Saturday, September 1, 2012

West Bengal Observed Historic Anti-Imperialist Day: Lakhs Protest Against US Imperialism


Kolkata witnessed another historic rally of hundred thousands people that roared against imperialist aggression over third world nations. Peoples mostly from the districts of South Bengal participated with full of enthusiasm to mark their protest against US aggression and to commemorate the Anti Imperialist Day of 1st September. Left Front like every previous year organized the anti-imperialist rally this year too. All state leaderships of Left Front led the rally from the front. The rally, as was scheduled, started sharp 1pm from Rani Rashmoni Road. The face of the rally took more than 2-30 hours to reach Deshbandhu Park when the tail was waiting at Rani Rashmoni Road. The rally was fully decorated with flags, festoons, and most importantly the mobile tableaus that remained most attractive part of the rally this year too. It was exactly 4-30 when the last tableau along with people reached Deshbandhu Park. Like the city of Kolkata, another urban hub of West Bengal Siliguri too witnessed an equally big anti imperialist rally where people from different corners of North Bengal made that a grand success. 
The prime slogans pronounced by the historic rally were:

(i) US Militarization over developing countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and countries of Latin America;

(ii) Financial Imperialism through FDI in retail sector, privatization of Insurance sector, Pension funds etc. over countries like India that causes intrusion in the internal economy of these developing countries;

(iii) Deaths of millions of people and huge loss of property in sponsored terrorist activities by ally powers like Israel etc.

(iv) So the final slogan was to safeguard political, financial and social sovereignty across nations.

While addressing the crowd at the end of the rally the CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee drew a whole backdrop of Imperialism primarily led by USA to correlate the magnitude of the contemporary imperialist aggression in the world. Having mentioned the Atom Bomb attack over Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a birth of today’s US led imperialism, Bhattacharjee explained that the nuclear attack against Japan was to throttle the battle for freedom in different countries after the Second World War, primarily either against the colonial rulings or the nationalist struggles. The subsequent attack against Vietnam and Korea were among the deadliest invasions of US and allied forces. US imperialism killed progressive African icons like Patrice Lumumba and many others. In Latin America US time and again attacked countries like Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama etc.

They devastated Afghanistan; brutally killing Saddam Hussein they demolished Iraq but could not find the mass destructive weapons; they sponsored internal terrorism in Libya, Syria etc in the name of founding democracy in these countries. Basically they want global OIL control, so they terrorize oil rich countries, said Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

Now the danger of imperialism comes in a different direction when US and allied countries target China and trying to set base in India. We won’t tolerate US base in India to blockade India and would launch bigger protest.

Like Militant terrorism the USA is now promoting financial imperialism in countries like India and other third world nations. US imperialism is now intruding in every internal economic sector of the third world or developing nations. Bank, Insurance, Pension Funds, Food Security are nowadays facing US policy controlling and the Central Government of India is trying to promote such intrusion. Who will control agriculture? If shopping malls are going to sell food and agricultural products our farmers will lose control over its own market forever. They are already facing such intimidation, averred Bhattacharjee.

India is trying to set up a strategic partnership or alliance with USA. What strategic alliance is this? We will protest against any of such alliance. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had made her visit in this state. It was unprecedented for any Indian state that nobody since independence had faced such a situation. Why did she visit Writers’ Buildings? This is a very alarming situation. We need to be more cautious, said Bhattacharjee.

Left Front Chairman Biman Basu while congratulating the people for making the rally a great success said that US led force are using our markets to meet their internal crisis. They are trying to control our economy. So we must keep our struggle on against such imperialist aggression. If any of US official comes to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of great Indian Philosopher Swami Vivekananda on 12th January next year, the state will definitely revolt.