK to withdraw altogether from the entire Chagos Archipelago. This came after the International Court of Justice judgment declared the UK-US military occupation to be the illegal occupation of a sovereign country. The UK and USA, while arming Ukraine to the teeth to oppose illegal occupation by Russia, just, themselves, illegally occupy our country. They do not even see their own hypocrisy.
Our Government is now, shamefully, holding secret talks with the UK Government, and making concessions. The Mauritian Prime Minister has even gone so far, after winning at the ICJ and UN General Assembly (where the UK-USA alliance was so isolated it got support from only three countries, Israel, Australia and Hungary) as to offer the USA a lease on Diego Garcia for their base to continue operating. We oppose this. LALIT, three big union federations, workers’ and women’s associations and anti-base militants, have come together to oppose these talks and this offer of a lease.
Our struggle on Chagos continues, focusing as always on (a) the dismantling of the US military base on Diego Garcia and the cleaning up of any nuclear and other pollution (b) the right of Chagossians as well as all people of Mauritius in general to visit or settle on all the Chagos islands, i.e. freedom of movement within our country (c) and the complete decolonization and re-unification of Mauritius territory, as called for by the UN’s courts and General Assembly. Military occupation must end.
LALIT’s struggle against wars and military bases in the Indian Ocean and world-wide has over years linked us together with the struggle that the JRCL is waging in opposing the Japanese ruling class and US imperialists maintaining military bases in Japan, and opposing arms manufacture and arms build-up. We oppose all the 800 or so military bases all over the world. They must all be dismantled, just as NATO must be.
Our struggles against wars and militarism are linked to our struggles against the capitalist system. Democracy in the capitalist system is difficult, if not impossible, when countries like the USA are run by a small band of a few hundred capitalists that run the monopoly firms of the “Military Industrial Complex”, of the Big Pharma, of the the food and agriculture sector, and of Big Data. It is these types of firm that dominate, and exploit the broad masses of the whole world, taking all the decisions in the interests of their profits. They, in turn, put humanity in a triple, inter-related existential threat: destruction through nuclear war, destruction through pollution-related environmental collapse, destruction through the collapse of civilization into either bands of armed men, of which Haiti is a precursor country, or into a dystopia of extreme state repression, of which we will soon have examples, if we do not manage to oppose this system in creative ways, relying on the brilliance of ordinary people, when they think and act together independently of the ruling class.
Our common struggle can only be reinforced through articulating our local struggles to the international struggles and at the same time building networks of organisations working towards revolutionary changes for more equal societies, in particular for classless society. Any lasting revolutionary change needs to be part of an international dynamic for change.
We wish your assemblies to be resourceful and inspiring for workers and students in Japan in the fight against the imperialist war, and against the military bases and the arms industry, that together, cause war.
Rada Kistnasamy
LALIT
