Tag Archives: Strikes

South Africa

Remembering the Marikana massacre – demanding justice and accountability

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Image: Marikana” by Truthout.org is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

On 16th August 2012, heavily armed South African police officers cordoned hundreds of striking miners at a koppie (small hill) not far from the platinum mine they worked in and the informal settlement of Nkageng where many lived. The miners were meeting, as they did usually during the strike, to discuss progress and plans for action. The police ordered them to disperse but the mineworkers refused to leave and demanded a meeting with their employers.

Realising that they were trapped, the mine workers tried to move off the koppie and make way to Nkageng. The police opened fire without warning killing 17 and pursued fleeing miners, killing a further 17 and leaving 78 injured. Furthermore, 270 mineworkers were unlawfully arrested and charged under common purpose law, accusing them of causing the deaths of their colleagues.  

On 10th August, nearly 3,000 workers had walked off from their job at the Marikana platinum mine operated by Lonmin (short for London Mining) in the Rustenburg municipality of North West province after managers refused to meet them. The mineworkers were not only protesting against low wages but also against poor working and living conditions – the informal settlements where many of them lived in shacks without basic necessities of water, sanitation and electricity.

Tensions were running high in the area following the strike. There was a series of violent clashes resulting in fatalities involving Lonmin security guards, the police, members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on one side, and the striking miners who had joined the emerging Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).

There is ample evidence that the violent attack by the police on the Marikana miners was well planned. There was collusion between the police commanders, the Lonmin management and South African government ministers. The day before the assault, the police ordered 4,000 rounds of live ammunition for R5 assault rifles and four mortuary vans. The police also called in the Tactical Response Team, a specialised unit for dealing with extremely volatile incidents.

Cyril Ramaphosa, now president, was a shareholder and a non-executive director in Lonmin at that time. As a senior ANC leader and a member of its National Executive Committee, he had immense political influence. Instead of calling for fair and peaceful negotiations securing a better deal for the miners, he labelled the strikers as criminals and urged strong police action. The ANC government wanted to assure the mining conglomerates that their profits were safe and they would bring any strikes for better wages under control.

Following the massacre, the ANC government ran a slick public relations campaign to deflect any criticism by blaming the striking miners for the violence. The official narrative was that the armed men advanced on the police lines rapidly, posing a serious threat and leaving the police no choice but to shoot in self-defence. The deaths were described as an unintended  ‘tragedy’ as opposed to a ‘massacre’.

President Zuma commissioned an inquiry led by retired judge Ian Farlam with the task to “investigate matters of public, national and international concern arising out of the tragic incidents at the Lonmin Mine in Marikana.” The Farlam Commission sat for 300 days beginning on 1st October at the Rustenberg Civic Centre, listening to testimony from widows, victims, police, company officials and other parties. The official report sanitised state violence and offered only vague accounts of the killings of the mineworkers – attacks on the police received more detailed attention – and made generalised recommendations for investigation and prosecution by other state bodies.

This was the most lethal use of force by South African police officers against protestors since the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 and Soweto students in 1976. In these cases, the protestors were challenging the apartheid regime against the pass laws in the first instance and the imposition of Afrikaans as the main language of instruction in the second.

The Marikana massacre attested that the non-racial democratic transformation brought about under the leadership of Nelson Mandela had never broken the link between the state and the corporations that benefited from the exploitation of cheap black labour. The shock and betrayal felt by the mineworkers after witnessing the murder of their comrades destroyed the somewhat paternalistic relationship that had come to exist between the bulk of the working class, the co-opted trade unions and the state in post-apartheid South Africa.

The repressive state structures of the police, the intelligence services and the army had remained in place to exercise state violence against the black working class. The South African extractive economy was deeply integrated into the world market and the new rising black elite eased into the neo-colonial relationship with the established economic power. The ownership of land, factories, mines remained unchanged leaving the majority of the black communities in poverty. The legacy of social inequality and violence continued as before.

After ten years, not a single officer has been charged for the killings nor has the South African Police Service been held to account. The 34 families of those who died received some compensation for loss of income but their claims of constitutional violations and general damages specific to each family’s circumstance have stalled.

The state has not paid any compensation to the 78 mineworkers who were injured and their case will be heard in the Pretoria High Court from late July to August. All the mineworkers who were arrested unlawfully have received compensation. The injured and arrested mineworkers have also launched a court application to hold President Cyril Ramaphosa and Sibanye-Stillwater, which bought Lonmin’s Marikana operations in 2019, liable.

