By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
29 December 2008
Through: Rubina Jamil, Chairperson; and Gulzar Ahmed Chaudhary, Secretary General
Email: [email protected]; or [email protected]
Dear Comrades and Friends,
The International Coordinating Committee and all organizations of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) convey to the leadership and all trade unions of the All Pakistan Trade Union Federation (APTUF) warmest greetings of revolutionary solidarity on the occasion of its National Congress in Lahore on December 30, 2008.
We hold the highest regard for the APTUF as the national trade union center in Pakistan. We commend and congratulate you for all your efforts and achievements in arousing, organizing and mobilizing the working class as well as other exploited people to fight for their national and democratic rights and for better working and living conditions.
We admire the special attention that you have given to the struggle for abolishing bonded and child labor and eradicating all forms of discrimination against women and the working people. We applaud your efforts to form strong and effective women and youth formations in order to augment the strength of the trade union movement.
It is through their own struggle that the oppressed and exploited people can hope to uplift and empower themselves and attain national and social liberation. We are confident that the APTUF can motivate the working class to coordinate with the rest of the people in fighting for national independence, democracy, social justice, development and peace.
You hold your National Congress at a time when the crisis of the world capitalist system is at its worst since the Great Depression and is expected to further worsen rapidly in many years. The reactionary government is bound to impose on the people policies and conditions that are far worse than those that have already generated high inflation and unemployment and curtailed trade union and other democratic rights.
In coordination with other NATO forces under its command, US imperialism is deploying more military forces to escalate its aggression against the peoples of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has overloaded Pakistan with onerous loans and military grants in order to feed bureaucratic corruption and militarization. It is engaged in large scale plunder and war under the pretext of fighting terrorism which it had engineered since the beginning.
We hope that the people of Pakistan will intensify their struggle to defend their national sovereignty and territorial integrity against US imperialism. The APTUF can play a significant role in developing the anti-imperialist and democratic movement in Pakistan and in putting a stop to the US scheme of neocolonialism and to the expanding US war of aggression in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
We wish the APTUF, especially the delegations to the National Congress, the utmost success in summing up the situation and arriving at the plan and strategy for overcoming the problems. Your resolute and militant struggles for national and social liberation will always get the abundant revolutionary support of the international working class movement and all the peoples of the world.###