Manik Mukherjee

Brothers, Sisters, Friends:

I have come here to express the solidarity of the Indian people with the people of Sudan in their struggles against imperialist domination. Indian and Sudan suffered long under the yoke of the British rule, and both had to bear the agony of fratricidal bloodshed instigated by the imperialist rulers. We share your pain and are partners in your anti-imperialist struggle. Today the imperialist powers headed by the USA are waging murderous wars against the people of the world. After bringing devastation to Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, they are now turning their attention to other countries like Sudan, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon etc. Sudan is a country rich in natural resources, like oil, natural gas, uranium, copper etc., which are coveted by the imperialist powers. Sudan has therefore become a victim of the age-old intrigues and conspiracies of imperialists.

Sudan is a country with great ethnic diversity, but for centuries the various ethnic groups had intermarried and shared common cultural and religious traits. The British rulers followed their customary divide and rule policy to perpetuate their colonial rule and to keep the country extremely poor, underdeveloped and weak. They fomented mistrust and division among the different ethnic groups. Because of their conspiracy and instigation, when they finally forced to leave in 1956, the country plunged into a protracted war. The imperialist powers, principally Britain, France and the USA, kept fanning and keeping alive this internal conflict by playing and playing off one group against the other.

The surge of anti-colonial movements in the post Second World War period freed from foreign rule one country after another throughout the world, and in Africa also, national governments were established in these countries. But the imperialist powers loathed to let all these large natural resources of the African countries go out of their control. So wherever a national government showed any proclivity towards independence and chose their own course of development, or if the peoples movements showed any leaning and taking an anti-capitalist stand, the imperialists pounced on these countries with their armed forces. They launched destabilization campaigns, counter-insurgency operations, military interventions, and even military occupation in order to bring about a regime change. The world witnessed this in the Congo, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Somalia and in a host of other countries. US is in the forefront of these attacks and its control of the IMF, World Bank, USAID is meant to strangle all the African countries and to keep them forever under the imperialist domination. Besides, the rivalry between the imperialist powers added to the tensions and conflicts in Africa.

Imperialism wrongly portrays in their propaganda the civil conflict in Darfur as a racial one, between the Arabs and the African Blacks. But all parties involved in this conflict – whether they are referred to as "Arab" or as "African". All our Muslim and all are local. A prolonged drought, famine and poverty plunged the people of Darfur in dire straits, and there was simmering discontent on the sharing of the scarcity of their scanty resources. The imperialists fanned this up so that the resulting unrest and fighting would destabilize the Government, which is "unfriendly"
to the Imperialist counties – thus facilitating their entry into Sudan. The Western powers supported and financed the rebel groups fighting the elected government. After instigating this conflict, the West is crying crocodile tears about the genocide in Darfur.

Sudanese people do not need to be taught by the imperialists how to protect human rights. Let a call go for President Bush and his cohorts be indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by waging war against Iraq and Afghanistan and for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

History has shown us over and over again that the so-called Western "peace-keeping" forces that are sent for "humanitarian" reasons are in reality deployed to further the imperialist interests, and not for peace and reconciliation. We should all take a lesson from what happened in Korea, in Congo, in Rwanda and in Yugoslavia.