The Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla (Bangladesh) -statement on current crisis

Written by: Proletarian Party of Bangladesh on 4 August 2024

 

(Above: Protests continue in Bangladesh on August 3.  Photo by Shaharik Istik Raz on Flickr.)

Intro:  We are reprinting this statement from the Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla (PBSP)/Bangladesh. In the two weeks since this statement was released, more killings have occurred as protests continue against the government. We offer the following notes of explanation.

Sheikh Hasina is described by the Economist magazine as “Asia’s Iron Lady”. She was prime minister of Bangladesh from June 1996 to July 2001 and again since January 2009. She heads the Awami League, the oldest existing political party in the country. It played a large role in achieving Bangladeshi independence and relations with India through Awami League. The Awami League has close ties to India’s Modi government.

The quota system of the Bangladesh Civil Service reserves 30% of positions for descendants of the freedom fighters of Bangladesh’s war for independence from Pakistan. They are mainly loyal to the Awami League and students object to the system for denying their opportunity to win jobs on merit.

The Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) is the Awami League’s main rival for office on behalf of the Bangladesh ruling class. To try and discredit the student movement, the government has declared the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and all its affiliates banned for their alleged involvement in this and earlier anti-government movements. 

The Chhatra League is the student wing of the Awami League. It is a violent, fascist supporter of the government.

The 9-point demands are reformist demands advanced by sections of the current anti-government movement – eds.

 

A Call to Struggling Students-Mass People - Proletarian Party of Purbo Bangla(PBSP)/Bangladesh

The Quota Reform Movement may have been triumphant, but the blood debt has not been paid.
Fight to overthrow genocidal, murderous Hasina-fascism!

Over the span of five days from July 16 to 20, Hasina-Awami-Indian fascists drowned the student movement, which gradually turned into a mass people's uprising, in an ocean of blood to suppress it. However, they have also been forced to surrender to the fair demands of the students. As a result, a significant triumph has been achieved in this bloody struggle. At the same time, Hasina-fascism has survived, for the time being, due to the limitations of the movement. Thus, the movement failed to achieve real political success.

These fascists have taken nearly two hundred lives in this brief period. More than a thousand students and young people were wounded by bullets fired by the police, BGB, army, and League terrorists. Many of them are dying in hospitals. The killing frenzy is still going strong, involving the Chhatra League, terrorists of the Awami camp, the Police-RAB, and finally the army. The state apparatus has brutally suppressed this movement. The army deployed sound grenades, tear gas, and fired shots from helicopters to put an end to the student protests in the streets for the first time in the history of the country. They opened fire on the processions. Martyr Abu Saeed, who bravely bared his chest in front of the police's raised guns, was fatally shot by direct gunfire in Rangpur.

Fearing the loss of power, Hasina-Awami fascists have confined the movement with a curfew. They have continued their fascist, one-sided propaganda by blocking access to the internet and censoring the news that the media reports. They have tried to disunite the leaders of the movement. They have arrested and abducted the movement’s leaders and tried to repress them through intimidation. They have spoken of the bogeyman of BNP-Jamaat since the beginning. This is how they want to hide their defeat by the bravery and struggle of the students. They are trying to protect their fascist power by any means. Cases and attacks against the protesters have already been initiated. They are arresting any opposition. All these will increase in the future. Large-scale terrorist operations against the protesters have already begun as they attempt to bring the situation under their control.

However, this government is still trembling with the fear of its fall. The babbling of their leaders has decreased. Their mouths are dry. Many of them are keeping the way to escape abroad. Until now, they have maintained their power only with the support of India and the force from the weapons of the army and bureaucrats. But even they might reject Hasina and bring a "Third Power" to the throne if they see too much danger. On the other hand, all opposition political forces and individuals, except the Awami League and their few sycophants, are seeking the downfall of this government. It is evident to all that the hands and feet of this regime are red with the blood of the students and the masses. They are deceivers, hypocrites, and liars. They are enemies of all students and all people.

