national question
Versailles vs Comintern: two visions of world peace
By Barry Healy
June 28, 2009, was the anniversary of the two bookends of World War I, in which it is estimated more than 15 million people died. On that date in 1914 Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo and, five years later, in 1919, 90 years ago this year, the Versailles Treaty was signed in Paris.
The first war in which the capacity of modern industry to deploy, feed, arm and dismember people was so hideously demonstrated, WWI was experienced by its victims as the "war to end all wars". Unfortunately, it proved not to be.
Out of the ashes of the conflict two competing visions of world peace arose: Versailles and the revolutionary and democratic alternative represented by the Communist International (Comintern) emanating from the 1917 Russian Revolution.
US President Woodrow Wilson swept into the treaty negotiations declaring: “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Over six months of intense horsetrading at Versailles a new imperialist order was hammered out, resulting in many of the conflicts that followed.
Troops out of the Tamil homeland, release the prisoners!
DSP reiterates support for the right of self-determination for the Tamil people
Democratic Socialist Perspective (Australia) statement in response to the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka
New pamphlet: The Tamil Freedom Struggle in Sri Lanka
The Tamil Freedom Struggle in Sri Lanka
By Chris Slee, Brian Senewiratne, Vickramabahu Karunarathne
Published by Resistance Books
2009, 40pages
$5.00
June 3, 2009 -- Ever since Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) gained independence from Britain in 1948, the basic rights of the Tamil minority have been under attack.
The ruling elite from the Sinhala majority have found anti-Tamil racism an extremely convenient device to secure their power and privilege and deflect discontent from below. The history of Sri Lanka is marked by a shameful and bloody series of government-instigated anti-Tamil pogroms.
Socialist Party of Malaysia condemns Sri Lanka's slaughter of Tamils
By the Socialist Party of Malaysia (Parti Sosialis Malaysia, PSM)
May 27, 2009 -- Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared victory over Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as the last LTTE strongpoints crumbled. The victory is for no one but only the chauvinistic nationalist Sinhalese government led by Rajapaksa, which had launched a brutal, merciless and cold-blooded military offensive against the Tamil population for several months, inflicting nothing but death, destruction and misery. The victory proclaimed by Rajapaksa will not put an end to the conflict that has lasted for several decades, but signals a new assault on working people in Sri Lanka -- Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim.
Tamil self-determination and the LTTE: Some lessons for the struggle
On May 23, 2009, anti-war activists joined members of Sydney's Tamil community in a march to protest the Sri Lankan government's war against the Tamil people, organised by the Stop The War Coalition.
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By Reihana Mohideen
May 21, 2009 -- “To save the lives of our people is the need of the hour. Mindful of this, we have already announced to the world our position to silence our guns to save our people", said Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the head of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) International Diplomatic Relations on May 17, thus flagging the military defeat of the LTTE.
CPI (ML) Liberation: A crime against humanity, not a `famous victory', in Sri Lanka
By the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
May 21, 2009 -- According to an announcement by the Sri Lankan government, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Prabhakaran is dead, killed by the Lankan Army. The LTTE is yet to confirm the death, and some sections are questioning the veracity of the claim.
The exact manner of Prabhakaran's death is clouded in suspicion. The Sri Lankan government claims he was killed when the army opened fire on a van in which he and two top aides were travelling; initially, Sri Lankan officials said the van caught fire under rocket attack and Prabhakaran's body was badly burnt. Subsequently, they claimed to have found his body, dead from a bullet, dressed in fatigues and having identification papers on him, during a combing operation. There are many unanswered questions about the manner of the death: including the suspicion that he might have been captured alive by the Lankan army, or that he might have taken his life before capture.
Sri Lankan socialists call for self-determination for Tamils
Indian communists: India must end support for genocide in Sri Lanka and the elite coup in Nepal
By Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
Interview with Bolivia's foreign minister: `Communitarian socialism will refound Bolivia’
Interview with Bolivia’s foreign minister David Choquehuanca by Patricia Bravo and Cris González, translated from the original article in the March 20, 2009, edition of
Brian Senewiratne: Genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka while Australia looks on
Sign open letter in support of Tamil rights in Sri Lanka. Go to http://fastuntoaction.wordpress.com/sri-lanka-crisis-statement-of-support
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Dr Brian Senewiratne
May 7, 2009 -- Socialist Alliance (Australia) -- I am a Sinhalese from the majority community in Sri Lanka, not from the brutalised Tamil community. I have campaigned for some five decades for the right of the Tamils to live with equality, dignity and safety in the country of their birth.
I am releasing this media briefing as a concerned Australian (here for 32 years), and as a member of the Socialist Alliance, the only non-Tamil organisation [in Australia] to support the struggle of the Tamils for justice.