Naxalbari May 25, 1967: A tribute

by Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents.org | May 25, 2017

Naxalbari is still alive. Half a century has passed, yet the struggle is as bright as the crimson sun. Naxalbari is alive in the politics of people. The politics of dominating classes with all its power, and after so many years, is still failing to ignore Naxalbari, now, name of a politics, and has failed to wipe out Naxalbari from the map of people’s struggle.

Now, the 50^th anniversary of Naxalbari, is a time to pay tribute to the path-breaking struggle that began in the area on the Mechi river along the India-Nepal border, to its architects, organizers and fighters, to the martyrs, many of them were murdered in prison cells, the poor peasants, the laborers, the women, the youth, the students, the intellectuals upholding a class line and making supreme sacrifice for the cause of the exploited. On May 25, 1967, police fired upon a gathering of people, and savagely murdered 9 including 6 rural poor women and 2 children in Naxalbari area. Martyrs are many. Aamraa to voolee naai shaheed, comrade martyrs, you are alive in our memory. (From a people’s song in Baanglaa.)

Remembering my Old Comrades

by Sumanta Banerjee

Frontier | Vol. 49, No.45, May 14 – 20, 2017

Photo: Internet

There have been lots of theoretical debates over the Naxalbari movement since its beginnings in the 1960s. At times, I also participate in those debates. But looking back at the years that followed, when I moved from the position of a sympathizer to an activist, I  treasure memories of some  wonderful people with whom I had the chance of sharing my days during the underground period, and in jails. This is not a sentimental nostalgic account, but a tribute to a few such brave souls, who dared to break out from their social environs and traditional upbringing, to join a revolutionary movement that tried to revive the moral ethos of our polity and society with the aim of creating a new political order based on economic equity and social justice. It was not a smooth journey for many among them, who had to wrestle within their inner selves in trying to shed the traditional conservative values on which they were brought up on the one hand, and reconciling with the  violent excesses of the movement that hurt their humanitarian values  on the other.

MST Leader Joao Pedro Stedile: ‘We need direct elections now and an emergency plan for the people’

The Dawn | May 18, 2017

by Joana Tavares / Source: Brasil de Fato

Photo credit: Santiago Macambira / Mídia Ninja

Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and of the People’s Brazil Front, analyzes the Brazilian political scenario, the role of the O Globo media network, the internal divisions among the putschists, and speaks about the need of building a transition government and the people’s project of Brazil.

Interview with Oscar López Rivera: “Fighting is not a Futile Exercise”

The Dawn | May 17, 2017

Photo: Resumen-english

By: Mari Narváez / Source: Claridad – Translation: Resumen Latinoamericano, North American Bureau / The Dawn News / May 17, 2017

While many of us could hardly concentrate on everyday matters as we thought obsessively about the fragile and unfortunate fate of Oscar López Rivera, the former political prisoner painted peacefully in the prison in Terre Haute Indiana.

Then on January 17, at 3:30 pm a guard called him to let him know that he had a call from his lawyer Jan Susler who gave him the news. “Oscar, President Obama just commuted your sentence”. Lopez Rivera stayed quiet. “How do you feel, Oscar?  Aren’t you happy?” “I feel the same as yesterday, the same as always,” he replied.

Canada’s Complicity in Entrenching Colonialism in Africa

by Yves Engler

Dissident Voice | May 23, 2017

The recent seizure of phosphate from a Moroccan state company in South Africa and Panama is a blow to corporate Canada and a victory for national independence struggles. It should also embarrass the Canadian media.

This month courts in Port Elizabeth and Panama City okayed requests by the POLISARIO Front asking South Africa and Panama to seize two cargo ships with 100,000 tonnes of phosphate from Western Sahara, a sparsely populated territory in north-western Africa occupied by Morocco. Ruled by Spain until 1975, Moroccan troops moved in when the Spanish departed and a bloody 15-year war drove tens of thousands of Sahrawi into neighbouring Algeria, where they still live in camps.