Showing 1198 results

-3- In this 150th anniversary year of the Irish Famine - or as we might say the Irish Holocaust - those responsible for such policies cannot be allowed to plead ignorance. Six times as many grain ships left Ireland during the famine as delivered food. This terrible man-made tragedy - as the Irish say, God sent the potato blight, but the English sent the famine - has left a lasting impression on Liverpool, the city I have the honour to represent in the British parliament. Speaking of the emigrants who sought to find their redemption in North America, the maritime historian Dave Hollet says, in his recently-published book, 'Passage to the New World': "Sadly though, many were to die in Liverpool from cholera, typhus or starvation before they could embark. Destitute, thousands more remained in the port, unable to continue, where their descendants live to this day." The timelessness of this tragedy, this crime, and the lessons it offers, is reflected in the fact that Oxfam has chosen to screen the recent four-part BBC television historical drama - made in conjunction with the Irish broadcasting authority RTE, starring four Liverpool-Irish brothers from the McGann family and set in Donegal 150 years ago - 'The Hanging Gale' at their forthcoming international conference on world hunger. In a motion I tabled in the House of Commons, I called on the British government to officially commemorate the anniversary of the famine. 140 parliamentary colleagues supported me, mostly from my own Labour Party, but also from the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats, Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and even one Ulster Unionist. As was perhaps to be expected, the Tory government was unmoved, with a minister writing to me stating that "a local commemoration would seem more appropriate than one made by central government." With this attitude, it is little wonder that the British government can be so indifferent to the suffering of the children of Iraq, who are denied food and medicine by a crippling embargo. It is little wonder that they can so stoutly defend a system under which, according to recent Unicef figures, more than half a million children die every year as a result of the pressure on poor countries to repay interest on loans to western banks and financial institutions, such as the IMF. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), almost a third of the world's children suffer from hunger and half of humanity is denied access to decent medical care.

-4- Speaking at a recent famine commemoration in Ireland's County Mayo, the award-winning actor and film-maker Gabriel Byrne, drew out this connection, stating: "People think the Irish famine has no relevance to our lives today and that the famines in Ethiopia or Rwanda or elsewhere are isolated events. The truth is that the same condition designed to enrich a very few and deprive the majority of their rightful wealth, and not just their right to their land, but to their identity and culture - this is happening all over the world today. The famine was a symptom of social and economic policies that continue." The third issue that I want to touch on is the need to democratise international relations. At the end of the last century, a handful of powers dominated the whole globe. In 1894 they met in Berlin and carved up the African continent as though it were slices of a cake. Throughout this century, the peoples of the world have struggled to win back their independence. The 1917 revolution in Russia saw one great power voluntarily relinquish all claims of a right to dominate other peoples and throw its weight behind colonial liberation. The victory over fascism, and the founding principles of the United Nations, in 1945, saw important elements of democracy recognised in the canons of international law. From this, we saw the great waves of decolonisation, the collapse of the old empires and the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement, founded by such giants as Nasser, Nehru, Nkrumah and Tito, which grew to have more than 100 member states. It is these achievements that the United States and Britain, above all, have sought to roll back in the guise of a 'New World Order', which India's late former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi - one of many Third World leaders to be murdered in suspicious circumstances - aptly dubbed, "a world according to the order of Mr George Bush." Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the carnage of the Gulf War, the United Nations has strayed far from its original objectives. The authority of the General Assembly has been usurped by the Security Council and the Security Council is dominated and manipulated by the United States. The results are there for all to see. More than four years since Iraqi forces quit Kuwait, the blockade of Iraq continues, despite it having already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. The same scenario has been applied against Libya and other countries, whereby, according to a carefully rehearsed script, biased resolutions are passed and pre-ordained