The conditions of the families who live in the shacks have changed little over the ten years. They still do not have their basic necessities of water and electricity. The Marikana mines are highly profitable, yet the owners have not taken action to improve the living conditions of these communities.

On 16th August 2022, on the tenth anniversary of the Marikana massacre, thousands of miners will gather at the koppie to remember their 34 colleagues who were brutally killed as they have done every year, Widows, families, fellow workers, union leaders, politicians and church leaders will demand those responsible  be prosecuted and jailed.

The City of London is deeply embedded in the extractive mining industry in South Africa over decades in financing the operations of the Anglo-American corporations which are highly profitable and provide rich dividends to the investors. British imperialism which supported the Apartheid regime still wields enormous power over the economy and politics of South Africa. 

International solidarity is all the more critical to ensure that the Marikana massacre is not erased from history and that there is justice and accountability. In the UK, the Marikana Solidarity Collective has organised two key events to remember the Marikana massacre

Firstly, there will be three film screenings on Sunday 24th July at the British Film Institute (BFI) with discussions led by panels to reflect on the tragic 2012 massacre of mineworkers in Marikana, South Africa and their ramifications.

12 noon ‘Winnie’,  DirectorPascale Lamche.An account of the life and struggle of Winnie Mandela, the extraordinary anti-apartheid activist at the key moment of transition.

2pm ‘Miners Shot Down’,  DirectorRehad Desai.An acclaimed and compelling documentary about the Marikana massacre.

3.45 pm Panel Q&A Discussion with Asanda Benya, University of Cape Town researcher, on the women miners’ perspective in Marikana; Andy Higginbottom on the London connection.

4.30 pm ‘Blue Notes and Exiled Voices’ DirectorImruh Bakari.An affectionate portrait of exiled South African musicians in London: Louis Moholo, Pinise Saul and Hugh Masekela.

The events will be co-chaired from Marikana Solidarity by Amanda Latimer (Kingston University) and Cecil Gutzmore (retired activist and academic).

Tickets £10 for all or part of the day https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=commemoratingmarikana

A handful of complimentary tickets are available, speak to a Collective member or email Marikana Solidarity Collective, email: mambushlives@gmail.com

Refreshment: You can purchase drinks / sandwiches and eat in the venue. With BFI’s agreement you are welcome to bring your own refreshments to consume.

Secondly, on Tuesday 16th August at 4.30 p.m. there will be a vigil to mark the 10th anniversary of the Marikana massacre outside the South Africa House on the east side of Trafalgar Square. Everyone is welcome to join in solidarity.

Sources and further readings

Andy Higginbottom (March 2018) ‘The Marikana Massacre in South Africa: the Results of Toxic Collusion’ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323607571_The_Marikana_Massacre_in_South_Africa_the_Results_of_Toxic_Collusion

Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR)  (June 27 2022) Report ‘Reparations for victims of the Marikana massacre’ https://www.csvr.org.za/reparations-for-victims-of-the-marikana-masssacre/

Greg Marinovich (16 August 2021) ‘From the Archive | The women of Marikana’https://www.newframe.com/the-women-of-marikana/

Greg Nicolson Marikana – a massacre still without any criminal consequences 19 May 2022 https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-05-19-marikana-a-massacre-still-without-any-criminal-consequences/

Mail and Guardian (30 July 2014) ‘Toxic’ Lonmin-police collusion blamed for Marikana massacre’  https://mg.co.za/article/2014-07-30-toxic-lonmin-police-collusion-blamed-for-marikana-massacre/

Niren Tolsi and Paul Botes (13 August 2021) South Africa: ‘I Don’t Feel Like a Citizen of This Country’ https://allafrica.com/stories/202108140276.html

Sarah Bruchhausen (16 August 2021) Mountains and massacres https://www.newframe.com/mountains-and-massacres/

SERI (2015) Commissioning ‘The Present: Marikana And Its Aftermath’  http://www.marikana-conference.com/
Tendai Marima (20 August 2015) ‘After Marikana, little has changed for miners’ https://www.aljazeera.com/author/tendai_marima_201147112737784307

Yvonne Erasmus (22 Aug 2021)  ‘Marikana and the many faces of justice’ https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-08-22-marikana-and-the-many-faces-of-justice/

First published in Labour Hub on July 13 2022 https://labourhub.org.uk/2022/07/13/remembering-the-marikana-massacre-demanding-justice-and-accountability/

Sudan

Sudan’s democratic revolution stands at a critical juncture

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Image: Revolution in Sudan. Author: Esam Idris, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

The resignation of Prime Minister Hamdock on Sunday 2nd January has removed the proverbial fig leaf of the military behind which it could control the democratic transition.  At last, we have two forces now contending for power, the unarmed people and the armed generals.

