By MARTIN FACKLER, New York Times,  May 1, 2013

The report by the nine researchers, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the most likely outcome for the next two decades showed China narrowing the gap with the United States in military abilities, in areas including building aircraft carriers and stealth fighter jets. At the same time, the report, to be released Friday, said China’s economic interdependence with the United States and the rest of Asia would probably prevent it from becoming a full-blown, cold-war-style foe, or from using military force to try to drive the United States from the region.

One of the authors, Michael D. Swaine, an expert on Chinese defense policy, called the report one of the first attempts to predict the longer-term consequences of China’s rise for a region whose growing economic prosperity has been largely a result of the peace and stability brought by American military hegemony. He said one conclusion was that the appearance of a new rival meant that, for better or for worse, the current American-dominated status quo might not last much longer.

“We wanted to ask, how should the United States deal with this possibility?” said Mr. Swaine, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, based in Washington. “Can the United States continue with business as usual in the western Pacific, or must it start thinking of alternative ways to reassure the region about security?”

The other authors included scholars, former government officials and other Carnegie analysts.

The report, an advance copy of which was seen by The New York Times, said the consequences of the region’s shifting strategic balance might be felt most strongly by Japan, an Asian economic power that has long relied for its security on its alliance with the United States. The report found that in most projections, Japan would probably respond to China’s growing power by clinging more closely to the United States, as it has done recently during a heated argument with China over islands in the East China Sea that both countries claim. At the same time, despite the stance of its hawkish new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s fiscal troubles and political paralysis will probably prevent it from significantly bolstering military spending, as some in Washington have hoped it will do to help offset China’s increasing capabilities, the report said.

In the most extreme instances, the report predicted, doubts about the ability or commitment of the United States to remain the region’s dominant military power could one day grow strong enough to drive Japan to more drastic measures, like either embracing China or building its own independent deterrent, including nuclear weapons.

For the whole region, the report found the most likely outcome to be what it called an “eroding balance” — essentially, a continuation of the current situation, in which American hegemony is slowly undermined by China’s increasing military abilities and growing willingness to assert its interests. The report said the biggest risk in this environment would be an accidental escalation of a limited dispute, like the current clash with Japan over the disputed islands.

At the same time, the report said that for the foreseeable future, China would not follow the former Soviet Union in becoming a global rival to the United States. Rather, it said, China would remain a regional power with a narrow strategic focus on territorial disputes with its immediate neighbors. Even so, the report warned, that would still make it a serious challenge to the United States, which has vowed to increase its military presence in Asia despite budget cuts.

“Can the United States maintain its primacy of the past 60 years?” asked Mr. Swaine. “The United States says so, but whether it actually can is not entirely clear.”

Director: Sanjay Kak
Synopsis:  ‘Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist’, the revolutionary patriot had said almost a hundred years ago, and that forewarning travels into India’s present, as armed insurrection simmers in Bastar, in the troubled heart of central India. But to the east too, beleaguered adivasis from the mineral-rich hills of Odisha come forth bearing their axes, and their songs. And in the north the swelling protests by Punjabi peasants sees hope coagulate–once more–around that iconic figure of Bhagat Singh, revolutionary martyr of the anti-colonial struggle. But are revolutions even possible anymore? Or have those dreams been ground down into our nightmares? This is a chronicle of those who live the revolutionary ideal in India, a rare encounter with the invisible domain of those whose everyday is a fight for another ideal of the world.
Gondi, Odiya, Punjabi with English Subtitles

—————————————————————

Talking about a revolution…

by BUDHADITYA BHATTACHARYA, The Hindu, Bangalore, May 16, 2013

Can you talk about the beginnings of Red Ant Dream? When and why did you get interested in making this film?

[Photo:  A Still From the Film]

It’s always difficult to say where the beginnings of a film lie, because in a sense what you put into a documentary could be the summation of many years of thinking about an idea, your whole life even! For more than a decade all my films have been about resistance – Words on Water was about the movement against big dams in the Narmada valley, Jashn-e-Azadi about Kashmir, and now with this new film we look at the stirrings in Bastar in Chhattisgarh, the Niyamgiri hills in Odisha, and briefly Punjab. More specifically, I think Red Ant Dream was a reaction to the way in which the rebellion led by the Maoists in central India was being depicted in the media and in public discourse – as an isolated, autonomous outbreak of something like a pestilence, something alien called Maoism.