-5- punishments are enforced in case a country and its leader refuses to bend the knee. What greater hypocrisy can there be than the treatment of Iraq and Libya when Israel continues to defy more than 40 Security Council resolutions - some of them with a history of decades - with impunity. Indeed, not even the most servile Arab regime could fail to be shocked by the US exercise of the first Security Council veto of the Clinton Administration in order to shield fresh Israeli land grabs in Jerusalem. Whilst the United States can manipulate the Security Council to function as an instrument of global dictatorship, the General Assembly, where every member state has an equal voice and a single vote, is bypassed, slighted and ignored. For the last four years, the General Assembly has voted by an overwhelming majority to condemn the US blockade of Cuba. In the last such vote - in November 1994 - only Israel was prepared to vote with the US. But the United States is not only ignoring the voice of the international community - the Republican-dominated Congress is preparing new laws that, in a clear violation of international law, would extend the blockade to foreign ships, US subsidiaries in third countries, foreign companies and trading organisations and sovereign states. These proposals are so outrageous that even the British government has protested! Another clear instance of double standards concerns the recent 25- year review and indefinite extension of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) points out, this indefinite and unconditional renewal makes the prospect of a nuclear-free world less rather than more likely. It entrenches an arbitrary nuclear monopoly on the part of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Like the United Nations itself, the NPT's original aims have been twisted, distorted and forgotten. The original idea for the NPT came from a former Irish Foreign Minister, the late Frank Aiken, whose goal was to completely rid the world of nuclear weapons. At the recent NPT review conference, today's Irish Foreign Minister, the leader of the Irish Labour Party, Dick Spring, told the world that the only acceptable level of nuclear weapons in the world is zero. But the big nuclear powers have no intention of scrapping their arsenals or giving up the terrible danger that they pose. They even interpret their arbitrary monopoly in a unilateral and partisan way. Countries such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Iran, which are developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, are accused of trying to develop nuclear weapons, and every kind of pressure is brought to bear on

-6- them, but not a word is said about Israel's estimated arsenal of some 200 nuclear warheads. The so-called "north Korean nuclear issue" is a particularly outrageous piece of hypocrisy. Since the 1950s, the DPRK has exerted every effort to turn the Korean peninsula into a nuclear-free, peace zone. Throughout this time, the country has constantly faced nuclear threat and blackmail from the United States, which maintains some 4,000 nuclear weapons, as well as more than 40,000 troops in south Korea. Japan, which occupied Korea as its colony, is just a turn-key away from its own nuclear capability. Its nuclear fuel is enriched into deadly plutonium at Sellafield, posing a deadly threat to my own constituents, as well as millions of other people. I firmly believe that the three aspects of human rights and their violation on the world scale that I have outlined demonstrate the need to develop a new culture of human rights at the dawn of the 21st century. As genuine human rights cannot be achieved in a situation where one country dominates another, the international human rights movement needs to work towards the goal of global independence.

Speech by Keith Bennett, Chair, Korea Friendship and Solidarity Campaign (KFSC), to the ‘New Worker’ public meeting, ‘Defend Cuba!; Defend Democratic Korea!’, London, Thursday March 4 1999 Dear Friends and Comrades First of all, I would like to express my thanks to the organisers of tonight's meeting, the ‘New Worker’ newspaper for having invited me to join their platform to ‘Defend Cuba! Defend Democratic Korea!’. Since its establishment in November 1997, the Korea Friendship and Solidarity Campaign, of which I am currently the Chair, has enjoyed the close and active support and participation of the ‘New Worker’ newspaper and the New Communist Party. Indeed, the party, alongside others, was instrumental in the setting up of our campaign, and has consistently backed and supported all our initiatives and activities. I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the NCP comrades for their invariable support, and for the constructive and non-sectarian way in which they approach the often difficult work of gaining a hearing for Korea in this country's labour and progressive movement. The NCP has inscribed the cause of friendship with the socialist countries on its banner from the very day of its foundation. And unlike many other parties in this and other countries, it has not retreated from that point of principle, that cornerstone of proletarian internationalism. I would like, too, to say a word in tribute to and appreciation of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. To a great extent, I think it is an example of what a broad-based, flexible and imaginative progressive campaign should be. And of what it is possible to achieve even in political conditions that are generally held to be pretty bleak. Of course, the concrete circumstances, conditions and possibilities for Korea solidarity work in this country are very different, and far more complex, than those for Cuba. Nevertheless, in all modesty, I think that we can look at