Kawsachun News was recently in Desaguadero, Peru, to speak to participants of the general strike against the parliamentary coup that took place against ousted President Pedro Castillo.
Peoples Dispatch reported state forces killed 17 people January 9 in Juliaca, Peru, bringing the total during this unrest to 46 deaths, as of the last available press reports.
Clau O’Brien Moscoso, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Team, is in Peru reporting from the ground. She spoke to Kawsachun News on January 12.
Here is some of her video documentation of the national strike.
BAP Haiti/Americas Team member Claudia O'Brien Moscoso (@PiolinSghost) has been in the streets of Lima with the masses of #Peru's people, who have been protesting the parliamentary coup of @PedroCastilloTe. Check this thread for her documentation. https://t.co/DgNJcLgN46
Ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan with Russian President Vladimir Putin / credit: Twitter / Kremlin
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Multipolarista.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused a top U.S. diplomat of threatening his government as part of a “foreign conspiracy” to overthrow him.
This March, opposition politicians in Pakistan tried to push a no-confidence motion through the National Assembly, seeking to remove Khan from office.
Khan, who was democratically elected in 2018, said the U.S. government was supporting these opposition lawmakers in their attempt to oust him.
“I’m taking the name of U.S., the conspiracy has been hatched with the help of America to remove me,” the Pakistani prime minister said, in Urdu-language comments translated by the media.
In a meeting with leaders of his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Khan singled out Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
According to the prime minister, Lu threatened Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed, warning that there would be serious “implications” if Khan was not ousted.
Washington allegedly told Majeed that U.S.-Pakistani relations could not improve if Khan remained in power.
Khan accused the U.S. embassy of organizing Pakistani opposition lawmakers to vote for the no-confidence motion in the National Assembly.
In previous comments, Khan had also said that Washington sent a letter threatening him for rejecting its attempts to create U.S. military bases in Pakistan.
Khan hinted that the soft-coup attempt was aimed at reversing his independent foreign policy. Under Khan, Pakistan has deepened its alliance with China, greatly improved relations with Russia, and maintained staunch support for Palestine.
Washington has rejected these allegations. However, Khan’s comments are bolstered by testimony that Lu himself gave in a March 2 hearing of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Near East, South East, Central Asia and Counterterrorism.
A video clip of Assistant Secretary of State Lu in the hearing, which went viral on Twitter, shows him admitting that the U.S. government had pressured Pakistan to condemn Russia for its military intervention in Ukraine.
Lu’s video testimony confirms that Washington is angry because of Islamabad’s growing relations with Moscow.
Imran Khan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Beijing Olympics. The Pakistani leader subsequently took a trip to Moscow on February 24, the beginning of the military campaign in Ukraine.
After his visit, Khan announced that Pakistan would be expanding its economic ties with Russia, importing its wheat and gas, while ignoring Western sanctions.
Although the country is a close ally of China, Pakistan has for decades had a difficult relationship with Russia. Under Khan, Islamabad’s tensions with Moscow have significantly softened.
Pakistani scholar Junaid S. Ahmad published an article in Multipolarista analyzing the numerous reasons why Washington would want to remove Imran Khan from power, including his growing alliance with China and Russia, his refusal to normalize relations with Israel, and his gradual move away from Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan’s opposition is trying to overthrow Prime Minister Imran Khan with a no-confidence motion.
Khan says he has proof of foreign funding for a regime-change op to reverse his independent foreign policy – especially his alliance with China and Russiahttps://t.co/wdIqWDlqss
The deputy speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly, Qasim Suri, suspended the opposition’s no-confidence motion, arguing that it was unconstitutional because it was part of a “conspiracy” supported by “foreign powers.”
This means that Khan has 90 days to hold snap elections.
There are worries in Pakistan, however, that the soft-coup attempt against Khan could escalate into an old-fashioned military coup.
Pakistan’s army is very powerful, and notorious for overthrowing civilian leaders. An elected Pakistani prime minister has never completed a full term.
Pakistan’s military is also closely linked to the United States, and frequently acts to promote its interests.
In concerning comments made in the middle of this controversy, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa praised the United States and Europe. Breaking with the elected prime minister, he criticized Russia over its war in Ukraine.
These remarks suggest that Khan may have lost the support of top military leaders.
General Bajwa: ‘We share a long history of excellent relationship with the United States which remains our largest export market; UK/EU vital to our national interests; Russian aggression on Ukraine is very unfortunate, this is a huge tragedy.’
Farmers protest in India on December 26, 2020 / credit: Ravan Khosa
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis.
November is a month of pleasant weather and festivities in India. But during the final week of this month last year, several hundred thousand farmers gathered on the borders of the National Capital Territory of Delhi—which contains the capital of New Delhi—to confront a huge police force.
They settled down at several points on the border, creating new townships and organizing huge langars, a Sikh concept that involves free meals cooked and eaten together as a community.
