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No to French interference and intervention in Guinea

category west africa | imperialism / war | press release author Thursday February 22, 2007 18:42author by Alternative libertaire - ALauthor email relations.exterieures at alternativelibertaire dot org Report this post to the editors

Alternative Libertaire statement

For over a month now, a popular social movement has been shaking Guinea. The workers, supported by their trade-union organizations as well as the country's youth, are standing up to the dictatorial power of the president, Lansana Conté, demanding his departure and the satisfaction of their social claims.


No to French interference and intervention in Guinea


For over a month now, a popular social movement has been shaking Guinea. The workers, supported by their trade-union organizations as well as the country's youth, are standing up to the dictatorial power of the president, Lansana Conté, demanding his departure and the satisfaction of their social claims. After the false negotiations (the agreements signed with the trade-union organizations were not respected), the power is responding with vicious repression (curfews, a state of siege, mass arrests), which has already caused the death of more than 100 people. The French State, which has so far supported the regime, has just dispatched the military vessel Sirocco to the Gulf of Guinea and French troops stationed in Côte d'Ivoire may intervene in Guinea in order to evacuate French nationals and restore order in conformity with French interests and those of the French companies who benefit from the exploitation of the country's resources. France thus confirms its role as neo-colonial gendarme and guarantor of the interests of multinationals, a role it has always intended to play in Africa.

Alternative Libertaire supports the social and democratic demands of the people of Guinea and demands an end to the repression of the social and labour movement.

We also demand the withdrawal of all French troops from the African continent.


Alternative Libertaire
22nd February 2007


Translation by FdCA-International Relations

Related Link: http://www.alternativelibertaire.org
author by Rob Notowitz - African People's Solidarity Commiteepublication date Thu Feb 22, 2007 22:34author email robapsc at excite dot comauthor address author phone 857-233-7504Report this post to the editors

Touch One! Touch All!
ASI makes urgent call for support for the struggle for freedom in
Guinea-Conakry!

The following statement comes from Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the
Interim Committee of the African Socialist International (ASI). The
African Socialist International is an international party of African
revolutionaries. The ASI has as its historical mission the unification and
liberation of Africa under an all-African socialist government under the
leadership of the African working class and poor peasantry.

The ASI calls on all who receive this document to forward it to as many
contacts as possible and distribute it around the world in order to lend
support to the just struggles on the ground in Guinea-Conakry, West
Africa.

For more information, contact the African Socialist International:
Omali Yeshitela, ASI Chairman
1245 18th Avenue South
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705
USA

Luwezi Kinshasa, ASI Secretary-General
BILT Mansions
4-16 Deptford Bridge
London SE8 4HH
United Kingdom
20 8265 1731 (land) / 077 8412 1709 (cell)
uhuruasi@aol.com
www.asiuhuru.org

Look for regular updates on the situation in Guinea-Conakry on
www.uhururadio.com




Uhuru! A’mAfrika;

A critical test is upon us. We have the opportunity to directly involve
ourselves in the struggle to defend the interests of Africa and forward
the international African Revolution for the liberation and unification of
Africa and our people worldwide. Our test is to determine whether we will
continue on the road of near-meaningless conferences and empty talk fests
concerning African unity or whether we will become genuinely involved in
determining the future for Our Africa and Our People.

The test is in Guinea-Conakry, where a rotting, repressive, inept and
avaricious neocolonial regime is tottering on the brink of extinction in
the face of unrelenting protests from the masses of our people. Already
government buildings, official centers and institutions have been
assaulted and sacked in different sections of the country, including
Conakry, the capital.

This follows a several-weeks-long general strike, first called by the
trade unions, whose opportunist leadership has vacillated, first one way
then the other, after negotiated deals with the Lansana Conte regime
proved more or less advantageous for the leadership. However, neither the
vacillation of the union leadership nor its subsequent attempts to halt
the strikes have been able to stop the motion of the masses whose
suffering and growing emiseration have continued to push them forward to
the current state of open insurrection.

Guinea is a West African territory of approximately 8 to10 million people
that was a formal French colony until independence in 1958. Like most of
Africa, it is rich in minerals even as its population subsists on
approximately one US dollar a day. The natural resources of the territory
include bauxite, gold, iron ore, uranium, diamonds, coffee, fish,
hydropower and agricultural products. In fact, Guinea produces about half
of the world’s bauxite, the mineral necessary for the production of
aluminum.