What resonances did you see in the three distinct movements you have focused on?

From where I stand it’s been clear that what was happening in Bastar was part of a much longer and widespread tradition of people’s resistance, a more militant – if you like, a more revolutionary – tradition than what we have usually accommodated within our accepted vocabulary of politics and resistance. That’s what connects the words of Bhagat Singh to those of the radical poet Avtar Singh Pash, that’s what connects protesting farmers and landless Dalits in Punjab to the fighting people of the Niyamgiri hills, and of course all of them to the armed rebellion in central India. I’m not saying they all add up to the same thing, of course not, just that if you care to, you can see the wires that join them, and once you see them, you cannot help but notice how distinct that desire for revolutionary change is, how different it is from a more reformist nibbling at the edges of the current system that we have. It’s the old division you know, sangharsh aur nirman…

The film also shows us the ways in which the memories of Bhagat Singh and Pash, and the Bhumkal rebellion are kept alive. How central are these memories to revolutionary imaginings?

I think these are more than memories, and it would be reducing them if we were to dismiss them as nostalgia. These are what help construct a genealogy for these movements, this is what gives fighting people a history: and without a history what are people? So for Punjabis to remember the contribution of the Ghadar rebellion of 1915, or for the guerillas in Bastar to invoke the Paris Commune of 1871, or from more recently, for the fighting Dongaria Kondhs of Niyamgiri to remember the movement that led to the stoppage of the mining of the Gandhamardhan mountain in the mid 1980s, all of that goes into the construction of a revolutionary imagination. And what else is a revolutionary imagination other than the desire to turn this terribly unfair world upside down, and build a better, more ideal world for tomorrow?

Compared to Words on Water and Jashn-e-Azadi, Red Ant Dream is more diffuse. What were the challenges of narrating and editing it?

I think it probably might appear so because the earlier films were specific to one space, and one easily identifiable issue around which the resistance centres – large dams in the Narmada valley, the idea of Azadi in Kashmir. Here we take that idea of resistance and run that taut wire across quite a range of landscapes – Bastar, Odisha, Punjab…

The film did not involve a great deal of shooting – probably eight weeks in all. But the edit took very, very long. The argument of the film was really built on the editing table by an exceptional collaborator, my editor (and co-writer) Tarun Bhartiya, over probably a year and a half of intermittent work. You see if there is no straight narrative, no one geographical zone, not even a set of ‘characters’ on whom you can hang the story, then the task becomes more difficult. You’re left with the challenges of an essay film, but one that is constructed not with abstract images but with the brick and mortar of verite, observed material.

The film also incorporates found material – interviews with Azad, footage of a Salwa Judum rally and Maoist ambush videos. To what end did you seek to use these?

I suppose the logic of found material is that you could never even begin to approximate the effect that they carry: the audio recording of Azad is an old one, which has been circulating amongst journalists and others for years; but here it stands in for an insight into the minds of the Maoist leadership, which otherwise is opaque and closed to us. So is the material of the early Salwa Judum – that was shot as Government propaganda, but we managed to chance upon the unedited material, and that begins to tell a story which is completely hidden in the finished propaganda film. So are the Maoist videos, not just of attacks but also the interviews recorded sometimes literally a day after the havoc was wreaked upon people in Bastar, often recorded amidst the destruction and smouldering debris of their homes. What other images can ever convey the look in the eyes of those who’ve seen their loved ones hacked to death?

What are your hopes of the film? Where all do you plan to take it?

