Pakistan

The upheaval that led to the eventual breakup of Pakistan started not on the national question but on the basis of class struggle

نومبر1967ء کی دھندلی صبح پاکستان کے مختلف علاقوں سے تین سوکے قریب افراد ہر طرح کی مشکلات اور سماج کے جمود کا مقابلہ کرتے ہوئے سماجی و معاشی انصاف کی جدوجہد میں لاہور میں اکٹھے ہوئے۔ موسم خزاں کی فضا میں انقلاب کی مہک تھی۔ پارٹی کی تاسیسی دستاویزات غیر مبہم تھیں، ’’پارٹی کے پروگرام کا حتمی مقصد طبقات سے پاک معاشرے کا قیام ہے جو صرف سوشلزم کے ذریعے ہی ممکن ہے‘‘۔ لیکن پی پی پی کو عوامی قوت بنانے والے واقعات کا نکتہ آغاز راولپنڈی میں طلباء کی بغاوت سے ہوا جس نے ملکی تاریخ کے سب سے طاقتور انقلاب کا آغاز کیا۔ ...

The PPP’s present leadership takes its support base for granted. As a tradition, the PPP has prevailed upon the oppressed masses for four decades.

The slogans of eliminating feudalism, and for democracy, secularism, human rights, social justice, gender equality, national sovereignty are hardly new

Young Doctors in Punjab achieved victory on Wednesday 7 November after a struggle that lasted over two years. More than 22,000 young doctors in Punjab were united in their demands for better wages and service structure under the banner of a new organisation called Young Doctors Association (YDA).

The ruling of the Supreme Court in the Asghar Khan case [in which a former army chief and a former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have been found guilty of rigging the 1990 general elections] has laid bare the burgeoning intrinsic conflicts between and within the most vital institutions of the Pakistani state, the titans, the political executive, military establishment and the judiciary.

The political apathy that prevails amongst the deprived and oppressed masses in Pakistan reflects the deep malaise and despair that has set in society. The mammoth reception that Benazir Bhutto was accorded five years ago on her return from exile to Karachi on 18th October 2007 that had raised new hope for the masses and the subsequent campaign that has turned into a vigorous movement had sent tremors in the echelons of power.

The reactions of the political elite during the recent caricature of a long march launched and abruptly ended half way by Imran Khan [a right wing populist politician and former Pakistan cricket team captain] were either hysterical or comical. The Jamaat a Islami and other religious outfits that supported it are trying to create an extreme right wing political force at the behest of the sections of the state.

The suffering of the people of Pakistan is largely unknown in the West. A veil of silence has been carefully drawn over the number of people killed every day by American drones and Taliban murders. But recently a small corner of the curtain was raised as the result of a particularly appalling event.

Bhagat Singh was a fervent torchbearer of the proletarian struggle. He rejected the prejudices of caste, creed, nationality, race, gender, and, of course, religion.

Sixteen years ago on September 20, 1996, in the dusk falling into darkness, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, aged 42, was riddled with the bullets of this ferocious state. He was assassinated along with six of his comrades in front of his house, 70 Clifton, Karachi — the most renowned political address in Pakistan. At the time, ironically, his sister was the prime minister and the chief executive of the country. Innumerable conspiracy theories and accusations have been doing the rounds since. Yet none of the culprits have been apprehended or indicted and those personnel of the state forces who were named and arrested have gone scot-free.

The Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign has organised a campaign of public meetings to commemorate the hundreds of workers who were recently killed in fire factories in Karachi and Lahore, exposing the criminal behaviour of the owners who had locked all exits bar one [at the Karachi factory] and even then insisted that finished goods should have priority over workers trying to escape to save their lives! The capitalists of Pakistan stand condemned before the whole of the working people.

The horrific factory fire at a Karachi garments and clothing enterprise where 289 workers, men, women and children, perished and hundreds were injured with severe burn wounds in an inferno in a caged factory with sealed gates is not an exception but the norm for the proletariat in Pakistan. It lays bare the conditions in which they are forced to work.

The dominant intelligentsia with its constricted outlook, shackled in the fetters of an obsolete and redundant capitalist ideology, is now the merchant of doom.

For quite some time now several so called secular parties, especially the MQM, have been campaigning around the idea that feudalism is the real cause of the country’s plight and its abolishment is the only solution to Pakistan’s tribulations. Their endeavour is in fact mainly to defend the petty bourgeois businesses and the Mafia capitalism on which they rely for their social and economic basis.