To: Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice mailing list
June 25, 2019
RE: Hong Kong, Iran, and CVO website
Starting in April, giant demonstrators have taken place in Hong Kong against a new proposed extradition bill. On Sunday, April 28, 130,000 people came out on the streets to denounce the bill. This was biggest mass rally in Hong Kong since the “Umbrella Movement” of 2014, which demanded free and fair elections. On Sunday, June 9, organizers estimate that one million people, in this city of only 7 million, demonstrated, and then on the following Sunday, two million people. The local police, who try to minimize the event, put the numbers at less than a fourth of what the organizers claim, but even that would still show the overwhelming sentiment of the people.
The proposed bill would allow people to be extradited for a number of offenses from Hong Kong to, among other places, mainland China. Under the banner of having “one country, two systems”, Hong Kong was reunited with mainland China in 1997. It has a special status in China, and this was supposed to guarantee that its basic way of life remained unchanged for 50 years, until 2047. So at present, the people in Hong Kong have far more political rights than those in China, but the extradition bill is one of the attempts of the pro-Beijing politicians to do away with these rights. It would allow China to punish protesters by extraditing them on this or that pretext to be tried by courts in mainland China. These courts do the bidding of the ruling fake “Communist” Party of China. An example of how the CPC treats dissidents is that the mainland Chinese government has issued an order to purge all news or comment concerning the Hong Kong protests from websites in China. T
The persistence of large demonstrations in Hong Kong does not show
that the local freedoms are securely entrenched. It is only the staunch
resistance of the people that has preserved them, while the Chinese
government has put pressure on the Hong Kong government to clamp down
on protests. As the new protests began in April, local Hong Kong courts
sentenced a number of activists for their role in the pro-democracy
Umbrella Movement of 2014, with two leaders getting jailed for 16
months. This is a serious sentence in Hong Kong, but would, of course,
be regarded as a tap on the wrist in mainland China where, for example,
a million Uighurs are in detention camps simply for being an Islamic
ethnic group. The Hong Kong government, dominated by pro-Beijing
politicians, has put increasing pressure on protesters, so that
activists are becoming more worried. According to one report about the present actions,
“The young activists involved in recent protests have switched tactics to form leaderless, anonymous collectives, hiding their identities with face masks and using messaging apps to organise. The government has begun to act against these, arresting one Telegram group administrator on suspicion of conspiracy to commit public nuisance. Many activists no longer welcome their photos being taken or doing interviews with foreign media. Within the course of a week, they are becoming as cautious as mainland Chinese dissidents.”
In the face of the protests, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, announced an indefinite delay for bringing it to the Legislative Council. This didn’t satisfy the people, who wanted to see its definite withdrawal, and the demonstration on June 16 continued to denounce the bill as well as to carry for Carrie Lam’s resignation.
The protest movement in Hong Kong deserves the support of workers and activists throughout the world. The Chinese government says that it is simply its own internal affair, and no foreigners — or mainland Chinese people either, for that matter — should be concerned. But working-class internationalism means that the people of one country should support the struggles against oppression of other countries. The Chinese people are our class brothers and sisters. Those who do not support the struggles of other peoples are helping build their own chains of oppression.
This doesn’t mean that the protest movement in [Hong Kong] is a socialist movement. In China and Asia, as well as in the US, the left-wing movement suffers a major crisis of disorientation. The question of the ultimate goal is by no means clear. As well, the democratic movement unites people with different viewpoints and class stands. But it is an important one for socialists, because the struggle for democratic rights is dear to true socialists. And in Hong Kong, this struggle also helps expose the state-capitalist nature of the Chinese government. Once a revolutionary party, the Chinese Communist Party has become the party of a new oppressive class, including many millionaires who take part in its ranks, and many “princelings” who owe their privileged status to their parents’ position in the party.
By Joseph Green, Detroit Workers’ Voice <>
The Trump administration is engaging in imperialist brinkmanship with Iran. It doesn’t directly go to war, but it is following a strategy of “maximum pressure”, which means threatening to destroy the other country if it doesn’t agree to US demands. He is escalating military pressure on Iran, as well as enforcing sanctions that amount essentially to an economic blockade. He engages in more and more hostile acts, including cyberattacks on Iranian installations. All this leads towards war, whether by accident or by intention.
On June 20th, the Iranian government shot down a US drone engaged in military reconnaissance. It says the drone was in Iranian airspace, while the US government denies this. But to send a military drone near to another country during a period of tension is an aggressive provocation, designed to prove that the US is a bully that can do whatever it wants to weaker countries.
Some pundits say Trump is an isolationist. But he is just as imperialist and warlike as the multi-lateralists. Trump is responsible for the present war crisis with Iran, as he withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal. He is also responsible for the continuing US backing of Saudi intervention in the Yemeni civil war, thus helping to bring starvation and humanitarian crisis to millions of Yemenis.
At the same time, the Iranian regime is an oppressive one itself, and it doesn’t hesitate to use its own version of maximum pressure against other Middle Eastern forces. It is an aggressive, would-be imperialist power, albeit weaker than US imperialism. It has not hesitated to send troops to prop up the Assad dictatorship in Syria against the people, to inflame sectarian rivalry in Iraq, to murder, over the years, thousands of left-wing activists in Iran, and so on. Our support goes to the Iranian people, who have risen up repeatedly in protests against the theocrats, and not to their oppressors.
It is the people of the Middle East who will eventually free themselves from the local oppressors. A future Middle Eastern spring is inevitable, while Trump’s imperialism is simply another yoke on the people. Trump’s opposition to the Iranian regime isn’t even an opposition to fundamentalism, as he backs the Saudi theocratic regime, forgives it for cutting the journalist Jamal Khashoggi into little pieces, closes his eyes to the hundreds of beheadings it has carried out in recent years, and looks forward to business deals with it.
Down with the new war threats from US imperialism! Solidarity with the peoples of the Middle East!
By Joseph Green, Detroit Workers’ Voice <>
The Communist Voice Organization website has gotten a facelift. It is now in dual-pane outline format, which makes it easier to see the extent of the topics covered. It contains years of material on subjects from the mass struggles to revolutionary theory, and concentrates particularly on the problems of disorientation in the communist and left-wing movements. It contains articles from the Communist Voice, the Detroit/Seattle Workers’ Voice list, the Workers’ Advocate, and other publications that upheld revolutionary Marxism against both Trotskyism and Stalinism.
When you check out the website, please write in if you find broken
links or other problems, or to suggest additional topics to be focused
on. The website will only improve if it is a collective project.
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First posted on July 3, 2019
Typo corrected, July 23, 2019
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