The 14 point agreement signed by Hamdock and the generals on 21st November 2021 after his release from house arrest received a firm rejection by the political parties and the civil society organisations, the doctors committee and Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) and the Resistance Committees. Such was the angry civic opposition that Hamdock could not form a civilian cabinet. 

The transitional framework since 2020 under Hamdock was favoured by all the foreign powers – the US, United Kingdom, European Union, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt. It was also supported by the United Nations Secretary General, the African Union, the IMF and the World Bank.

But the transitional agreement, the constitutional declaration and the Hamdock agreement were all deeply flawed because they did not address the issue of executive control by the military, its control of key ministerial posts and foreign policy, the accountability of the generals to civilian government for the violence unleashed and the military control of the economy.

There have been daily mass demonstrations and the last march of the millions on Thursday 6th January was one of the more than ten major nationwide protests since the coup on 25th October 2021. The message from the demonstrations could not be clearer. They want the generals out of political power and returned to the barracks. They want no compromise and no negotiations with the military. They want a civilian government.

The military response is fairly standard now. Swamp the protestors with tear gas. Often fire the projectiles directly at protestors deliberately causing death and injuries. Use live fire when under pressure. Shut all the bridges across the Nile connecting Khartoum with other cities. Shut down the internet and social media. But this has not stopped the protests.

But that is not all. In many neighbourhoods, the generals are using “more than excessive force” by deploying the entire security apparatus to suppress the protests: the army, security forces, police, anti-riot police, paramilitaries of Rapid Support Forces, the Central Reserve Police and the General Intelligences Services.

Under the state of emergency, the plain clothes General Intelligence Services has been raiding homes, arresting activists of the resistance committees to prevent them from organising. We still have no idea about how many arrested, at what locations they have been detained, under what conditions people are kept – whether they are kept in solitary confinement or being tortured.

Joint security forces are also reported to have raided hospitals, pursued injured people to detain them and hence prevent them from getting medical care. On 6th January they stormed into Al Arbaeen Hospital the second time assaulting patients and staff. The Emergency Department of Khartoum Teaching Hospital was also raided and gas canisters thrown into the building. 

It is quite common in the media to have a death count after the coup of 25th October. This stands at 62 on Sunday 9th January. But that is to ignore the nearly 700 injuries recoded within a month after the coup. This figure would be much higher after nearly three months.  Also forgotten are casualties of at least 246 deaths and more than 1,350 injuries by mid-July 2019. This incomplete record is unprecedented in Sudan’s history of uprisings since independence, with a handful of casualties in 1985 and around a score in 1964’s uprisings. 

Women have been at the forefront of the Sudanese democratic revolution. At any protest you can see them in groups raising the victory sign. So ‘patriotic’ soldiers of Sudan sexually abused women to drive them away from the protests. On Sunday 19th December, 13 girls and women were alleged to have been raped.   This aroused memories of 70 women who were raped during the 3rd June sit in which resulted in the Khartoum massacre by the Rapid Support Forces. Women have come out publicly protesting against sexual violence. No soldiers have been held to account for these infamies. 

The violence that was perpetrated in Darfur has now come home to Khartoum and Omdurman. The Sudanese people are not prepared to forget and forgive these atrocities. They want the army to be held to account.

Strikes have been a weapon to defy the military since the inception of the December Revolution in 2018.  Recently, important struggles have developed in some workplaces. Thousands of court workers went on strike between 2nd and 6th January, demanding a rise in their bonuses to cope with the escalating cost of living. Workers in the Bank of Khartoum have been demanding pay rises for the same reason. The bank was privatised in 2010 with 70 percent of its shares held by the UAE Bank of Abu Dhabi, with money flowing into the pockets of privateers. To clamp down on the mobilisations of bank workers, the management has sacked 200 workers and 500 more are at risk. These struggles have sparked off solidarity campaigns to bring together the strikers and the activists of Resistance Committees. The Sudanese Workers Association for the Restoration of Trade Unions (SWAFRTU) is reviving a united independent working class movement away from the grips of the establishment.

