Bush fiddles while Asia burns!

End The Raids & Deportations –

Stop Dividing Families

PAKISTAN-USA FREEDOM FORUM
2257 92^nd Street

East Elmhurst, NY 11369, USA
Tel (718) 397-5027 or (718) 763-3543
Fax (718) 574-4333
E-mail: pakusaff@hotmail.com

Free Kashmir –

No Indian Army

Bush fiddles while Asia burns!

The government of President Musharraf in Pakistan is in a crisis, as people are rising up against his U.S. backed regime. This is part of a great change in Asia, where people are resisting centuries of colonialism, monarchy, dictatorships, neo-liberalism and domination by the Western powers. In Iraq, the resistance is fighting US/UK invaders. In Afghanistan, people are fighting the deadly US/NATO war. They are bringing the Western powers to their knees in an unwinnable war against the poorest people in the region. In Palestine, the people are fighting the US/Israeli apartheid government. Iranians are standing fast against Western attempts to invade and control their country. The Turkish people are seeing their army sent by their US/NATO-puppet government to violate Iraq's sovereignty, crossing the border to attack the Kurds in northern Iraq. Next, the US army in Afghanistan will claim the right to cross the border into Pakistan to attack “terrorists” there. In Nepal, the people are in revolution against the corrupt and repressive monarch, King Gyanendra. In the Philippines, the people are in struggle against US puppet Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The people of Kashmir and Chechnya are fighting for their self-determination. For over a hundred years, from the Boxer Rebellion to the Korean War, from the Indonesian genocide to the Vietnam War, Asians have been in struggle.

These are wealthy, populous lands, with pipelines snaking through the heart of Asia, sucking all of the oil and natural gas out of Central Asia. Asia is filled with gold and copper, oil and rubies, with rich soil, and above all with billions of people whose sweated labor is the most valuable resource the Western and Japanese monopoly corporations seek to dominate.

In Pakistan, Dictator Perez Musharraf may have abandoned his military uniform, but he is the militarist who sends his troops to kill his own people. Pakistanis have given Musharraf the nickname “Busharraf,” the "poodle" of George Bush, since he has done nothing but his master's bidding since assuming power. The people are resisting the Musharraf dictatorship: Lawyers, judges, businessmen, politicians, students, workers and peasants are seeking justice and constitutional democracy.

We stand with the people of Pakistan who are outraged by Benazir Bhutto’s murder and we give condolences to her family. Millions supported her as an alternative to Musharraf. She took on the role of the “common's peoples' choice". She had been in self-exile for the past eight years, after being accused of embezzling billions from the national treasury as Prime Minister. She was not a "democratic rival" to the dictatorship. She had supported Musharraf when he overthrew the legally elected Nawaz Sharif in 1999. In her will she left her party to her, as if it was her personal fiefdom – hardly a democratic outlook. Bhutto returned to Pakistan last fall in a deal brokered by Condoleezza Rice and John Negroponte, and some British diplomats, who saw her as a democratic face to bolster Musharraf’s regime.

Bhutto’s assassination shows that making a deal with the U.S. government and its puppets does not work, since they will get support you one day and kill you the next. This must be an example that we must put our reliance on the common people, not on one rich politician over another.

For over one hundred years, the Western powers have exploited, ravaged, and murdered millions of Asian people in the interest of the big corporations. The atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used to demonstrate US power. The deaths of four million Koreans and three million Vietnamese were as nothing to the US and its western allies. Madeline Albright said in 1996 of the deaths of half a million Iraqi children during the Iraq embargo: "We think the price is worth it." The devastation of Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in the wanton murder of hundreds of thousands more Asian people.

PAKUSAFF condemns the US and Western governments whose machinations have produced unprecedented massacres, exploitation, devastation and intrigues in Asia. We demand reparations for the millions who have been murdered and maimed in this endless war. The people of Asia want to maintain their national integrity, free of colonialism, exploitation, and war. They deserve homes, food, health care, schools, justice, and above all peace. They do not want puppet governments and poverty. There can be no peace in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq, or justice, democracy or constitutional guarantees of freedom as long as the West powers are at war against the interests of the people of Asia. We call for an end to all foreign troops on Asian soil, and an end to all Western political and economic intervention. Further, we call on the US and Western government to stop their attacks on immigrant workers, who are forced to leave their homelands due to the neo-colonial and globalization policies of these governments. We call on the US government to change its policies at home and abroad to ones that respect human rights and the sovereignty of other countries, to regain the respect of people around the world.

PAKUSAFF calls on people from all Asian countries who live in the U.S. to come together to support each other in the fight for freedom, genuine democracy and the sovereignty of their home countries. We are working with others to hold a conference for this work of mutual solidarity. We hope this would be the beginning for people from other continents to come together and support each other’s struggles, especially from Africa which is the next target of US intervention.

Dr. Muhammad Shafique Mr. Shahid Comrade
President General Secretary
(917) 280-0840