That it will be seen, and talked about and debated. That it will re-open a conversation about what real change can and must mean – that’s what the persistence of the revolutionary ideal is about at the end of the day. The film is already moving – it has been shown at festivals in Gorakhpur and Banaras, and this past week in Delhi, Chandigarh, Amritsar and Bhatinda. Documentary films have an amazing circuit, although it is mostly invisible. That’s what makes its practice so exciting in India today: there is very little mediation between the film-maker and audience, it’s not really up to the distributor to decide which film is worthy of release and which one isn’t. In all the screenings I’ve mentioned there hasn’t been a spare seat

In May of 1973, Shakur was in a car that was pulled over by police on the New Jersey highway. A shootout occurred, resulting in the deaths of her companion and fellow activist Zayd Malik Shakur and State Trooper Werner Foerster. Assata Shakur was wounded in the gunfight, having been shot twice. Accounts of what happened that night differ greatly — surviving Trooper James Harper (also wounded) claimed that Zayd Malik Shakur began firing when they asked him to step out of the vehicle whereas Assata Shakur attests that the police fired first, even after she had her hands in the air.

Shakur was convicted of Foerster’s murder and sentenced to a life in prison. In 1979, with the help of allies, she was able to escape from confinement and flee to Cuba where she still lives and calls herself a “20th century escaped slave.”

Wanted for approximately 34 years, Shakur, born Joanne Chesimard in New York City, has now become the first woman and the second domestic terrorist to have ever made the FBI’s most wanted list. The bounty for her capture and return to the U.S. has now jumped from $1 million to $2 million.

Shakur still has a massive share of supporters in the U.S. and abroad, as many rightly doubt the impartiality of the U.S. justice system towards Black activists, especially in the 1970s. Indeed, many of the facts in the state’s case against her are considered shaky and unfounded at best, and the “he said/she said” nature of the trial does not lend itself to an unquestionable conviction.

Even taking her conviction at face value, the FBI’s continued pursuit of her for nearly four decades — and her labeling as a domestic terrorist — seems overboard. Could it possibly be because the U.S. is in such denial of its own evident racist past that the government has to believe that she’s guilty for the sake of pride?

From Salon:

James Braxton Peterson, Director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University, has argued that the continued interest in Shakur’s capture reflects an evasion on the part of the U.S. government to truly come to terms with its racist recent past. “It is unlikely that our government will ever be able to come to terms with its own role in the violent racial conflicts of its immediate past, and thus unlikely that Assata will ever be able to live freely in her country of origin – these United States,” he wrote. The point being that if Black Panthers continue to be framed as dangerous, violent terrorists, the government’s role in the race war that birthed the panthers can be neatly tucked into history’s unread footnotes.

The article, written by Natasha Lennard, also points out how sensitive the U.S. government remains to this day about Black Panther and BLA propaganda. According to Mother Jones, possessing Black Panther literature or imagery — including images of Shakur — in prison can get inmates sent to solitary confinement as authorities claim that the items encourage and indicate gang activity.

Regardless, Assata Shakur remains an icon in and outside of the jailhouse. Songs and books have been written about her, her own autobiography Assata has a large readership and journalists continue to flock to Cuba for the chance to interview her. Public outcry leans heavily on her side so she’s an unwise target for the FBI to continually call attention to. Captured or free, she’ll remain an icon.

Assata Shakur first woman named on FBI most wanted list [Salon] Why the Assata Shakur case still strikes a chord [The Grio] Former Black Panther Assata Shakur Added to FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List [Democracy Now]

I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.

In 1978, my case was one of many cases bought before the United Nations Organization in a petition filed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, exposing the existence of political prisoners in the United States, their political persecution, and the cruel and inhuman treatment they receive in US prisons. According to the report:

‘The FBI and the New York Police Department in particular, charged and accused Assata Shakur of participating in attacks on law enforcement personnel and widely circulated such charges and accusations among police agencies and units. The FBI and the NYPD further charged her as being a leader of the Black Liberation Army which the government and its respective agencies described as an organization engaged in the shooting of police officers. This description of the Black Liberation Army and the accusation of Assata Shakur’s relationship to it was widely circulated by government agents among police agencies and units. As a result of these activities by the government, Ms. Shakur became a hunted person; posters in police precincts and banks described her as being involved in serious criminal activities; she was highlighted on the FBI’s most wanted list; and to police at all levels she became a ‘shoot-to-kill’ target.”

