Report of Lal Khan's Speaking Tour of Spain

The campaign that we launched with the PTUDC had an even greater impact with the visit of Lal Khan from November 19. The situation in Pakistan continues to be extremely serious for the workers' movement, the struggle against the imperialist war, against fundamentalism and against the measures of the government of General Musharraf and also the repression with arrests and torture of workers and union leaders, such as the Baluchistan comrade, Hameed Khan.

In spite of having only a short time to organise these meetings, the results have been extraordinary: nearly 12,000 leaflets were distributed, as well as 3,100 posters and 26,000 leaflets, to announce the meetings with Lal Khan this week. We had to select which cities to visit and we decided on the following itinerary: Madrid, Vitoria, Guadalajara, Barcelona and Gerona.

This short tour of Spain by Lal Khan has been a huge success. In the 6 meetings the total attendance was almost 500 people, and in the collections we raised some 170,000 pesetas (more than US $900).

In Madrid we organized two events: on Monday 19 in the afternoon in the headquarters of CCOO (the Workers Commissions trade union). We got the participation of Marcelino Camacho (the former general secretary of CCOO) and Angeles Maestro (a leader of the United Left and the Communist Party). 90 people attended. The results were very good, the most spectacular being the collection, which raised 65,500 pesetas (US $364).

125 people attended this meeting, the audience was a good cross section of society: youth, workers and women. Though it was not possible to make a collection in the hall, with only bags at the exit we raised almost 25,000 pesetas (US $138).

We organized a meeting in the faculty of Political Sciences in the Madrid Complutense University, where 40 students attended the meeting.

Under a banner with the slogan: "Only the struggle of the working class can put an end to fundamentalist terrorism and imperialist aggression" we held a meeting with an attendance of 104 people, mostly workers. We had a collection and raised 57,000 pesetas (US $316). This reflects the spirit of the meeting. The workers of ECHO were beginning a strike that same night, but they nevertheless came along and intervened briefly in the meeting between the speech of Marcelino Camacho and that of Lal Khan. They apologized for not staying for the whole meeting, as they were beginning the strike that night, but they gave 25,000 pesetas (US$ 138) to the Pakistan campaign.

80 people came to the meeting, and some 40 of these were Pakistanis living in Barcelona, some youth, workers, and members of left groups. Diego Rejón, general secretary of the CGT of Catalunya, gave a lead-off of 15 minutes. After the introduction of Lal Khan - delivered in English with Spanish translation - there were several questions. Afterwards he made a short speech of 15 minutes in Punjabi - the language which most of the Pakistanis present spoke. We made a collection and raised 13,000 pesetas (US $72).

We organised a meeting in Mufersa (refuse collectors), the meeting was held in the changing room, where the meetings are normally held, with the attendance of 50 workers (the firm only employs 95 workers, out of which 25 are on the night shift). So a big majority of the workforce came along. The workers were very impressed by the speech, they said that we had permitted them to get to know the real situation in Afghanistan, also they asked about individual terrorism and the situation in Israel. Finally we made a collection and raised 9,000 pesetas (US $50).

All in all, a great success.

See also the PTUDC website: www.ptudc.org
And the PTUDC in Spain website: www.es.ptudc.org