The Sovereignty Council formula was adopted for the transition after the fall of al-Bashir following the tradition established after the October 1964 revolution, which brought down the government of Major-General Abboud, and the 1985 military coup against President Nimeiry. Given the failure of all the transitions after the overthrow of a military dictator, this approach is flawed because it leaves with the generals the executive control of the Sudanese state.

Since 2019, this executive power of the generals has been on display. When it was on the defensive just after 2019, they were ready to sign a power sharing agreement to give them time. When a civilian was to assume the chairmanship of the Sovereignty Council, then the Prime Minister and ministers were arrested and the civilian government dissolved. Then the Prime Minister was reinstated with a new agreement. Al-Burhan and behind him the military council had total executive power.

The generals are continuing a long tradition of 52 years of military rule during which they have captured the state power.  They are a military capitalist stratum with a monopoly over the economy as well as of violence. Their declamations are ‘security’  ‘no chaos’, ‘stability’ ‘public order’, all uttered to preserve the existing order. The rich Sudanese with landed property, real estate, businesses would support the generals. The elite officer class has deep links with the oligarchy.

They want a government of technocrats which they can supervise.  Now the generals want a caretaker civilian government which can take decisions during the transition to the elections to be held sometime in 2023. Until then they do not want to transfer all executive power to a civilian government.

The generals are making calculations as to how to resolve the crisis. They could play long with the mediation efforts till the civil society gets tired of coming out on the streets. If all this fails, they​could unleash terror on civil society.  The government that emerged under al-Bashir after the 1985 uprising used brutal measures against civic society. When the Doctors Union went on their second strike, Mamoun Mohamed Hussein, its president, was executed. Meanwhile, all professional unions were dissolved and government-controlled replacements created. Activists were sent to infamous ‘ghost houses’ to be tortured, and over 70,000 government employees were dismissed.  He silenced civil society for three decades using the National Congress Party and the Islamic movement.

Here is the dilemma for civil society. How is the civilian government to be formed? Through what political mechanism? Who will assure that such a government would represent the people? How would political and economic power be wrested from the generals?

Hamdock when departing, suggested a round table conference bringing all the parties together to resolve the disputes and find a solution. Recently a committee of several university directors are integrating eight proposals from civil society organisations to end the political stalemate.  The UN has just launched a mediation process to bring all the parties to the table.

There are legitimate concerns that such mediations are there to undermine the democratic revolution.  There is an option not yet on the agenda: the election of a constituent assembly to represent the people of Sudan. Such an assembly would take power on behalf of the people. It would elect a representative civilian government, set up committees to formulate a new constitution, budgetary control, other issues such as accountability of the army and the economic control exercised by the army.  The demand for a constituent assembly would be revolutionary. It could galvanise Sudan and address the crisis of representation.

Such is the challenge faced by civil society against the military’s state capture. Political agitation and mobilisation should relentlessly highlight the corruption by the military, the economic strangulation of the nation, the economic stagnation of the country, on how developmental needs of the people in terms of health, education and jobs have been sacrificed to feed the bloated military.

The opposition needs to ensure that the military loses its moral legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the Sudanese workers and peasants and lower middle classes. The urban movement has to connect with rural movement. All sectarian tendencies will need to be eschewed. The lessons from the previous uprisings in 1965 and 1985 need to be learnt to avoid the pitfalls. If they unite, organise and fight, the people of Sudan will win their fight for democracy.

Take action now:

First published on Labour Hub 12 January 2021 https://labourhub.org.uk/2022/01/12/sudans-democratic-revolution-stands-at-a-critical-juncture/

Uncategorized

A long march to freedom

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The Myanmar coup shows that the military is an existential threat to democracy in many nations

Protestors in Yangon

The latest overthrow of a democratically elected government in Myanmar on February 1st, 2021 shows dramatically how the military can set back democracy. The Myanmar military, known as Tatmadaw, has declared a one year “state of emergency” and taken full control of the country’s government and infrastructure. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Chairman of the State Administration Council, is now exercising supreme power over the country.

Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and several dozen other senior officials were arrested in early morning raids in the capital, Naypyidaw. The charges laid against Ms Suu Kyi allege that she illegally imported and used communications equipment -walkie-talkies -found at her home in Nay Pyi Taw. The military repeatedly claims that there was fraud in the elections of November 8th 2020 which the National League of Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide.

The party backed by the military, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) performed dismally. Given that the military holds a quarter of all seats in both the House of Nationalities and House of Representatives in accordance with the 2008 constitution devised by the military, giving the military a veto over any change, the claim of fraud is contrived. The deeper reason is the anxiety of the military that its monopoly of political, social and economic power has come under serious threat by the electoral popularity of NLD and the demand for constitutional reform.