I was falsely accused in six different “criminal cases” and in all six of these cases I was eventually acquitted or the charges were dismissed. The fact that I was acquitted or that the charges were dismissed, did not mean that I received justice in the courts, that was certainly not the case. It only meant that the “evidence” presented against me was so flimsy and false that my innocence became evident. This political persecution was part and parcel of the government’s policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such charges.

On May 2, 1973 I, along with Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for a “faulty tail light.” Sundiata Acoli got out of the car to determine why we were stopped. Zayd and I remained in the car. State trooper Harper then came to the car, opened the door and began to question us. Because we were black, and riding in a car with Vermont license plates, he claimed he became “suspicious.” He then drew his gun, pointed it at us, and told us to put our hands up in the air, in front of us, where he could see them. I complied and in a split second, there was a sound that came from outside the car, there was a sudden movement, and I was shot once with my arms held up in the air, and then once again from the back. Zayd Malik Shakur was later killed, trooper Werner Foerster was killed, and even though trooper Harper admitted that he shot and killed Zayd Malik Shakur, under the New Jersey felony murder law, I was charged with killing both Zayd Malik Shakur, who was my closest friend and comrade, and charged in the death of trooper Forester. Never in my life have I felt such grief. Zayd had vowed to protect me, and to help me to get to a safe place, and it was clear that he had lost his life, trying to protect both me and Sundiata. Although he was also unarmed, and the gun that killed trooper Foerster was found under Zayd’s leg, Sundiata Acoli, who was captured later, was also charged with both deaths. Neither Sundiata Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media was ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press on a daily basis. In 1977, I was convicted by an all- white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison. In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case, and who were also extremely fearful for my life.

The U.S. Senate’s 1976 Church Commission report on intelligence operations inside the USA, revealed that “The FBI has attempted covertly to influence the public’s perception of persons and organizations by disseminating derogatory information to the press, either anonymously or through “friendly” news contacts.” This same policy is evidently still very much in effect today.

On December 24, 1997, The New Jersey State called a press conference to announce that New Jersey State Police had written a letter to Pope John Paul II asking him to intervene on their behalf and to aid in having me extradited back to New Jersey prisons. The New Jersey State Police refused to make their letter public. Knowing that they had probably totally distort the facts, and attempted to get the Pope to do the devils work in the name of religion, I decided to write the Pope to inform him about the reality of’ “justice” for black people in the State of New Jersey and in the United States. (See attached Letter to the Pope).

In January of 1998, during the pope’s visit to Cuba, I agreed to do an interview with NBC journalist Ralph Penza around my letter to the Pope, about my experiences in New Jersey court system, and about the changes I saw in the United States and it’s treatment of Black people in the last 25 years. I agreed to do this interview because I saw this secret letter to the Pope as a vicious, vulgar, publicity maneuver on the part of the New Jersey State Police, and as a cynical attempt to manipulate Pope John Paul II. I have lived in Cuba for many years, and was completely out of touch with the sensationalist, dishonest, nature of the establishment media today. It is worse today than it was 30 years ago. After years of being victimized by the “establishment” media it was naive of me to hope that I might finally get the opportunity to tell “my side of the story.” Instead of an interview with me, what took place was a “staged media event” in three parts, full of distortions, inaccuracies and outright lies. NBC purposely misrepresented the facts. Not only did NBC spend thousands of dollars promoting this “exclusive interview series” on NBC, they also spent a great deal of money advertising this “exclusive interview” on black radio stations and also placed notices in local newspapers.

 . . .

Like most poor and oppressed people in the United States, I do not have a voice. Black people, poor people in the U.S. have no real freedom of speech, no real freedom of expression and very little freedom of the press. The black press and the progressive media has historically played an essential role in the struggle for social justice. We need to continue and to expand that tradition. We need to create media outlets that help to educate our people and our children, and not annihilate their minds. I am only one woman. I own no TV stations, or Radio Stations or Newspapers. But I feel that people need to be educated as to what is going on, and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in Amerika. All I have is my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask, those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media, those of you who believe in truth freedom, To publish this statement and to let people know what is happening. We have no voice, so you must be the voice of the voiceless.

Free all Political Prisoners, I send you Love and Revolutionary Greetings From Cuba, One of the Largest, Most Resistant and Most Courageous Palenques (Maroon Camps) That has ever existed on the Face of this Planet.