Why is this fascist government able to survive despite being so hated and excluded? One reason is that they control the state apparatus (the army, BGB, and police) and are directly supported by India's expansionist, Hindutva fascist Modi government, as well as foreign imperialists. Another reason is that the anti-quota movement so far has shown immense valor in the student movement, but it was devoid of any political aims. They themselves called it an “apolitical” movement. A fascist administration such as Hasina's cannot be overthrown by an apolitical movement. As a result, it was largely deprived of the participation of all the struggling classes of society, especially the large urban working class. If the working class of the city had joined the student movement, this government would have been thrown into the dustbin by now. The people would have crushed the barbarous fascist Awami leaders, including Hasina, beneath their feet.

However, the extremely angry students have added a new dimension to this movement. They have ousted the terrorist Chhatra League from many universities, even if temporarily. They have resisted armed attacks by these government-backed thugs and retaliated heavily against them. The Leaguers who carried out armed attacks on the street movement were driven away like dogs by the students. Much-hated leaders were beaten up; the PS of Gazipur's ex-mayor Jahangir, who fired at protestors' marches, was killed and hanged from a tree, and a policeman or two faced the same fate in some places. They attacked a number of police posts and stations and set them on fire. They even broke into the Narsingdi jail, freed all the prisoners, and looted hundreds of weapons from there. Even though there was no organized, centralized leadership behind these events, the entire ruling class was stunned by this spontaneous outburst of public outrage. They were rendered helpless in the face of mob power, albeit very temporarily.

This uprising temporarily immobilized the fascist regime in almost the entire country. This movement has demonstrated how brutally oppressive fascists can be. It was just a very rational, demand-oriented movement of the students. So it is easy to imagine how brutally they can deal with the struggle to overthrow the fascist regime.

The people's power has never been established in this nation's history through a mass movement or mass coup. Sometimes the government is forced to resign, and some of the demands of the people are forced to be accepted, but in the end, others of the ruling class take over, as happened in '69 or '90. The reason for this was that these movements were not equipped with a political program to capture state power by the people. The ruling class has weapons; they have various forces, which these political forces of the people did not have. That is why we from our proletarian party say with the utmost importance that the people must take up arms and build their own forces. This barbarous fascist power and their state apparatus must be defeated by violent means. It is not a crime to bear arms against the arms of the enemies of the people. Destroying the enemy's lair or killing the barbarous scoundrels among them is not something to be frowned upon. But it has to be planned and part of a political agenda. The people have every right to counter the barbaric terror of the ruling fascists with revolutionary terror.

The true freedom of the people lies in the growth of the people's war through rural-based guerilla warfare and the creation of a new democratic state composed of workers, peasants, and middle-class citizens. Mass movement and mass upheaval must be linked with rural-centric mass warfare. Only the urban-centric mass movement and mass upheaval, which will be built based on this people's war, will be able to establish people's power.

But it is a protracted struggle. Therefore, it is not possible to stop various types of mass movements, and neither will they stop. Besides, not only the workers and peasants but also the people of all levels of society and even the bourgeoisie are struggling against fascism. This is seen in this ongoing movement.
As a result, the mass movement that is currently underway needs to continue and be focused on the political goal of toppling fascism. The workers and peasants, especially the working class, must join the urban movement. Programs should be brought forward with the aim of building a real democratic society and state by eliminating fascism. All revolutionary, democratic, leftist, and progressive forces and political parties must unite in that cause today.

We call on the struggling students, the combatants on the front lines, to shake off the confusion of so-called “apolitical” gibberish. Awami fascism will not accept your 9-point demands yet. They have only taken a strategy to secure their throne by retreating a bit through quota reform. They will not spare the vanguard of the movement. They and their terror gang 'Chhatra League' are preparing weapons for revenge. You must also prepare your weapons. That weapon is the political agenda, the target of which now is to oust Hasina-Awami fascism. This is the way to fulfill the 9-point demands. To fulfill the dreams of martyrs. To fulfill your duty to the families of the martyrs.

- Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
- Establish a truly independent and democratic society free from imperialism, India, and foreign exploitation and control!
- Long live the agrarian revolution!
- Long live the People's War!

 

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