Asia

As the Pakistani Marxists are taking part in relief operations in Kashmir, Alan Woods, on behalf of the International Marxist Tendency, has addressed a letter to the Kashmiri people, which is being read out in all the relief camps that have been set up.

We have received three press statements from left groups in the Philippines. Although we may not agree with every detail of these statements, we are publishing them for the interest of our readers together with an accompanying letter which helps to understand the context in which they are written.

We have received this report from Kashmir, detailing the PTUDC's growing relief efforts. Medical camps are now being established and our relief camps are awaiting the goods to arrive with the solidarity caravan.

This article from the English daily DAWN in Pakistan explains that the team of doctors coming with the Indian relief delegation to go along with MP Manzoor Ahmed and the Revolutionary Solidarity Caravan have been denied access to Pakistan. This clearly exposes the rottenness of the Musharraf regime and shows how little the dictatorship is concerned about the victims of the earthquake.

We have received this report from Pakistan containing information from the PTUDC teams on the ground in Kashmir. The comrades have been hard at work establishing Solidarity Relief camps and holding meetings to discuss an action plan for the relief effort on the ground.

On Friday, October 14, Comrade Manzoor Ahmed, Member of Parliament and PTUDC president, held a press conference at the Lahore Press Club announcing the launching of the PTUDC solidarity caravan, called “The Revolutionary Solidarity Caravan”. Manzoor also announced his programme of demands for the aftermath of the earthquake and criticised the Musharraf government's handling of the disaster.

The initial shock of the earthquake in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir is beginning to turn into anger as millions of people are left without shelter in the cold and rain. The PTUDC’s international solidarity campaign has swung into action raising well over £1000 over the last few days. The response to our appeal has been truly amazing, but we need to raise more money to pay for the supplies, convoys, and medicines that we will be sending to the worst affected areas of Kashmir and Pakistan.

Following on from the letter we published a few weeks ago, another reader in China has added his thoughts to the discussion. He highlights particularly the growing disparity between different social layers in Chinese society, a result of the development of capitalism, which is destroying all the gains of the past.

The introduction of the “market economy”, i.e. capitalism, in China is provoking massive social contradictions: extreme poverty at one end, extreme wealth at the other. But a gigantic proletariat is also being created, the “gravediggers” of capitalism, as Marx used to say.

We received this flyer from the PTUDC in the United States, which is being distributed to trade unions and workers in the US in order to raise money for the PTUDC's aid campaign. You can download the flyer from the PTUDC website.

We were sent this contribution from Munno Bhai, a very well known left wing journalist and TV director in Pakistan.  The article is on the economic growth rates in Venezuela. It is one of his daily columns published on September 23 in the daily Urdu newspaper, the Jang with a readership of nearly 20 million people.