Like most of Africa, Guinea’s vast material and human resources benefit
American, European and other imperialist corporations to further the
interests and advance the development of their countries and societies at
the expense of Africa and African people. Infamous corporations like De
Beers, the cartel notorious for its exploitation of African diamonds, and
Alcoa Aluminum and its subsidiary, Reynolds of the U.S., and Alcan of
Canada, are major beneficiaries of Guinean assets at the expense of the
impoverished masses of our people there and elsewhere. However, the
imperialist exploitation of Guinea is not limited to De Beers and U.S. and
Canadian corporations. French, German and Australian corporations are also
serious exploiters of Guinean mining interests.

Because of their expropriation of so much value from these resources, the
corporations and the imperialist governments that work for them have huge
stakes in the outcome of any struggles that occur in Guinea, the West
African region and Africa as a whole. Indeed, generally speaking, they are
intent on preventing any meaningful changes that would forward the capture
of Africa’s resources for our own benefit.

It is in their interests to keep the situation in Guinea just as it is in
terms of power relations, regardless of what individual comes to power. In
fact, there are some indications that some imperialist forces are
disgusted with the Conte regime because of its inefficiency in protecting
their interests and the openly corrupt practices that serve to mobilize
the masses in opposition to the regime. This leads to what the
neocolonialists and imperialists like to refer to as “investment
insecurity.”

The concern of imperialist white nationalist forces about the growing
“investment insecurity” of Africa (which can be translated to mean the
growing militant consciousness of our people, especially the workers and
poor peasantry) is revealed by the number of military bases they have
established all over Africa. Some of these bases have long-standing
histories. For example, the French have military bases going back to the
colonial era throughout “Francophone” Africa. And, the British influence
is of fundamental concern for development in the West African region. In
fact, there are several thousand British troops in neighboring Sierra
Leone, a British neo-colony, as well as UN “peace keepers,” and a US FBI
station.

Along with the neocolonial regimes in the area, all these imperialist
forces have interests in determining the outcome of the struggle in
Guinea, lest it spread to other territories, especially Sierra Leone,
Liberia, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau, all border territories with the
same basic neocolonial crisis-laden contradictions.

All of these forces – the imperialist states outright, in the form of
their military forces and intelligence agencies in the region; the
imperialist corporations in whose interests these states function; and the
neocolonial regimes in Guinea-Conakry and the region – are moving full
speed ahead, sometimes in contradictory fashion, to crush or otherwise
undermine the struggles of the masses. They are struggling to protect
neocolonialism and to deny the ability of Africans to achieve control of
our own resources and our own Mother Country, Africa.

In the last several decades Africa has been characterized by our enemies
as a hopeless continent, where violence, poverty and ignorance are but
natural conditions of existence and where the only meaningful solutions
are white-sponsored Sing-Alongs or other forms of charity. Therefore it
must be understood that the struggle we are witnessing in Guinea
represents a critically-developing component of the general crisis of
imperial white power. It is a white power that is losing its grip on the
world, obviously in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Venezuela
and other locations.

However, the manufactured picture of Africa as a place of senseless
violence and anarchy has prevented the peoples of the world, especially
the international African community, from recognizing the critical role of
Africa in the contest of the world’s oppressed to end imperialist
domination over our lives.

Nearly every imperialist force in the world has the exploitation of Africa
as the foundation for its plans for survival and development. The U.S. and
France are in a most serious, sometimes bloody contest for control of what
has in the past been considered France’s sphere of influence in Africa.
Moreover, Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of George Bush’s foreign policy
and the current head of the World Bank, has declared that his priority as
World Bank president is going to be activity in Africa. This is a follow
up on former US President William Jefferson Clinton’s plan that also
targeted Africa for greater exploitation. China has an Africa Plan and is
becoming the most dynamic actor in African economic affairs. France and
England have their Africa Plans as well.

The crisis of imperialism is deepening as a result of greater losses to
its ability to exploit the resources of the world’s peoples with impunity.
This is why Africa is becoming increasingly important for the survival of
a foul social system founded on the enslavement and dispersal of our
people and the theft and division of our land and its separation from us
and our separation from one another.

We must act!

The situation in Guinea-Conakry gives us the perfect opportunity to step
forward, especially those of us who consider ourselves African
Internationalists, revolutionaries who recognize that key to the progress
of the dispersed African nation is the total liberation and unification of
Africa and African people under the leadership of the African working
class aligned with the poor peasantry.

We must act!

Especially those of us who recognize that the liberation and unification
of Africa and our people can not be accomplished short of revolution that
will allow for the destruction of neocolonialism, correctly defined by
Kwame Nkrumah as the last stage of imperialism.

