The campaign for the 2013 elections is perhaps the worst ever from the point of view of the oppressed classes of this country. There is hardly any party that addresses the most burning issue in society – the class contradiction and exploitation. Not even a single mainstream party claims to be a ‘party of the poor’.

A record breaking 40-day dockworkers strike at Kwai Tsing Container Terminal in Hong Kong ended with victory on 6 May.

Following the collapse of the nine-storey Rana Plaza at Savar near Dhaka last week, the death toll of workers killed in the disaster had reached 501 by the morning of Friday 3^rd May. Many people fear that the death toll will rise above 1000. While a large number of workers are still missing and feared dead, their relatives have taken to the streets to protest against the brutality of the Capitalist economic system that caused this tragedy. This latest incident took place just five months after the Ashulia tragedy near Dhaka in which more than 110 garment workers were burnt to death in a Tazreen Fashions factory after a fire broke out. No-one has yet been held responsible, let

More than 500,000 took to the streets on May Day in what was in effect the second largest general strike in the history of Indonesia. The working class of the 4th largest country in the world is starting to move in a very radical manner as the workers are imbued with confidence from their recent successes.

The political elite and superstructure that dominates this society in the current period have shown utter disdain towards the working classe.

On the morning of Monday, 22 April, police attacked the protest camp of Unilever workers outside the factory gate in Rahim Yar Khan. Nine were arrested and tortured. They had been protesting for their reinstatement for the last nine days, a struggle that has been ongoing for the past few years.

There are many forgotten heroes of the Liberation movement against the British Raj in the Subcontinent. Bhagat Singh and his comrades were some of those who stood against imperialism on a programme of Socialist Revolution. On 23^rd March 1931, Bhagat Singh along with his comrades Raj Guru and Sukh Dev were hanged by British Imperialism at the Central Jail in Lahore.

We bring to the attention of our readers an article written in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn about Malala Yousufzai and the work of the Marxists in the Swat area in Pakistan.

Pakistan Post Office Directorate General Employees Union elections were held on 11 March 2013. The revolutionary group of PTUDC comrades won a landslide victory and got 70% of the votes.

On the 23^rd of March 1931, twenty-three year old Bhagat Singh, the legendary revolutionary icon in the struggle for liberation and emancipation of the masses in the Indian subcontinent and his comrades in arms, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru, were hanged at Lahore’s central jail.

The arson and burning down of 178 houses in the night of 8^th and 9^th March in Joseph Colony, a Christian neighbourhood near Badami Bagh, in the heart of Lahore is yet another fanatical incident that reflects the malaise afflicting the Pakistani society. A vigilante mob carried out this act of savagery on the pretext of allegedly blasphemous remarks made by a Christian youth in a drunken fracas with a Muslim friend.

The political debate in the ruling elite is shrouded with the issue of corruption. It is dubbed as the most serious threat to the system and eradication of this menace is being portrayed as the recipe for the social and economic salvation of this country.

Unilever is extracting huge profits in Pakistan through brutal exploitation of workers. Most of the products of Unilever are now manufactured through Third Party contracts in which workers are given starvation wages and no other benefits at all.

Ever since a recently established war crimes tribunal came to the verdict of a life sentence against the Jamaat-a-Islami chief, Abdul Qadir Mullah, on 5^th of February for crimes against humanity during the civil war in 1971, Bangladesh has been embroiled in clashes and unrest in which several people have been killed and wounded.

There has been an aggressive campaign in the media that the recipe for growth and the solution to the economic crisis is privatisation and not the nationalisation of industry, agriculture, finance capital and the economy. Nationalisation has been dubbed as a failure and an economic disaster.