Assata Shakur Havana, Cuba

Below is a clip of Assata Sakur’s Documentary “Eyes of the Rainbow: Assata Shakur Documentary”

“I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crimes in which only men were supposedly involved, i have been accused of planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post offices, airports, hotels, police cars, subways, banks, television, and newspapers. They have offered … rewards for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.” — Assata Shakur

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

by John Hill, Mohawk Nation News, mohawknationnews.com, May 2, 2013

A great loss to the people, to the nation, to the resistance, anti-imperialist movement right across Great Turtle Island. 

On March 13th, Dacajeweiah, Splitting-the-Sky, 61, left us forever when he passed away in his home in Adams Lake, British Columbia. Dac’s colonial name was John Boncore Hill, from Six Nations. “From Attica to Gustafsen Lake,” and thereafter, he was a warrior, a comrade, a brother, a father, a grandfather, a friend.

We deeply mourn his loss.

The family will release a biographical statement and details of memorial arrangements in due course. With deepest love to his wife, She-Keeps-the-Door, and children. We stand with Dac’s many many co-fighters and friends. He loved the People. The AIM song is dedicated to the continuance of the resistance after a warrior has fallen.

From Roslyn Cassells:

Splitting the Sky, also know as John Boncore, his colonial name, aged 61, was one of the most fierce, uncompromising, warriors I have ever met. He was fighting the pipeline in northern BC at the time of his death, but has been involved in sovereignty issues and many human rights and ecojustice campaigns all over the world.

As a survivor of the prison uprising in Attica and a member of AIM (American Indian Movement) he came to Surrey, BC during the trial of the Sundancers of Tspeten, the Gustafson Lake standoff, the longest trial in BC history. That is where I met him.

He tried to arrest George Bush for war crimes, and was an ally of social justice battles everywhere. His fierce spirit, big heart, and huge smile and sense of humour is what I will remember of Splitting the Sky.

I doubt he will rest in peace, as there is yet no justice. I suspect his fighting spirit will return to encourage those of us who remain to keep up the battle for all peoples, and all our relations.

I will always remember Splitting the Sky, and his cry for justic

The WikiLeaks founder talks Bush and Bradley Manning.

[Photo Credit: Espen Moe / Creative Commons]

I had an opportunity to interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been granted political asylum since June 2012. Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden over sex allegations, although he has never been charged. Assange believes that if sent to Sweden, he would be put into prison and then sent to the United States, where he is already being investigated for espionage for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military memos on the WikiLeaks website. –Medea Benjamin

George W. Bush’s new presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Texas has opened with great fanfare, including the attendance of Presidents Obama and former Presidents Carter, Bush Sr. and Clinton. George Bush has said that the library is “a place to lay out facts.” What facts would you like to see displayed at his library?

A good place to start would be laying out the number of deaths caused by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. At Wikileaks, we documented that from 2004-2009, the US had records of over 100,000 individual deaths of Iraqis due to violence unleashed by that invasion, roughly 80% of them civilians. These are the recorded deaths, but many more died. And in Afghanistan, the US recorded about 20,000 deaths from 2004-2010. These would be good facts to include in the presidential library.

And perhaps the library could document how people around the world protested against the invasion of Iraq, including the historic February 15, 2003 mobilization of millions of people around the globe.

It will be a show trial where the government tries to prove that by leaking the documents, Bradley “aided and abetted the enemy” or “communicated with the enemy.” The government will bring in a member of the Navy Seal team that killed bin Laden to say that he found some of the leaked information in bin Laden’s house.

The government doesn’t even claim that Bradley passed information directly to “the enemy” or that he had any intent to do so. But they are nonetheless making the absurd claim that merely informing the public about classified government activities makes someone a traitor because it “indirectly informs the enemy”.

With that reasoning, since bin Laden recommended that Americans read Bob Woodward book Obama’s War, should Woodward be charged with communicating with the enemy? Should The New York Times be accused of aiding the enemy if bin Laden possessed a copy of the newspaper that included the WikiLeaks material?