We must act!

Especially those of us who recognize that African liberation and
unification cannot happen without destruction of the economic structures
that have tied Africa to imperialism for at least as long as the capture
of our continent and enslavement of our people in the process that gave
rise to capitalism/imperialism as a world economy.

We must act!

Especially those of us who recognize that the liberation of Africa is
meaningless without socialist transformation that results in Africa being
in total possession of its own resources, directed toward our own
self-defined interests under the leadership of the producing class, the
workers, aligned with the poor peasantry.

We must act!

Especially those of us who understand that every struggle in the African
world, including this struggle in Guinea-Conakry, is but one front of the
struggle for the total emancipation of Africa and African people and that
each struggle must become a conscious, organized thrust toward the final
objective of the liberation and unification of Our Africa and Our People.

Guinea gives us the best opportunity for united action that we have had in
many years. This is because of the fact that among all the forces involved
in the struggle in Guinea, one of them is committed to the liberation and
unification of Africa and African people and has, even before now, made
known its unity with an all-African solution to the problems of Africans
worldwide.

The leading revolutionary force on the ground in Guinea is the Africanist
Movement. It is an organization that is organized in several of the West
African post-colonial territories, including Sierra Leone, Guinea-Conakry,
Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana and Senegal.

The Africanist Movement is led by Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, a young man in his
twenties, who was a child soldier, later forced into exile as a teenager,
jailed in Guinea-Conakry because of his exposure of the regime as a
journalist. He has organized a massive movement throughout West Africa.

The Africanist Movement is our movement. In October of 2005, Chernoh Bah,
the organization’s director organized a regional leadership conference in
Sierra Leone that resulted in representatives of the movement from
throughout the region formally signing on to make the Africanist Movement
a component of the African Socialist International representing the West
African region.

Less than a year later Chernoh Alpha M. Bah attended a key meeting in
London to become the official representative of the International Tribunal
on Reparations for African People (ITRAP). ITRAP is holding a reparations
tribunal in Berlin, Germany in June of this year to indict western and
U.S. imperialism and put them on trial for the years on forced labor or
slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and the consequences that are still
being experienced by our people worldwide.
Subsequent to this London meeting, the Africanist Movement organized a
meeting in Sierra Leone to create the ITRAP West African regional
committee.

The Africanist Movement is also a critical component of the All African
People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP). Organizing
grassroots projects to win Africans from throughout the world to build
sustainable water purification, electrification and other programs
throughout the African world, AAPDEP will contribute to anti-imperialist
self-reliance and revolutionary consciousness among the African masses.

It is clear that the Africanist Movement is not just another run of the
mill organization, intoxicated by visions of personal power. It is an
organization that understands that the struggle for Guinea-Conakry is part
and parcel of the struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa
and African people everywhere. The Africanist Movement has no illusions
that there can be an independent and free Guinea as long as Africa and
African people continue to be kept in bondage and Africa’s resources
continue to be controlled by international imperial white power.

The Africanist Movement is fighting for us! It is fighting our battle!

This is one of the reasons the Africanist Movement is being targeted by
reactionary forces in Guinea: it continues to move forward with the masses
of African workers even as the trade union leadership and other
opportunists vacillate or even openly oppose the struggle of the people.

In attempts to defend itself from destruction the neocolonial Conte regime
in Guinea has brought in troops from neighboring Guinea-Bissau to protect
Conte from his own army that is growing ever restless in the face of the
people’s struggle. Army posts in some cities are actually arming people in
the area to create their own independent spheres of control. Conte is
struggling to control the Guinean army that has killed scores of people
since the beginning of the insurrection by providing foodstuffs and
economic privileges in an attempt to win and maintain the army’s loyalty

There are even rumors that Conte has hired African mercenaries formerly
associated with Ulima, a Liberian force that he funded to oppose the
former regime of the deposed Liberian president Charles Taylor.

Militants in Guinea are being targeted for arrest and/or assassination as
the regime desperately attempts to hold onto power. In addition, Conte has
resorted to ethnic baiting in an attempt to further divide the resistance.
Conte claims that the opposition to his regime is based on ethnic rivalry.
He states that the two other main ethnic groups in Guinea oppose him based
on Conte having power because of his ethnicity. This is a typical ploy
that has too often succeeded in dividing opposition to neocolonial rule
and, in some cases has led to internecine slaughter of ethnic groups by
one another.

