Najeeba Wazefadost came to Australia as a child refugee in September 2000 by a perilous journey by boat. She is now president of Hazara Women of Australia and I interviewed her for Green Left TV at a 500-strong Hazara community demonstration in the centre of Sydney on February 20 to protest the ongoing massacres of Shia in Pakistan.
See the GLTV video and photos of the protest below.
Pakistan
Minister of State for Finance Saleem Mandviwalla confirmed on January 23 that murder charges against the owners of the Baldia Town factory that caught fire on September 11 last year had been withdrawn. The investigation officer was also changed.
On January 24, there was no general strike. The apparent silence of the working class was a result of the systematic targeting of unions by the state apparatus.
With over 259 workers killed in the fire, the final death toll is still unavailable.
Hashim bin Rashid is the general secretary of the Lahore branch of Pakistan'sAwami Workers Party, which was recently formed by three left-wing groups uniting. Hasmim was a special guest at the Socialist Alliance national conference in Geelong 18-1-13, where the gave the talk in this video. The video is by Green Left TV.
Alia Amirali is a leading left activist, general secretary of the National Student Federation (Punjab) and a member of the new united left party Awami Workers' Party who will be visiting Australia in January 2013 to be the international guest speaker at the 9th national conference of the Socialist Alliance. She is also a researcher on the Baloch National Movement and a lecturer at Quaid-e-Azam University.
The statement below was released by the newly formed Awami Workers Party on November 2.
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Three leftist parties, Awami Party Pakistan, Labour Party Pakistan and Workers Party Pakistan, will formally merge into a new party called the Awami Workers Party (AWP) on November 11. It is a first step towards building an alternative to the status quo that has brought the Pakistani state and society to the brink of collapse.
This was stated by leaders of the three parties at a press conference held on November 2 at the Islamabad Hotel.
The shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai has unleashed a wave of revulsion and protest in Pakistan, along with a wave of media attention around the world.
Across the political spectrum people are, quite naturally, interpreting this brutal crime through their own ideological lenses.
Unfortunately, leaps of logic and aggressive, violent non-sequiturs abound. This is in both the misogyny-addled justifications for this brazen assassination attempt and in the attempts to use this sickening attack as cover or justification for deadly and destructive foreign interventions.
The statement below was released by the Awami Party Pakistan, the Labour Party Pakistan and the Workers Party Pakistan on talks to merge their groups.
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Over the past few months, three left political parties have been holding meetings to discuss the possibility of a merger and creation of a new progressive force in Pakistani politics. Many of us have been striving for left unity for years, even decades.
Resistance national conference motion in solidarity with Pakistani political prisoner Baba Jan. Moved 22 July 2012. Adelaide South Australia.
Free Baba Jan - sign the open letter
More information about Baba Jan
Two leaders of the Labour Party Pakistan and the Progressive Youth Front (PYF) narrowly escaped torture by a special interrogation unit due to prompt protests in Pakistan and around the world, Farooq Tariq, LPP national spokesperson for the LPP, told Green Left Weekly.
Baba Jan and four comrades were jailed last September for standing up for people's rights in the Hunza Valley, in the remote province of Gilgit-Baltistan, after their villages and farmlands were flooded in 2010.
A June 27 speakout in the Bourke Street Mall called for the freeing of political prisoners in Pakistan and condemned the Pakistani state’s use of the Western-sponsored “war on terror” as a pretext for cracking down on community activists and trade unionists. The speakout was use to collect signatures names on an international open letter.
For 9 months, Baba Jan Hunzai and 4 fellow activists have languished in Pakistani jails, charged with terrorism offences, and suffered torture. Their crime? Organising the oppressed local community to struggle for compensation, after their villages were submerged by a climate-change induced landslide. Green Left TV's Peter Boyle interviewed Labour Party of Pakistan spokesperson Farooq Tariq.
You can join Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali and many others around the world in signing the open letter in support of Labour Party Pakistan activist Baba Jan, jailed and tortured for fighting for compensation for flood victims.
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For the past eight months Baba Jan Hunzai and four fellow activists have languished in various jails of Gilgit. Twice in this period he has been removed from jail and tortured by military and police agents.
At May Day rallies it organised or took part in throughout Pakistan, the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) highlighted the cases of members and supporters facing “anti-terror” courts. These include the Faisalabad 6, serving long sentences for leading a 2010 power loom workers strike and 12 power loom workers currently facing the Anti-Terror courts in Karachi for union organising.
The Labour Party of Pakistan has reported that LPP member Baba Jan and other activists in Gilgit district jail were severely beaten and tortured by dozens of Rangers, Police and Frontier Constabulary in the early morning of April 28.
In response, an international campaign is being organised for the release of Baba Jan and other activists jailed last year for campaigning for compensation for flood victims.
After devastating floods swept the Atta Abad Lakes region of Pakistan last year, police opened fire on a demonstration of people demanding compensation. Two people were killed.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s April 17 speech to the Council of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute was widely reported in the global media as announcing an early withdrawal of Australian troops from Afghanistan.
But the April 20 Australian Financial Review said government ministers had reassured Australia’s allies in the US-led multinational occupation of Afghanistan that the speech did no such thing.
Yasin Malik is the chairperson of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, a secular nationalist organisation formed in 1977 to struggle for the independence of Kashmir.
Since 1947, Kashmir has been divided between Indian and Pakistani occupied areas. Both claim the whole of Kashmir and have fought three wars over the country.
The JKLF launched an armed struggle in 1988, but changed tactics to non-violent struggle in 1994.
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