This protest sparked a general strike of 250 million Indian farmers as well as workers from other sectors, making it the largest known strike in the world.
Over 11 months have passed since then and farmers have maintained their protest sites, although at a smaller level, using this to inspire protests in other areas of India. The movement is the strongest in parts of northern India (states such as Punjab and Haryana, and the western portion of the state of Uttar Pradesh). But it has spread to other areas as well, thereby strengthening the overall opposition to India’s right-wing, sectarian ruling regime. While this movement has raised several demands, the most persistent one has been for the repeal of three highly controversial farm laws, which were passed in 2020, bypassing normal parliamentary procedures.
Women have made up a significant portion of the farmers’ protests in India over the past 11 months / credit: JK Photography
The farmers say—and several experts back these claims—that these new farm laws greatly increase the possibility of corporate control over the Indian farming and food system. One law strengthens the contract farming system in favor of corporate interests and against farmers. The second law increases possibilities for big corporations to hoard huge quantities of important crops and hence manipulate and dominate their market. The third law weakens the existing procurement farming system while facilitating a new, unregulated tax-free purchase system, which big business can easily dominate. Both local crony capitalists and big multinational agribusiness companies are likely to use these new opportunities to increase their domination, while also entering into collaboration to corner small farmers.
Allowing big business to dominate India’s food and farm system would be a culmination of trends witnessed in recent decades. The advent of Green Revolution seeds promoted by Western—particularly U.S.—pressure opened up Indian farming to big business, but led to an increase in pollution and soil degradation caused by chemical fertilizers and pesticides, escalated costs to farmers, lowered food quality, and the loss of biodiversity as local seeds and mixed farming systems were uprooted. Objections voiced by the most senior farm scientist, Dr. R.H. Richharia, director of the Central Rice Research Institute, were brushed aside with a heavy hand and he was rudely removed from his job.
The next stage of corporate domination came with the ushering in of the World Trade Organization regime, with its rules for international trade and patents. This could not be stopped, but resistance efforts helped save some safeguards for farmers.
The third stage came with the advent of genetically modified (GMO) crops, including the Bt Cotton crop. Next, efforts were taken to introduce GMO technology to grow several food crops, starting with brinjal (eggplant or aubergine) and mustard. A Monsanto partner mounted an aggressive campaign for spreading GMO brinjal, which would have paved the way for GMO technology to produce other food crops. However, a strong resistance movement opposed this and, so far, GMO food crops have been resisted more or less successfully. Professor Pushpa Bhargava, an acclaimed scientist to whom the Indian Supreme Court offered a special advisory role on this issue, warned, “The ultimate aim of this attempt of which the leader is Monsanto, is to obtain control over Indian agriculture and thus food production.”
Women harvesting rice in Palacode in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu / credit: Deepak kumar on Unsplash
The longer term trend has been for big agribusiness to try to dominate the Indian farming scene, although this has been resisted with varying success by farmers and activists at different stages. Building on this previous strength, many farmer organizations have shown greater unity and resilience this time for a more determined resistance.
This growing resistance may be one reason why the open announcement of the India-United States free trade agreement (FTA) has been postponed. Earlier prolonged negotiations for India’s proposed FTA with the European Union had to be called off due to strong objections raised by farmers, particularly dairy farmers.
Such fears are even more pronounced in the context of negotiations for FTA with the United States, which have been even less transparent than the European negotiations.
Sections of Indian bourgeois media have been speculating the FTA with the United States will be introduced in stages. Meanwhile, farmers’ concerns have been confirmed by other recent government decisions as well. Recent moves for mandatory protection of staple foods have been opposed in favor of facilitating the growing big-business domination of food processing and a setback to existing systems, which protect farmers and small processors from the pressures of a less regulated market. The Indian government also recently advocated for palm fruit trees to increase edible oil production, which has been criticized for harming the interests of millions of traditional oilseed farmers and disrupting the biodiversity and ecology of areas where palm-oil plantations are planning to be introduced on a mass scale.
Nearly two-thirds of India’s 1.38 billion people remain linked to rural livelihoods. Approximately 115 million farmer households can be counted in India, most of them small family farms. The growing big-business intrusion has led to an ever-escalating rise in farming costs and debt, in turn leading to ordinary farmers losing their land. According to census data, farmers have been turning into landless households at the rate of 100 per hour. From a global perspective, this is part of the worldwide struggle to save small farmer communities. The movement can gain traction if protesting farmers include the concerns of landless rural households, who now comprise almost half of households in the Indian countryside. Another widely felt need is for this movement to move toward ecologically protective farming, the importance of which has increased as the global climate changes.
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener of the Campaign to Save Earth Now. He has been involved with several social movements in India. Dogra’s most recent books include Man Over Machine and Planet in Peril.