In the meantime the Africanist Movement is attempting to fuse a
revolutionary consciousness onto the mass movement. While the basic mass
demand has been the removal of Conte from power, the Africanist Movement
realizes that the removal of one or several men at the seat of power will
not resolve the fundamental contradiction faced by our people in Guinea
and the region: neocolonial domination that upholds imperialist white
power.

Because of this the Africanists are raising democratic national
revolutionary demands that include, but are not limited to:

1. All power to the workers and peasants; establishment of a democratic
national revolutionary government of workers and
peasants.

2. Freedom of press, speech, assembly and political association.

3. Nationalization of the strategic components of the economy, especially
the extractive, mining sector. This will allow the people to begin using
the natural resources of Guinea for economic development for the
people—for food, clothing, housing, education and development of the
economic infrastructure.

4. Dismantle and restructure the army under the leadership of a democratic
national revolutionary committee of patriotic officers, non-commissioned
officers and soldiers.

5. Living wages for all workers.

6. Establish worker-peasant committees to begin a process of repatriation
of all the wealth and resources stolen by members and supporters of the
current neocolonial regime and deposited in imperialist banks.

7. Immediate investment in water collection, purification and delivery.

8. Freedom for all political prisoners and those militants arrested during
the insurrection.

9. Removal of the borders separating Guinea-Conakry from its neighbors and
thereby expanding the economy of the region and allowing for greater
economic planning to the benefit of all the people in the region.

10. Removal of all military checkpoints requiring identification papers
that specify ethnicity.

11. Immediate withdrawal of all imperialist troops from the region and
their intelligence agencies, including those of the UK, U.S., UN, and EU.

12. Immediate withdrawal of all troops brought in from Guinea-Bissau and
other mercenaries being used to defend the neocolonial regime.

13. Reparations for all the wealth taken from Guinea and the region by
imperialist corporations in collusion with the neocolonial regimes.

14. Price support for peasant and domestic agricultural production.

15. Government support for modernization of domestic agricultural
production, including modernization of equipment, supply of fertilizer and
seeds, and protection of domestic and regional producers and markets from
imperialist corporations that undermine our local economies.

16. Clinics and healthcare for the rural and agricultural communities.

17. Assistance for the seafood producers, including modernization of the
fishing fleet and protection of the fishing coast from imperialist
intervention and over fishing.

18. Solidarity with African people in Africa and throughout the world who
are struggling against imperialism in any form, including neocolonialism.

19. Recognition of the right of return for all African people displaced
and dispersed from Guinea and Africa by slavery, colonialism and other
attacks on Guinea and Africa as a whole by imperialism.

While there are other demands being forwarded by the Africanist Movement,
these demands are demonstrative of the character of the movement and its
intentions.

We must act!

Those of us in neighboring West African post-colonial “countries” must
mobilize solidarity demonstrations in support of the workers and toiling
masses in Guinea-Conakry, putting forth their demands as our own and
demanding that the regional neo-colonial regimes keep their hands off
Guinea.

Those of us throughout Africa, we must act! We must hold demonstrations at
the embassies of Guinea-Conakry and Guinea-Bissau, in places where they
exist, putting forth the demands of the people, condemning the Conte
regime and neocolonialism in general and demanding the withdrawal of
troops from Guinea-Bissau. We must also hold actions at the embassies of
the U.S., UK and France, demanding withdrawal of their military forces
from the region and hands off Guinea-Conakry.

Throughout the world Africans must take similar actions. Within the U.S.
and other imperialist countries we must hold demonstrations at key
embassies and initiate appropriate actions against the corporations
involved in the exploitation of Guinea’s resources and in whose interests
the neocolonial regimes function.

One fundamental task before us is to publicize to the world what is
happening in Guinea-Conakry and the demands of the Africanist Movement.
This document must be widely distributed. Available media resources such
as UhuruRadio.com, Burning Spear News and other patriotic news and
information distribution centers must assume our responsibility to inform
the world, especially the African world, of what is happening in
Guinea-Conakry and what the stakes are for Our Africa and Our People.

The stakes are high. The struggle in Guinea-Conakry represents our
opportunity to join in active participation for the future of Africa,
indeed, for the future of our people. We must not hesitate. We must not
fail this test presented to us, and we must not abandon those brave
African men and women of the West African Front of our struggle for a
liberated and united Africa.

The Africanist Movement is our movement; it is an active part of the
African Socialist International and, at this moment, it carries on its
shoulders the hopes and aspirations of Africans worldwide.

Izwe Lethu I Afrika!
One Africa! One Nation!
No Compromise! No Surrender!

Related Link: http://www.apscuhuru.org
 

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