PARTISAN!

Pauline Slaughter, Melbourne

On March 10th, this year, Comrade Eshan Ali faced yet another instance of brutal repression from the Pakistani state. For simply discussing a peaceful protest, he was thrown into jail on trumped-up charges of terrorism. Even if these accusations were true (which they are obviously not), it would be the duty of all communists to oppose his arrest, as we oppose all state repression of fellow comrades. Make no mistake, this arrest was an attempt to kill Comrade Eshan. Senior officers in the Pakistani police evidently hoped that the vile conditions of the prison would finish him off well before an official executioner would need to.

Despite their best efforts, Comrade Eshan walks free. However, he is almost certainly under tight state surveillance. His fellow comrades in the Awami Action Committee Gilgit-Baltistan (AAC-GB) have had to go into hiding, lest they risk arrest themselves. Despite this, Comrade Ehsan’s release is worth celebrating. The imprisonment and attempted murder of any comrade is an attack on the entire movement, and Comrade Eshan’s freedom is a freedom won by all communists.

The major ‘communist’ groups have remained completely silent in response to the attack on Eshan Ali and the AAC-GB. The Revolutionary Communist International (RCI), of which Comrade Eshan is a member, has rightly organised against his arrest. Likewise, Communist Unity, the International Communist League (ICL) and the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) have rallied to his defence. Chances are, in the time it took you to read this letter, a communist, labour militant or fellow revolutionary has met a brutal instance of state repression somewhere in the world. Yet Comrade Eshan’s arrest managed to rise above the noise and galvanise support from around the world. Amnesty International, Genocide Watch and three UK Labour MPs have vocally opposed his imprisonment. By comparison, the silence from the bulk of the communist left is deafening.

We must ask ourselves this question: why was the vast majority of the socialist movement totally silent? We shouldn’t ask this question simply for Comrade Ehsan’s sake, but for the sake of the next revolutionary thrown behind bars. We’ve seen outright repression against Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters party in South Africa, against Anasse Kazib and the Revolution Permanente in France, even against members of an anarchist reading group in the United States, who are themselves facing trumped-up terrorism charges simply for organising a peaceful demonstration.

The sectarian mode of organising often results in sincere comrades viewing one another as enemies; we compete for recruits, newspaper sales and resources. Our efforts mutually undermine each other; we chant ‘works of the world unite’, yet we are so painfully divided that the words ring hollow. If we are seriously committed to building a society beyond capitalism and beyond state oppression, we require the kind of solidarity that only a mass communist party organised across the entire planet can provide.