Suu Kyi’s pact with the military has unravelled. The youngest daughter of the Burmese father of the nation, Aung San, assassinated in 1947, her rise began on the back of the 1988 democracy uprising when she became the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD). When the NLD won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, the military nullified the results, and kept her under house arrests off and on for 15 years from 1989 to 2010. She became an international icon and won many awards including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

When Myanmar opened up to liberalisation, there was a protracted move to democracy and the NLD won the 2015 elections when she assumed the post of State Counsellor (equivalent to Prime Minister). Her image was tarnished when she appeared before the ICC to deny the allegations of genocide against the Rohingya by the military.

In Myanmar, people have been protesting against the coup in large numbers. The response has been water cannons and rubber bullets and even live ammunition. Amnesty’s crisis evidence centre has reported that there is evidence of use of machine guns and live fire on protestors. The first victim of police shooting was a young woman, Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, shot on February 9th. On February 20th, reports came that security forces opened fire on protestors wounding 40 and killing two in Mandalay. A large number of people have been arrested and detained.

So far the protestors are not deterred. All sections of civil society have joined in civil disobedience to demand the restoration of democracy. What is significant is that workers have taken action. Rail workers, civil servants, bank workers have come out on strike against the coup. Unions have taken a leading role in organising the strikes.

The coup is poised to deliver a major blow to the $6 bn garment industry reeling from the pandemic which has reduced working hours. Garment workers have joined protests. Front line health workers in more than seventy medical facilities have walked out in response to the coup. It has cut off telephone lines and internet connections across a large part of the country to stop protestors from communicating for organising and also with the outside world. Witnesses describe the level of violence as ‘a war zone’ in Mandalay and other locations away from the main city Yangon where most embassies, the UN and international journalists are based. The general strike on Monday the 22 shut down businesses in defiance of the military’s threat of violence is a harbinger of the coming heightened struggle between the masses and the military.

At this stage it is hard to say how severe the military repression will be and what will be the costs to civil society. The military has a history of terrible violence in1988, during the massive democratic uprising known as 8-8-88 (acronym for August 8,1988), when thousands of protestors were massacred and again in 2007, when protests were suppressed with killings and arrests. In 2017, the military unleashed violence against the Rohingya with more than 600,000 fleeing to safety in Bangladesh.

Our hope should lie with the mobilisation of the people united in a common front. The demand for democracy must include the Rohingya in the North West of the country if there is to be meaningful democracy for all. The ethnic cleansing must stop and those who sought refuge in Bangladesh must be allowed to return.

We have to go back to Burma’s colonial period to understand how modern Burma developed as a nation. British colonisation of Burma began in 1824 and after three Anglo-Burmese wars spanning over 60 years, it consolidated the annexation of Burma in 1888, sending the last king of Burma, Thibaw Min, into exile in India. Of those years, George Orwell who spent five years in Burma, wrote in 1929 that that the British were robbing and pilfering Burma quite shamelessly. They seized the mines and the oil wells, controlled timber production and acted as all sorts of middlemen, brokers, millers and exporters, making colossal fortunes from rice without the peasant producers getting anything out of it. The get-rich-quick businessmen make their pile from rice, petrol etc., and sent the money to England, rather than investing it in the country.

Secondly, Orwell said that the British government was at pains to give the people only summary instruction, merely sufficient to produce messengers, low-grade civil servants, petty lawyers’ clerks and other white-collar workers. They were unwilling to develop a well-educated Burmese class which could assume the leadership of the country in the future.

The Second World war was a turning point. Burmese independence fighters set up a Burmese Independence Army (BIA) to free the country from British rule. They initially forged an alliance with Japanese forces to obtain training and weapons. The British, on retreating, followed a scorched earth policy to thwart the Japanese advance. They destroyed the major government buildings, oil wells and mines for tungsten, tin, lead and silver to keep them from the Japanese. When the Japanese occupied Burma and refused to give independence, the BIA switched allegiance to the British and rebelled against the Japanese by deploying its units across the country. It became the first truly national organisation in Burma which is still honoured by its people.

Myanmar was bombed extensively by the Allies. At the time of independence, the country was in ruins with its major infrastructure completely destroyed. Independence began badly with many of its best leaders assassinated. Over the next decade, the fragile democracy struggled to rebuild the country, a task that should not be underestimated in an underdeveloped colonial country where there was no Marshall plan to reconstruct it.

