Guinea:the world's top
exporter of Bauxite, the ore used to make aliminium.
update
March 6thwww.asiuhuru.org
Earlier
today, March 6, 2007, Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, Director of
the Africanist Movement a regional African
Internationalist organization based in Sierra Leone and
several neighboring "countries" was stopped
while driving in Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone. The
two police women who stopped the car carrying Chernoh
Alpha M. Bah and two other persons said they got a radio
message to stop the car for previously refusing a police
order to stop.
The men were detained for four hours by the police and
the car's driver had his license confiscated by the
police. The men were charged with defying police
officers and driving without paying
attention.
The police have told them that they must come to the
police station on March 7 at 10 am to answer
certain questions before their court hearing
at 2 pm.
The charges are completely false. They never disobeyed a
police order to stop as should be obvious by the fact
that they did stop for the police women when they were
asked to do so.
The attack on Chernoh Alpha M. Bah is directly tied to
his political activities in the region, especially in
Guinea-Conakry where the Africanist movement has played a
role in protesting the neocolonial regime presiding over
the growing emiseration of the people there.
The fact is that the demands of the Africanist movement
calling for economic, political and social justice in
Guinea-Conakry have made all the neocolonialist
governments in the region nervous because of the obvious
implications they have for all of the neo-colonial
regimes and their imperialists sponsors. This is
especially true for Sierra Leone that only recently
suffered a spontaneous teachers' strike.
We demand the immediate cessation of the harassment of
Chernoh Alpha M. Bah and the Africanist movement. We
demand that all charges be dropped and that the security
of Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, the men arrested with him, as
well as the entire membership of the Africanist movement
be guaranteed by the government.
We demand that the Africanist movement and the people of Sierra
Leone be allowed the rights of freedom of speech, press
and political association. Call in
and/or email to the Sierra Leonian embassy nearest you to
make these demands and defend the Africanist Movement and
its leaders. For those in
the U.S., the contact information for the Sierra Leonian
embassy in Washington D.C. is as follows: Phone
numbers:
(202)-939-9261 / (202)-939-9262 / (202)-939-9263
Extension 112 for the Ambassadors voice mail
Ambassador's email: he@embassyofsierraleone.org
Deputy ambassador: dcm@embassyofsierraleone.org
Head of chancery: hoc@embassyofsierraleone.org
This and
the following article communication comes from the office
of 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
to call and email the nearest Sierra
Leonian embassy immediately to protest
the arrest and political harassment of Chernoh Alpha M.
Bah and the leadership of the Africanist Movement. There
is no cutoff time when these calls and email messages
should stop. Please help us keep track of this
mobilization by emailing us at uhuruasi@aol.com to let us
know that you were able to call-in and/or email! 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
Touch One! Touch All!
ASI makes urgent call for support for
the struggle for
freedom in Guinea-Conakry!
http://www.TheBlackList.net
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."
Guinea's opposition leader jailed Sept.2000
The Guinean opposition leader, Alpha Conde, has
been sentenced to five years in prison after
being found guilty of sedition. The state
prosecutor had demanded that Mr Conde be
sentenced to life imprisonment on several charges
including endangering state security and
recruiting foreign mercenaries. Mr Conde, who leads
the Guinean People's Rally, denied the charges,
accusing those who testified against him as
"false witnesses" and maintaining that
all the charges had been fabricated. "I am
an intellectual, my fight is a fight of ideas. My
weapons are my pen and my speech," Mr Conde
said before the verdict. He was arrested after the
presidential election in 1998, in which President
Lansana Conte came to power amid allegations of
vote-rigging.
Seven of the
47 people accused with Mr Conde were given prison
sentences ranging from 18 months to three years.
The others were released or acquitted. The
opposition leader initially had a team of
international defence lawyers, but they withdrew
after the judge rejected their calls for the case
to be thrown out on the grounds that it violated
Mr Conde's parliamentary immunity. The last of
the seven defence lawyers, Paul Yomba Kourouma,
told the Conakry court that several of the
detainees had been tortured following their
arrests. He also questioned the reliability of
witnesses for the prosecution.
Mr Conde was
formerly professor of politics at the Sorbonne
University in Paris.
His trial has
been interpreted as an important test for
democracy in Guinea - a country which has been
under military rule for most of the time since
independence from France over 40 years ago.
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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 introops 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!
photos:www.sergiohanquet.com/viajes/guine08.htm
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