the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, and its magazine, ‘Cuba Si’, as an example of how we should approach our own work. Comrades As the leaders of the two countries themselves have often remarked, Korea and Cuba are geographically far apart from one another, separated by continents and oceans. But it is very appropriate that they be linked together in tonight's meeting. Cuba and Korea are both socialist countries. Indeed, they have both often referred to themselves as respectively defending the eastern and western outposts of the socialist camp. That socialist camp may have temporarily contracted in size over the last decade or so, but this unfortunate fact can but serve to highlight the importance of these two countries’ mutual friendship and solidarity, as well as reinforce our own responsibility and duty to defend and support them in all possible ways. Although relatively small in size and population, both Cuba and Democratic Korea are considered as thorns in the side of imperialism because of the active, militant and tenacious way in which they have upheld, and continue to uphold, the red flag of socialism, alongside the banner of independent anti-imperialism. In 1953, the Korean people forced the US imperialists to sign the Armistice, ending the Korean War. Although millions had been killed, with Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, and all other towns and cities raised to the ground, US General Clark was forced to admit that he had

the unenviable distinction of being the first US military commander to sign an Armistice where the United States was not the victor. The victory of the heroic Korean people in the war, at the time when the United States was at the height of its power, encouraged anti-imperialist struggle throughout what soon came to be known as the 'Third World'. By the end of the decade, the Cuban revolutionaries had established the first bridgehead of socialism in the western hemisphere. And the particularly deep Cuban-Korean friendship may be said to date from this point. Although itself still emerging from the ruins of war, Korea rendered every possible support to the Cuban people. It was at this time that Che Guevara visited Korea and expressed the view that Korea of Kim Il Sung was the country in the world that he most admired. This conviction of Che's is noted in the writings of such reputable scholars as I.F. Stone and Bruce Cummings, and in at least one of the major biographies of Che published to mark the 30th anniversary in 1997 of his death in combat. From this time on, Korea and Cuba not only supported and assisted each other in their socialist construction, they also joined hands to support the peoples' revolutionary struggle around the world, from Central America to Southern Africa, something that acquired organisational form with the Havana 'Tricontinental' Conference and the founding of OSPAAL, the Organisation for Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Communist Party of Cuba and the Workers' Party of Korea have also closely cooperated in the ranks of the international communist movement, combining firm opposition to revisionism with a striving for the broadest possible unity, putting to one side divisions and disputes of a previous period which may no longer be relevant in changed circumstances. The strength and importance of this collaboration has been reinforced following the counter- revolutions in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, following which both parties took a number of timely initiatives, of which I shall mention just two: The publication and adoption of the Pyongyang Declaration, 'Let us Defend and Advance the Cause of Socialism', during the April 1992 celebrations of the 80th birthday of the late President Kim Il Sung; and The Havana Conference, 'Socialism in the 21st Century', in November 1997, marking the 30th anniversary year of the death in combat of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. The last two World Festivals of Youth and Students, both held in conditions of acute political difficulties and formidable logistical obstacles, were held in Pyongyang and then Havana. Indeed, it can be said that Korea and Cuba are the two countries that have positively contributed to the global anti-imperialist and communist movements on a scale wholly disproportionate to their size, population or comprehensive national strength. In this context, it is worth noting that Cuba, even in the midst of its 'special period', triggered by the collapse of the socialist market and the intensified US blockade, and faced with its own natural disasters of drought and hurricanes, has recently sent substantial quantities of both sugar and medicines and pharmaceutical products to help their Korean brothers and sisters through their present economic difficulties. Thus, within US imperialism's overall scheme of the 'New World Order', alongside its constant hostility to all socialist countries, and to other states, such as Libya, Iraq and Yugoslavia, which refuse to bend the knee and submissively play the role assigned to them, a special, inveterate, visceral and hysterical, bordering on the irrational, hostility is reserved for the revolutionary socialist states of Korea and Cuba. This is the context in which the US ruling circles formulate and execute all their strategies with regard to both countries, even when, in appearance, they take the form of appeasement, enticement or even 'assistance'.

