Asia

Tibet erupted in ethnic based rioting over the past few days. Undoubtedly there is some outside interference, but this alone cannot explain what is going on. At the root of the problem is the uneven spread of wealth, which has been made worse by the introduction of market economics, compounding the feeling of national oppression of the Tibetans.

The price of rice in Bangladesh has a correlation with poverty, economic and political stability. In 2000, a wage labourer could buy 6-7 kg of rice with his daily income (about US$0.80). Now, less than half of that can be bought, even though the income has risen over time. Rising food prices could derail all political predictions and spell disaster for the country in 2008.

On January 30, 2008 two workers in World Dresses Ltd, Mirpur, Dhaka, (Bangladesh) were attacked and beaten by management staff at the end of an evening shift. One died, the other was hospitalised with broken limbs. Fearing unrest management closed the factory. When knowledge of the attack reached the company's workers, hundreds demonstrated outside the factory.

On February 29 the Karachi regional conference of the Pakistani Marxists was held with 350 present, their biggest ever gathering. At the meeting there was a balance sheet of the recent election campaign and we reproduce here the speeches of the comrades who stood for parliament, Lund, Wazi and Manzoor.

On Saturday February 23rd over 10 supporters of the PTUDC in Montreal attended a workshop about the recent elections in Pakistan. The workshop was hosted by the International Marxist Tendency.

The murder of Benazir Bhutto and the rigged elections in Pakistan have opened up a period of turmoil in the country. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused an unprecedented instability that is undermining an already shaky equilibrium. The whole region could catch fire as classes come into conflict. Here is an appraisal of the situation in the Editor's note of the upcoming issue of the Asian Marxist Review.

The Economic and Political Weekly, the most academic magazine in India, has published a review of Lal Khan's book, "Partition - can it be undone?", written by Ranabir Samaddar. He gives a positive appraisal of the book and asks a pertinent question at the end: "But are the official communists listening to all these?"

A motion of affiliation to the PTUDC was successfully passed at the meeting of the University of East Anglia Union Council on 21st February. The Union is now officially affiliated and an emergency motion on Pakistan was also passed to be sent to the NUS Executive in time for the National Conference.

Over a dozen people attended a meeting on the recent fraudulent elections in Pakistan on a cold blustery Toronto evening. The meeting was hosted by Canadian supporters of the Pakistani Trade Union Defence Campaign (PTUDC), the first such meeting to date in Canada.

Now that they have blatantly manipulated the results, the main parties in Pakistan are working towards the formation of a coalition government. This is what the imperialist wanted all along. It is also what the right wing of the PPP wanted as well. But the masses are waiting for concrete results, an end to their misery. On this path we will see class polarisation within the PPP itself, which will prepare the ground for the intervention of the Marxists.

We received this synopsis of major complaints received about serious irregularities during Monday's election. It clearly shows that these elections were neither fair nor democratic. The result was decided beforehand and was designed to get the political scenario that imperialism requires to govern Pakistan. They can rig the result, but they cannot falsify the real misery that people in Pakistan have to suffer!

Erik de Bruyn has been monitoring the elections in Karachi and has exposed blatant vote-rigging on a grand scale. He was interviewed by several mainstream Belgian newspapers, among them  "Het Volk", "Het Nieuwsblad" and "De Standaard". Here we provide a copy of the interview in De Standaard where Erik explains the same points he raised in the articles published on this site over the last few days.

Comrade Erik de Bruyn, a well-known leader of the left wing of the Belgian Socialist Party, is in Karachi, Pakistan, as an official election observer. In this post on his blog, he gives us an eye-witness report on how reactionary parties like the MQM, with the consent of the state apparatus, rigged the elections in order to reduce the scope of the expected PPP victory. The candidates of the PPP Left have been particularly damaged by the rigging.

Before the results had come in, President Musharraf appeared on the state-run Pakistan Television, calling the vote "the voice of the nation" and the "mother of elections" must be accepted. But in fact this was the Mother of all Frauds.