It is a timely necessity to launch a new web called Asian Commune which will bring together workers and other oppressed people in Asian countries. Not only in Asia, but all over the world, working people who are battered by neo-liberal policies are engaged in various struggles against those policies in various ways. In those struggles, they get different experiences. The people who are engaging in such struggles are facing the same kind of repression, in capitalist countries in one way and in the third world countries in another way. Of these, the repression faced by the people in Third World countries is horrendous.
In Sri Lanka, too, the space provided for democratic struggles is being systematically abolishing. Today, the government has lost control of the country. Control of the production of goods, pricing of commodities and wages of the labour are in the hands of companies. The national resource of the country are selling at the behest of the brokers of those companies. Opponents are locked up in prisons. Free education and health care, which have not been sold due to public protests, are being sold to the private sector. Only the army and police are under government control. It is also for the benefit of the company owners to suppress the people who oppose their actions.
This situation is common in many poor countries. The struggling people are demanding an alternative solution to the situation. Opinions which suggests reforms to the capitalist system without overthrowing it are very popular. But the Covid 19 epidemic has dispelled all these myths. It has been proved that the issues of masses cannot be solved by such reforms to the bourgeoisie system. Today there is room for an alternative left. Now it is time to launch a strategy to seize power to the hands of the oppressed. Indian farmers have set a good example for us. People in other countries have different kinds of experiences. What is needed today is a medium to share these experiences and gather the experiences of those struggles. Today there is a need for a political movement which liberate working people from the bourgeoise political parties. It is our hope that the “Asian Commune” will meet that need.
Wijepala Weerakoon
Treasurer
Commercial and Industrial Workers Union