In the case of Korea, US imperialism has never been reconciled to its defeat in 1953. We hear much about the effects of sanctions on Iraq through the last decade. And rightly so. But in the case of Korea, sanctions imposed at the start of war in 1950 have never been lifted. In fact, up to today, they have been progressively tightened under one pretext or another. Korean assets in the United States, frozen in 1950, remain frozen to this day. And, as with Cuba, and, indeed, with Libya and Iran, as well, the US tries by every means to inveigle third countries into following its own policy of sanctions and blockades against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The present economic difficulties being faced by People's Korea, specifically and especially the acute food shortages, and the related and equally acute shortages of foreign exchange, fuel and fertilisers, have, of course, been brought to a head by an unprecedented series of natural disasters and freak weather conditions, and they have also been exacerbated by the collapse in trading relations with erstwhile socialist allies. But they cannot be understood separate from these long and continuing years of relentless economic pressure, a preferred method of warfare that the United States has increasingly refined into genocidal forms and proportions. Despite the clear and overwhelming desire of the vast majority of the Korean people, in the north, south and overseas, for the reunification of their divided country, irrespective of differences in politics, ideology or religious belief, the United States has maintained the partition of the ancient Korean nation for around half-a-century, through its military occupation of south Korea, with some 40,000 troops, equipped with all types of weaponry, including nuclear arms. These US troops not only threaten the north, but also suppress the democratic and patriotic forces of south Korea, while posing a danger to socialist countries, national liberation movements, and progressive forces throughout the region. Were it not for the presence of US troops in the south of Korea, the Korean people would have achieved their national reunification long ago. If US troops were to quit now, I believe that reunification would come within months, if not weeks, rather than years. At the close of the 20th century, the division of Korea, ranks with the partition of Ireland and Cyprus, and the denial of the national rights of the peoples of Palestine, Kurdistan, Western Sahara, and East Timor as one of the great scandals of international politics. The US military not only maintains its military occupation of the south. From 1953 onwards, it has been engaged in constant military provocations against the north. This has involved the intrusion of spy ships, most memorably the case of the USS Pueblo, which was captured, along with its crew, by sailors of the Korean People's Army in the 1960s; incidents at the Demilitarised Zone in Panmunjon, most memorably the so-called 'axe incident' in the 1970s; and air intrusions involving flights by spy planes. According to a Korean Central News Agency report this week, the US flew 160 spy flights across Democratic Korea during last month alone. Every year, the US occupation forces, together with their south Korean subordinates and sometimes other forces, including, at times, British observers, stage some of the largest military exercises in the world on Korean soil. Both 'Operation Team Spirit' and 'Operation Foal Eagle' are avowed dress rehearsals for an invasion of the north, and at the very least poison the atmosphere for dialogue and reconciliation. Above all, the US forces play the main role in keeping the Korean people divided. It was under their aegis that the notorious 'concrete wall' was built, completely bisecting the Korean peninsula, and preventing the reunion of literally millions of Korean families. These physical barriers are complemented by repressive laws, such as the misnamed 'National Security Law', which defines the whole population of the north of Korea as an "anti-state organisation", forbids any contact between people of the north and south, bans people from

listening to radio broadcasts from the north, criminalises the ideology of communism in the fashion of nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa, and has generally turned the south of Korea into a veritable graveyard of human rights. Just last week, the south Korean authorities were finally compelled to release Woo Yong Gak, considered by Amnesty International as the world's longest serving political prisoner. Woo served 41 years in prison, nearly all of this in solitary confinement. He was repeatedly abused, humiliated and tortured, and denied medical attention. His release was deferred again and again because he refused to sign a statement renouncing his faith and belief in communism, a prisoner of conscience, in terms of Amnesty's definition, par excellence. Now, old and frail, as a result of his ordeal, Woo remains subject to restrictions, and without any family members in the south to care for him. We must demand that the south Korean authorities allow Woo Yong Gak and his fellow comrades to return to their homes in the north, where their families and the entire society are waiting for