The Aceh province, which has been involved in a struggle for independence from Indonesia for 26 years, was devastated by the tsunamis.
BY Luwezi Kinshasa
While the white press continues to debate over the exact amount of people who have tragically died after being struck by tsunamis, there is nothing being said about the fact that the tsunamis are not the most devastating thing that has hit the affected areas of Southeast Asia.
In fact, more than anything, we have been bombarded by the news of white people’s donations to the people of Southeast Asia. It is as if white people just discovered poverty in that part of the world.
They travel there every year, running from inhospitable European weather. They go into Asia to have fun and find “heaven on earth,” knowing that the very people who serve them food and make them comfortable in those colonial holiday resorts are plagued by poverty, hunger, prostitution and AIDS that white power imperialism has imposed on them.
In 2004 alone, 2.1 million people were killed by diarrhea related diseases. Many more continue to die from curable diseases caused by the poverty that is a product of white imperialist domination over oppressed peoples.
The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of humans on earth are poor because over 75 percent of the wealth of the peoples of the world is concentrated in the hands of the white ruling class and white people in general.
During this past Christmas season alone, British people spent £4.3 billion on decorations and £30 billion celebrating Christmas, while most people walk about four miles a day to get water in the colonized world.
Imperialist pollution is responsible for severe environmental disorder
The violence of the sea cannot be separated from aggression against the environment at the hands of the European, U.S. and Japanese capitalist classes, who have, for a long time now, been dumping toxic waste into the sea, releasing high levels of dangerous gases into the environment, and carrying out all kinds of atomic and nuclear experiments at the expense of nature.
Long before the tsunamis appeared, contaminated water and water born diseases like diarrhea, cholera, dysentery and denge fever have been killing people in those areas of the world.
It is the oppressed and colonized peoples who have suffered the most from white power’s mindless interference with nature. Had these colonized countries had access to their own resources, they would have been better prepared to deal with the effects of the tsunamis.
In a country like India, where at least one third of the population lives on less that $2 per day and 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, the effects of the tsunamis were devastating. India would have sufficient resources to deal with the tsunami disaster, but its colonial relationship with Europe drains its resources, weakening its ability to cope.
Sri Lanka’s neo-colonial government’s resources, that should have been available for its people, are tied up in arms bought from imperialist countries for its war against the Tamil people who are struggling for independence.
Indonesia has lost over 70,000 people to the tidal waves. The epicenter of these deadly waves was near the Aceh province, which for 26 years has been fighting for independence from Indonesia.
In the Aceh and Sumatra regions, the neo-colonial government and infrastructure have collapsed. The freedom for the working masses of these regions from neo-colonialism and white imperialist power is a necessity. That is the only way they can be free to work and use their resources and labor to protect themselves from any natural disaster.
European charity is a cover for imperialism — what the people of Asia need is reparations
In Sri Lanka, Oxfam claims to have provided food for 8,000 families. Christian Aid in India and Sri Lanka has provided £150,000 of emergency funding through its partner organizations, the Churches Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA) and the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka.
This amount of money and the hundreds of millions of dollars that will flow to this region is a pittance in comparison to the money and resources stolen from people of Asia by imperialist white power. The British press claimed that the British public donated £20 million in 24 hours; but Africa alone pays white imperialist nations £20 million every 16 hours disguised as debt repayment.
Charity donations by these organizations, funded by the “generosity” of white and Japanese people, do not challenge the parasitic imperialist relationship to Africa, Asia or other oppressed nations. Charity donations appeal to the emotions of white people and allow them to feel good about themselves as they sit upon the bodies of colonized people killed, directly or indirectly, by imperialist policies that benefit white power and white people.
They leave white people free to determine what to do and what to give to oppressed people from whom the resources they have come in the first place. It leaves white people free to support their imperialist governments even as they give crumbs to the peoples who their government steals resources from.
But where is the white left from Britain, Germany and France? Where is their opposition to the imperialist pillage of the resources of these affected nations that has left them unable to effectively deal with the tsunamis? Where is the outcry in response to the fact that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in the U.S. knew in advance about the tsunamis but did not adquately warn the affected countries?
There is nothing. There is no massive action from white communists nor threat of industrial action in solidarity with the dispossessed people in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and Somalia.
This is an opportunity for the white left to mobilize and call for material reparations to victims of hundreds of years of European looting and plunder of resources. This is a moment for them to call for a new beginning in search of a new and better world where white people fight for reparations to colonized workers and the right of Africans, Asians and all other oppressed peoples to control their own resources.
However, their opportunism runs deep. They only mobilize when it is the livelihood of white people at stake.
Defeating neo-colonialism in Southeast Asia is the only way to guarantee safe future
The only way to create a situation where peoples, no matter where they are in the world, are capable of being prepared for disasters like this one; the only way to bring about a system without poverty and human suffering is to destroy imperialism and capitalism. We call on all working masses in Asia to intensify their efforts to end the neo-colonialism that has allowed a breathing space to imperialism in the region.
White and Japanese imperialism must be defeated in the region. The local ruling classes that have bertrayed the interest of the people must be defeated.
All power to the people!