They should pressure the media to speak out against the espionage charges. The Los Angeles Times put out a good editorial but other newspapers have been poor. A Wall Street Journal column by Gordon Crovitz said that Bradley should be tried for espionage, and that I should be charged with that as well because I’m a “self-proclaimed enemy of the state.”

If Manning is charged with espionage, this criminalizes national security reporting. Any leak of classified information to any media organization could be interpreted as an act of treason. People need to convince the media that it is clearly in their self-interest to take a principled stand.

What are other ways people can help Bradley Manning’s case? 

It’s embarrassing that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—Amnesty International headquartered in London and Human Rights Watch headquartered in New York—have refused to refer to Bradley Manning as a political prisoner or a prisoner of conscience.

To name someone a political prisoner means that the case is political in nature. It can be that the prisoner committed a political act or was politically motivated or there was a politization of the legal investigation or the trial.

Any one of these is sufficient, according to Amnesty’s own definition, to name someone a political prisoner. But Bradley Manning’s case fulfills all of these criteria. Despite this, Amnesty International has said that it’s not going to make a decision until after the sentence. But what good is that?

Their excuse is that they don’t know what might come out in the trial and they want to be sure that Bradley released the information in a “responsible manner.”

I find their position grotesque. Bradley Manning is the most famous political prisoner the United States has. He has been detained without trial for over 1,000 days. Not even the US government denies his alleged acts were political.

Human Rights Watch doesn’t refer to Bradley Manning as a political prisoner either. These groups should be pushed by the public to change their stand. And they should be boycotted if they continue to shirk acting in their own backyard.

Another way for people to support Bradley Manning is to attend his trial in Ft. Meade, Maryland, which begins on June 2, and the rally on June 1. They can learn more by contacting the Bradley Manning Support Network.

Thank you for your time, Julian.

April 30, 1975: a North Vietnamese tank rolls through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, signifying the fall of South Vietnam

TheGuardian

[Note from Maruti Suzuki Workers Union : We are currently on an indefinite dharna in Kaithal, Haryana since 24 March 2013, which included an 8-day Hunger Strike, and will continue until our demands are met. Please join us, in large numbers on 8th May 2013 in Kaithal (in front of the D.C. Office) for a program and rally to take the struggle forward.]

Make Stronger the Unity of the Workers of Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal and the Toiling Masses of Haryana !

On the occasion of May Day, take the pledge to challenge the attack of the Capitalists and the Government which serves their interests !

Friends and Comrades,

Our experiences in struggle since 4th June 2011 provide us with the realization of a renewed importance of May Day and its glorious history. Moulded and tempered in the hearth of the struggle against exploitation and repression, the meaning of this history confronts us with an immediacy and concreteness today.

Exploitation and unceasing exploitation, struggle and repression: what all have we not witnessed during the space of these two years! On the strength of our unity and the solidarity of the workers of the industrial belt of Gurgaon-Manesar, after three phases of strike actions in 2011, we finally formed our Union in March 2012. This expression of our collective strength was unbearable to the management of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Manesar and the state administration, who, to break this unity, as part of the conspiracy of 18th July 2012, declared us to be mindless criminals and terminated the jobs of 546 permanent and around 1800 contract workers. Along with this, 147 of our innocent fellow workers were thrown into jail, who continue to languish there, while non-bailable arrest warrants were thrust on 66 of us. An atmosphere of terror through continuous police repression and administrative intransigence firmly on side of the company management has been hounding us ever since. When we look at the horrible exploitative conditions of work of our fellow workers inside the factory today, the rationale behind the lies and fabrications of the company’s narrative around 18th July 2012 become clear to us. The workers working inside the factory today are bereft of all the rights that we won during the first phase of our struggle. Fewer workers than earlier toil harder than before. When even as much as an inkling of a renewed attempt to raise our voice, to establish our Union inside the factory came, 13 of the more active workers were promptly transferred to various corners of the country, and the attempt crushed there itself. So much for ‘everything’s under control’ in the Maruti’s ‘way of life’!