The military guns first crackled in 1962, when Gen. Ne Win overthrew a fragile government. The Revolutionary Council centralised state power, established the Burmese Socialist Programme Party with anti-communism as its motto and banned all other parties. Myanmar also turned away from the outside world when it came to economic policies. During the military’s 49-year direct hold on power, the country declined economically until it opened up to liberalisation in 2011.

In the wake of the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, the UN set up an independent fact-finding mission to assess the economic interests of the military in Myanmar with a view to recommending how these needed to be brought under the control of civilian authorities. In its report in 2019, the mission revealed a business empire is so vast and secretive that there is no transparency and accountability over the military budget. The Tatmadaw uses its web of commercial interests, established through military-linked companies and subsidiaries, relationships with state-owned enterprises and private crony companies, to secure financial resources to support its activities and personnel.

Furthermore, there were reasonable grounds to conclude that China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India, Israel, the Philippines, Russia, and Ukraine allowed arms and arms- related transfers and assistance to Myanmar which posed a direct and foreseeable threat to human rights to the people of the country. The military that were the champions of independence have become parasitical, treating the country as their fiefdom.

There has been a swift international response against the coup. The UN Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution calling for support for Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials, and to refrain from using violence on people protesting against the military coup. The US government has imposed sanctions on some military officers but it remains doubtful if that would provide key leverage for change. What is needed is corporations investing in Myanmar to begin to pull out their investments. That would worry the military deeply because it holds substantial shares in its joint ventures with corporations. However this response at its best has been rather timid. It is hampered by a legacy of seven decades of impunity when the international community failed to take any significant action when the military was violently repressing the minorities like the Karen and expelling the Rohingya muslims.

When the Burmese military took power in 1962, neo-fascist military dictatorships were in power South Korea, Guatemala, Iran, Nicaragua, Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia, Zaire and Thailand among many others. Through the cold war period until 1979, the USA supported these regimes, generally viewing them as promising stability in an unstable Third World. These regime intensified the use of organised terror in the name of ‘modernisation’.

American policy changed when the Shah’s dictatorship in Iran, installed after he coup against Mossadegh in 1953, was swept away by the Islamic revolution in 1979. It encouraged a new wave of democracies, albeit managed in its client states through electoral manipulations. However this promotion of democracy is not consistent as we saw in Egypt, after the uprising of 2011, when the first elected government of President Morsi was overthrown and replaced by one of the most brutal dictatorships under General Sisi, fully supported by the USA and many regional powers.

Liberal news and editorials in the media have rightly condemned the coup in Myanmar and demanded the return of democracy. It’s a pity that they have not been consistent over the decades and even today condone other neo-fascist and authoritarian governments across the world. Myanmar’s strategic position in the region puts it at the mercy of Chinese and American interests.

Western intervention in the name of freedom, human rights and democracy has been a dismal failure across the world. Progressive movements have rarely been supported by the dominant powers. In fact these powers have done everything possible to destroy such movements and have supported reactionary forces. The war on terror launched almost 20 years ago erased the boundary between terrorism and freedom struggles, hence all resistance movements across the world were labelled terrorists.

Military coups are not aberrations but integral to the imperialist system. Geopolitical interests play a significant role in the turn of events in any nation. Military aid by the most powerful countries create a class of privileged military officers with guaranteed pensions and business investments. They are linked to the dominant countries. They are a marked feature of uneven development when the gap between the highly developed countries and the undeveloped countries is so vast that it drives some classes to believe that a strong authority will lead to development. That is why the military remains an existential threat to democracy in many nations.

Military leaders are trained in the ethos of control, regimentation, discipline and order. They are not able to foster participation, negotiations, consensus and accountability necessary for democracy. The takeover by a strong man promising social order attracts many who fear chaos, including the rich who wish to keep on making money. That is why, when the military assumes power over society it represses politics and people and distorts society. It ends up in a mire of corruption and in the long term fails dismally. Myanmar is no exception.

Progressive forces should never disregard the power of nationalism and the role the military plays in the suppression of democracy. The illusion that the military in any country is a neutral force politically must be shed. Mass movements for political change need to be firmly based on popular participatory democracy, racial and ethnic equality, gender equality and an economy linked to ecology, to be developed for the good of all. This is going to be a long march to freedom for many people in the world including the people of Myanmar to whom we should extend unreserved solidarity.

First published in The Labour Hub on February 24 2021- link below

A long march to freedom