them. The personal tragedy of Woo Yong Gak is in microcosm the tragedy of the entire Korean people. And it is the United States that is primarily responsible for all the present sufferings of the Korean people. In the last five years or so, the United States, while not in any way backing down from or reducing the scale of its overt threat to Democratic Korea, has also tried the ‘carrot and stick' tactics of appeasement in an attempt to infiltrate the virus of 'peaceful evolution' into the north so as to undermine and destroy Korean socialism from within. For decades, the US had rejected all calls for dialogue with the north, changing tack only when the north began to develop its nuclear power industry, with a view to solving the problem of fuel supply and expediting the development of its national economy. When Korea stood firm against the ensuing threats of military attack, former President Jimmy Carter was sent to Pyongyang in order to explore a diplomatic solution. The situation was further complicated by the sudden death of President Kim Il Sung shortly afterwards. Seeing as how President Kim Il Sung had led Democratic Korea from the time of its establishment, and considering his towering stature in every field of Korean life, the United States was keen to explore for any sign of vacillation or confusion, and to exacerbate any problem or contradiction they could find. Unfortunately for them, although deeply shocked and profoundly grieved by Comrade Kim Il Sung's death, the Korean party and people had long prepared for this eventuality, and, as before, the US could find no opening. Thus, a few months after President Kim Il Sung's death, in October 1994, the United States signed the Framework Accord with the DPRK in Geneva. Under the terms of this Accord, the DPRK agreed to freeze its two heavy water nuclear reactors, in exchange for which the US undertook the responsibility of providing the DPRK with two light water reactors, through the establishment of an international body, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO). In the meantime, pending the construction of the new reactors, the US was to provide sufficient heavy oil to the DPRK to meet the resultant and temporary shortfall in its immediate and basic energy needs. Beyond this, the two countries were to take steps to at last normalise their relationship, starting with the establishment of Interests Sections in their respective capitals. In a letter to Korean leader Kim Jong Il, US President Bill Clinton further gave a personal undertaking to work towards the lifting of US economic sanctions on Democratic Korea. What has been the situation following the signing of the Framework Agreement? In a word, it is one where the DPRK has faithfully kept its side of the bargain, only to be met with bad faith, provocations and delay.

Interest Sections have yet to be established in Pyongyang and Washington DC, and there is no clear indication of when this might happen. Far from US sanctions against the DPRK being lifted, or even eased, they have actually been tightened, using, for example, the DPRK's scientific, technical and military cooperation with other Third World countries as a pretext. The promised fuel deliveries have been repeatedly put off and have arrived in a trickle falling far short of the agreed amounts. It should be stressed that these fuel deliveries are not some sort of US favour to the DPRK, but a solemn obligation in international law, freely shouldered by the United States as a price worth paying for north Korea to abandon its independent nuclear energy programme. As for the two light water reactors, the due time for their completion is drawing near, but, while a ground breaking ceremony was eventually held, the foundations for the reactors have not even been completed, and the whole project is running way behind schedule. The United States, rather than address its failure to meet its obligations, which is also related to its domestic political circumstances and to the neo-fascist and Christian fundamentalist intrigues against the Clinton administration fronted by the Republican right in the Congress and Senate, keeps looking for pretexts, whether they be the DPRK's development or export of missile technology, its launch of a satellite, or its construction of an underground tunnel at Kumchangri, to excuse its delays or even to wriggle out from under its obligations and revert to a policy of outright military confrontation. • Similarly, although, following the DPRK and China's acceptance of the proposal advanced by the United States and south Korea, four-party talks have been held periodically in Geneva since 1997, the US has consistently moved to block serious discussion of the crux of the Korean issue, namely the occupation of the south by US troops, while seeking to bog the talks down with a constant series of irrelevant anti-north Korean distractions. In this situation, the relevant authorities in the DPRK have pointed to the huge energy losses they have sustained through the combination of the mothballing of their existing nuclear reactors and the US' reneging on their promised fuel supplies, with catastrophic consequences for both industrial and agricultural production, and thereby bearing directly on the acute food