In this entire chain of events, rather than protect the rights of workers, we’ve found that the Government of Haryana has stood firmly on the side of the labour law-flouting, exploitative and illegal mechanisms of the Maruti company management. These ministers who make thousands of false promises just before the elections, have told us on many occasions that they cannot go against the ‘interest’ of the company. Without any impartial investigation, they declared us to be guilty and convicted. Thousands of policemen were posted to hound and repress our peaceful struggle. In order to ensure that our demands for our democratic rights do not reach the broader working masses of industrial belt in other factories, for the last nine months, the Haryana administration has effectively banned all dharnas and rallies in the Manesar area. They have even arrested some of our comrades for the ‘crime’ of distributing pamphlets with demands of workers! Our legitimate demands are such an eye sore to the Haryana government, that they did not give permission to hold even a dharna in front of the office of the Gurgaon D.C., and even our ongoing dharna in front of residence of Industries Minister, R.S. Surjewala in Kaithal has been sought to be crushed through various mechanisms.

In the light of the challenges that we faced in these last two years, when we remember the legacy of May Day, we feel an iron resolve in our hearts to take the struggle to its logical direction. On 1st May 1886, 80000 workers in Chicago had taken to the streets with the demand of an 8-hour working day, establishing the firm legacy of May Day. After this, the working class movement gained many successes. Even after this long militant history, today we find the larger section of the workers toiling day and night on 12-16 hour shifts under the vise-like grip of the illegal contract worker system. Workers are pitched against each other under the pain of unemployment, and the broad working masses find their lives deteriorating by the day for the profit of a handful of capitalists. To break the vicious cycle of capitalist exploitation, our previous generations have left us a strong legacy of militant struggle. Today when the capitalist regime and the government which is hand-in-glove with it, is making an all-out effort to snatch the gains of this legacy, we have to assume serious responsibility and resolve to protect these gains and take forward the workers movement with its new challenges.

During the space of our struggle, we have witnessed how the owners disregard and actively fight against our legitimate rights, even against the fundamental right to freedom of association and formation of Union to all others. Our movement has had two primary demands – the right to organize and complete abolition of the illegal contract worker system. Both these demands are well within the ambit of our Constitutional rights, but not only the company management, but even the media and the government which stands on the basis of the Constitution has continuously tried to suppress this. After the formation of our Union in March 2012, the Maruti company management flatly refused to even negotiate on our demand of regularizing contract workers in our Charter of Demands. The owners cannot tolerate the unity of permanent and contract workers. While the contract worker system has on the one hand become the principal basis of profit extraction from the cheap, insecure labour for capitalists today, it is at the same time becoming the main reason of the miserable conditions of workers in the country and worldwide. This is the main weapon in the hands of the capitalists to divide the workers movement. We can only face this by generalizing our unity and make our struggle against the segmentation between permanent and contract workers more resolute. We have learnt this lesson from our struggle.

Comrades, May Day is the celebration of the collective power arising from the unity of workers! But this unity is today in a precarious condition and we are faced with many difficulties while confronting this task of rebuilding our unity. The ever-worsening conditions of work and life are being responded to by the eruption of anger and unrest by workers all over the country. Despite the emergence of these mostly spontaneous bursts of anger, we feel that an able and responsible leadership organically linked with these aspirations and with the correct direction, is lacking which can take these agitations to the logical militant direction that they demand. To establish the unity of permanent and contract workers, a lot still requires to be done. While in the last phase we have witnessed the formation of Unions in some factories here and there, there remains a glaring need to form an even stronger unity among workers across various factories. Owing to these problems, even struggles which are militant in their initial phase, face disappointment and are forced to come to a compromise. Today, the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal industrial area is among the main centers of industrial production in the country. The working masses here have had experiences of many big movements in the area. In this scenario, it is important that we imbibe the knowledge gleaned in these struggles and make an uncompromising attempt to seek out solutions to the challenges we face, and also take it forward to the working masses of the entire country. Any exploitation of workers anywhere is an attack on the entire workers movement. To build up a concrete militant unity against this, is our primary aim. We want to place this task before the working class of the entire country today on the occasion of May Day, and pledge ourselves completely to work towards this aim.

Inquilab Zindabad! Mazdoor Ekta Zindabad!

MARUTI SUZUKI WORKERS UNION

Released by the Provisional Working Committee, MSWU, Manesar, Gurgaon