Democratic Palestine : 19 (ص 27)
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- Democratic Palestine : 19 (ص 27)
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as seen in the recent mass protests in
Pakistan and Chile, where the respec-
tive dictators continue to respond to
their crises with the usual state-of-siege
methods.
PAKISTAN
In January, General Zia Al Haq
made a pretense of ‘keeping up with the
times’ by lifting eight years of martial
law, announcing elections for 1990, and
installing a civilian cabinet, headed by
Prime Minister Junejo of the rightist
Muslim League. However, mass pres-
sure for real democracy exposed all this
as a fraudulent maneuver.
This spring the return of Benazir
Bhutto, daughter of the prime minister
Dictatorships Challenged
Focus on Pakistan
and Chile
Growing mass struggle many places in Asia, Africa and Latin America
has unmasked the crisis of neocolonialism. This year’s power changes
in Haiti and the Philippines showed that the people will not tolerate
corrupt dictators indefinitely. Now events in Pakistan and Chile are
challenging US imperialism’s reliance on fascist regimes to insure its
interests.
In the seventies, imperialism’s crisis
became apparent with a chain of victo-
ries for national liberation movements,
and an economic recession in the capi-
talist countries. The prevailing struc-
tures were proving insufficient to secure
imperialism’s exploitation of the peo-
ples and resources of the ‘third world’,
and the US resorted to installing dicta-
torships, relying on the military and the
most reactionary strata of the local
bourgeoisie. The CIA was active in
promoting coups - Chile 1973, Pakistan
1977 and Turkey 1980 are only a few
examples. The gendarme _ regimes
unleashed a virtual reign of terror,
comparable to Nazi atrocities practiced
at the time of World War II. Thou-
sands upon thousands of patriots have
been incarcerated, tortured, murdered,
or made to simply ‘disappear’. Mass
impoverishment was the other side of
this massive repression, as the juntas
totally subordinated the local economy
to the multinationals and finance
capital.
Today the cycle is coming full circle
with the resurgence of popular struggle
against the political, social and eco-
nomic tyranny of imperialism’s surro-
gate juntas. The 1979 Iranian revolu-
tion was the first major jolt to imperia-
lism’s reliance on dictatorships. Since
then, civilian governments have
replaced the juntas in a number of
Latin American countries. Faced by
objective developments, the US was
quicker to anticipate the outcome of the
mass uprisings in the Philippines and
Haiti. Marcos and Duvalier were
escorted to safety, while the Reagan
Administration worked to prevent the
mass struggle from bringing truly revo-
lutionary forces to power. However,
the dilemma for imperialism remains,
Jarre 1983 demonstration in Santiago
_
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who was hanged when Zia took power,
served as a rallying point for popular
sentiments against the regime. In
August, the Movement for the Resto-
ration of Democracy, which she pro-
files, declared its intention to initiate a
new phase of struggle if elections are
not held this year. The Movement
planned a rally for Pakistan’s inde-
pendcnce day on August 14th, to be
followed by a campaign for Zia’s
removal. The dictator tried to keep his
face clean by absenting himself from
the country, posing as a pilgrim in
Mecca. Junejo meanwhile confirmed
that his cabinet is only a decoration
pasted on the de facto continuation of
martial law. Hoping to head off the
Movement for the Restoration of
Democracy, he banned public mee-
tings, ordered the preventive detention
of scores of opposition leaders, and
sent the army into the streets for the
first time this year.
This only served to further enrage the
people who went into open rebellion the
last half of August, with protests
occurring throughout Sind and Punjab
provinces, and in Peshawar, capital of
the North-West Frontier Province. The
people were demanding early elections
and the release of the detained. In many
instances the masses went beyond the
Movement for the Restoration of
Democracy’s legalistic approach. Slo-
gans were raised demanding an end to
Pakistan’s collusion with US imperia-
lism’s plans. In scores of towns,
demonstrators hurled stones and
erected barricades against the regime’s
forces, and engaged them in hand-to-
hand combat. Banks and government
buildings were burned, and railways
disrupted by mass sabotage actions.
Zia’s soldiers shot to kill, and over 50
people died in the first five days of the
uprising, among them a few soldiers
and policemen who fell victim to the
masses’ rage. Arrests were ongoing,
with estimates of the number of those
detained ranging as high as 10,000.
WHAT IS AT STAKE?
Besides the masses’ right to freedom,
vital imperialist interests are at stake in
Pakistan. Especially since 1979, when
then Secretary of State Brzezinski, after
the fall of the Shah, defined the ‘arc of >
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