shortages. • For its part, the Korean People's Army has pointed out that it has always doubted the intentions of the US side, and therefore the efficacy of dialogue, and that, if the US side does not meet its commitments, then the DPRK is under no obligation to meet its either. Recent developments in the DPRK's satellite and missile technology make it clear that north Korea now has the capacity to inflict serious damage on US interests, not only in south Korea or Japan, or even Guam, but actually on US territory itself, in Alaska, Hawaii, and possibly even California. But it should be stressed that these military capabilities of the DPRK arise from the self-defensive needs of a country that has lived under the threat of atomic annihilation from the day of its establishment more than 50 years ago, and they are still dwarfed by the magnitude of the very real threat it faces. Faced with the Korean people's refusal to go along with the US' deceptive tactics of 'peaceful evolution', their insistence on keeping their sovereignty and unique form of socialism and way of life, even under the most difficult conditions, the United States is once again intensifying its preparations for a new aggressive war in Korea. To those comrades and friends who might say that a new Korean War is unthinkable, I would simply ask: Was not the Vietnam War 'unthinkable'? Was not the Gulf War 'unthinkable'? In recent months, the Pentagon has outlined a blueprint for a new Korean War. According to an article by Richard Halloran in the December 3 1998 issue of the 'Far Eastern Economic Review', their new military doctrine calls for a "US invasion of north Korea, the destruction of the Korean People's Army and the north Korean government in Pyongyang". US troops

would occupy north Korea and "Washington and Seoul will then abolish north Korea as a state and 'reorganise' it under south Korean control". Earlier, in a November 23rd piece in the 'Seattle Times', the same journalist quoted an unnamed Clinton administration official as saying: "When we're done, they will not be able to mount any military activity of any kind. We will kill them all." The authorities in the DPRK have made clear that they take this new threat seriously, but they are not intimidated by it. Whilst the Korean people do not want war, but love peace, they are taking all necessary steps to meet the heightened threat of war, based on their convictions and strategic calculations that, if war is imposed upon them, they will not only survive, but emerge victorious. In its statement of December 2nd last year, the General Staff of the Korean People's Army commented on the Pentagon's 'Operation Plan 5027' and analysed its five stages. According to the KPA statement: "The first stage is a 'control' stage. Under the pretext of 'controlling' the actions of the DPRK, the US is to amass its aggression forces in and around Korea and impose full-scale sanctions upon the DPRK by blocking its sky, seas and border." This, the KPA notes, is already largely the case. In the next stage, the US would launch long-range artillery and air strikes, using B-1 and B-52 bombers, against the DPRK, and including the widespread use of cruise guided missiles, many of which are already placed aboard US submarines that patrol constantly off the north Korean coastline. Indeed, the KPA notes that the US has been stealthily deploying naval and air forces around the area. The third stage would be a 'comprehensive ground offensive operation', in which the US would land troops and marines on both coasts of the DPRK, along with airplane and helicopter borne paratroops and special commandos, aiming to cut the country in two, and encircle the capital, Pyongyang. "The entire resources of the US Marine Corps would flow here", a US official said, referring to the Marine division on the Japanese island of Okinawa, another in California, and the third in North Carolina. Next would be an expansion of the occupation to the whole of north Korea. The final stage would be to forcibly dismantle all the institutions of the DPRK, placing the country under the control of south Korea, and restoring the capitalist system. This, incidentally, would not only render the whole of Korea a US puppet, but also bring US ground forces right to the land border of the People's Republic of China. According to the KPA: "The plan has three elements to provoke all out war; the first to mount a strike at the DPRK while imposing sanctions over the nuclear issue and so-called human rights problems; the second a 'surgical strike' at suspected nuclear facilities in the DPRK; and the third a pre-emptive strike at the DPRK under the pretext of provocation while cynically provoking the north." In tandem with the war preparations on the ground, the US is also ratcheting up its propaganda offensive. In testimony before the US Senate Armed Service Committee on February 2nd, George Tenet, the Director of the CIA, claimed that the DPRK, and specifically its development of missile technology, was now the greatest threat to the national security interests of the United States. The US has also attempted to use the underground tunnel constructed by the Koreans in the Kumchangri area as another pretext to cancel the 1994 agreement and for military aggression.