Pakistan: Back Jailed Working-Class Leaders

FAISALABAD, PAKISTAN, November 11 — Workers here are calling for solidarity actions and support for six union leaders who have been sentenced to a total of 490 years in jail. They were arrested in July 2010 during a militant strike of power loom workers, and later charged under anti-terrorist laws. To date 13 union leaders are facing charges of “terrorism.”

The U.S.-backed fascist Pakistani government is increasingly using the threat of “terrorism” to try to silence the working class, hoping to crush the rising workers’ movement. But workers are fighting back, in the factories and fields, in the public and private sector (see CHALLENGE, 9/5).

Power loom workers here struck in 2010 after a break-down in negotiations with the bosses, demanding an increase in the minimum wage already announced in the government’s 2010-2011 budget. When government officials, factory owners, local politicians and the media labeled the strikers “terrorists,” it so angered other workers that they ignored a police ban on public gatherings and joined the picket lines.

Over 100,000 workers marched through the streets here, shutting down Pakistan’s third largest city, despite being fired on by the police and armed thugs hired by the textile bosses.

As we work to build strike actions and the solidarity of other workers, we introduce PLP’s ideas into our struggle. Workers are receptive to our idea that militant reform is not enough, that we cannot eliminate this exploitation without getting rid of all the bosses and their capitalist profit system. We are building an international Party to fight for a communist revolution and a communist society where production will be for the benefit of the working class, not for bosses’ profits.