LALIT addressed a message of solidarity to the 63rd International Antiwar Assemblies held in Tokyo and six other cities in Japan
04.08.2025
These assemblies are organized every year by, Students’ Associations, Antiwar Youth Committee and the Japan Revolutionary Communist League (JRCL) were held on Sunday 3rd August 2025.
The assemblies are held to mark the tragic event which shocked the world when the USA and Allies dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some 80 years ago, killing more than 110 thousand civilians and injuring by deep burns and causing deaths many thousands more.
The assemblies are also being held in the context of today’s situation where the US imperialist and allies, in the process of their disintegration, are pushing to create conditions for an escalation of World War 3, which will be detrimental to human beings.
We are informed by the organizer of the 63rd International Assemblies that LALIT’s message will be translated in Japanese, printed and distributed in all seven venues of the assemblies.
Here is a copy of the message;
Comrades,
On the occasion of the 63rd International Antiwar Assemblies in Japan, LALIT sends revolutionary greetings to the Organising Committee and to all workers and students attending the Assemblies in Tokyo and six other cities.
In our message to you last year, we focussed on the genocide being carried out by the Israeli State against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and the increasing hounding out of Palestinians from the West Bank. Since then, the situation in Gaza has deteriorated catastrophically. Backed by U.S. imperialism, the Israeli genocidal regime has killed and starved to death Palestinians in Gaza, and injured many thousands more including children, the elderly, and the disabled. Israel has deliberately targeted and destroyed hospitals, schools, and civilian infrastructure. Food and medicines are blocked from reaching Palestinians in need. In the absence of strong actions to stop Israel’s genocide by States and international institutions, people all over the world have risen and taken global initiatives such as the Freedom Flotilla’s Madleen boat, the Global March to Gaza in which three of our LALIT members participated, and the Sumud convoy from Tunisia to Egypt, mobilising mass support. The aim of all the protests were to expose the atrocities committed by the Netanyahu State on people of Gaza. The protests, as well, expose the state of siege imposed by Israel. As if in retaliation to global solidarity for Gaza, Israel attacked Iran by setting off bombs in Tehran and assassinating Iranian military and scientific personnel and their families. Trump then bombed three civil nuclear sites. In general the Israeli and US attacks resembled State-organised terrorism. We are indeed already in the kind of barbarism that capitalism has for so long threatened, and indeed dipped into often in the past. Indeed, Israel is until now bombing both Syria and the Lebanon, too.
In Mauritius LALIT together with 20 unions and women associations constituted the Common Front to Stop Genocide and Close the Diego Garcia Military Base, organized a demonstration in Port Louis to support the Palestinian people. We called on our Government to support South Africa’s case at the ICJ against Israel for genocide, and to isolate Israel. The three comrades from LALIT who participated in the Global March to Gaza, in their public report back, described the repression meted out by the Egyptian authorities that bowing down to Israel’s threats and the USA’s military aid.
Our struggle in Mauritius against the Israeli genocide is linked to our struggle against the illegal UK-USA occupation of the Chagos Archipelago, where the Diego Garcia military base is. Both are struggles against US imperialism. Despite the International Court of Justice findings and United Nations General Assembly ruling condemning Britain’s detachment of Chagos prior to Independence, our Government is finalizing a sell-out “deal” with the UK-USA. Mauritius is supposedly to have its sovereignty over the entire Chagos confirmed. But Mauritius, in exchange for money, is to lease Diego Garcia for at least 100 years for the US to keep the military base on this Mauritian island. The UK and USA will have an effective veto over any decision over the whole of Chagos. This deal is rightly seen by LALIT and the whole of the Trade union movement in Mauritius as meaning our Government is accepting ‘Blood Money’. Mauritian sovereignty is restricted, while the military base from which all manner of unlawful acts have been, are being, and will be carried out, remains. This is in violation of the UN Pelindaba Treaty for an Africa free of Nuclear Arms, to which Mauritius is signatory. The deal is also a major setback for the Mauritian Government in the struggle for decolonisation. It is also a strategic blunder to accept this abject “deal” after the support of the African union and so many other countries for Mauritius at the UN and ICJ.
Diego Garcia hosts B 2 and B 52 bombers in position to be used against countries like Iran and Yemen which are not bowing down to US imperialism and which support the Palestinian people. Meanwhile Trump has started a trade war, blackmailing and imposing huge increases in trade taxes on countries trading with US. Even traditional allies, such as Japan and European countries, are not spared this trade war. We have to watch carefully so as to oppose our governments’ negotiations for tariff concessions in return for keeping US Military bases on Diego Garcia and Okinawa and other places in Japan.
The war launched by Russia on Ukraine has raged for more than 3 years now, continues to cause immense suffering, tens of thousands killed, millions displaced, and entire communities destroyed. While we demand the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, we also demand that NATO countries immediately stop their war-like, imperialist encirclement of Russia. We also oppose the general warmongers from NATO countries and the US as they position themselves to take economic advantage from the conflict by both grabbing land and raw materials in Ukraine, continuing to cause Ukraine’s ruination, and seizing of Russian funds.
Just as the people of Okinawa and all of Japan have long resisted the U.S. military presence on their islands, we must oppose every imperialist base that perpetuates neo colonial control, that perpetrates wars, and poses nuclear threats to the people of the whole globe. Our struggle against the US Diego Garcia military base is essential and we rely on internationalism so that together we all manage to close down all the hundreds of US bases world-wide.
Together, we stand against imperialist war and capitalist exploitation. On the occasion of the 63rd Assembly let us reaffirm our appreciation for the persistence and energy of workers and anti-war activists in Japan to mobilize against military bases and imperialist war.
On this occasion our thoughts go to people in Gaza, and of Palestine as a whole, who are subjected to Netanyahu-Trump’s utter barbarism as they talk of “finishing the job”, the cruellest way of announcing the final stage of their genocide. It is truly horrific.
Our common struggles bring us closer to actions in favour of socialism and against the barbarism of capitalism, against military bases that are symbols of militarism that we oppose.
LALIT
26 July 2025
