Smash the blockade of Cuba!
The Cuba solidarity organisation Cubanos En UK has launched a fundraising campaign to buy essential vaccine supplies to aid the Cuban vaccination programme. Sanctions and the brutal US blockade have made essential vaccine supplies hard to come by in Cuba. Cuba’s exemplary biopharmaceutical sector has stepped up and is carrying out final stage trials on two coronavirus vaccines, but the blockade has made it very difficult to secure the supplies needed to roll the jabs out. Things like vials, syringes and materials needed to carry out clinical trials are required.
The fundraiser was initially launched on fundraising website Crowdfunder UK and later moved to JustGiving before Cubanos En UK created its own website for the fundraiser. Crowdfunder UK stopped accepting donations for the campaign, we suspect due to the effect of the blockade on their payments provider, the US company Stripe. JustGiving confirmed that it closed the fundraising page due to Cuba being ‘one of the countries under sanctions [from the United States]’.
Rock Around The Blockade, the RCG’s campaign in solidarity with socialist Cuba, has made a contribution to this very important fundraising campaign and we encourage anyone who wants to show their solidarity and support for the Cuban revolution to do the same, or share the below URL to spread the word.
Use the link to donate and share: https://www.support-vaccination.org/
In a world dominated by imperialist powers, the Cuban Revolution has once again been given an opportunity to prove its resilience and capability to struggle in the face of economic and political attacks. Our support and solidarity are necessary, Cuba’s struggle against the virus is a struggle for humanity, as Cubanos En UK says: ‘We can help Cuba by contributing to this campaign. We can help the world by helping Cuba.’
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Birmingham’s children
Birmingham has some of the highest rates of child mortality in the country at a little over seven deaths in every 1,000 live births. This is even higher in underfunded, working-class and BAME wards like Bordesley or Handsworth which have been hit hardest by austerity. Over the pandemic there have been around 600 children living in temporary accommodation as part of Brum’s homeless families. Labour Council leader, Ian Ward, cries crocodile tears and blames ‘Tory austerity’. But he has proved himself a true ally to the ruling class. He has promised to cut £111m from the budget every year, sold off all 14 council-run nurseries to private companies and focused on developing luxury homes and business districts; the taxation of which will help sustain the Labour-run council. FRFI 280 put it well, ‘Socialism is the only answer’. Socialist Cuba has an infant mortality rate of just 3.9 per every 1,000 live births and as the revolutionary slogan billboards in Havana say, ‘200 million children in the world today sleep in the streets. None are Cuban.’
Joe Smith
BIRMINGHAM
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The Indian Kisaan-Majdoor
Partly by way of anglicisation from Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu, the Indian kisaan-majdoor (farmer-labourer) struggle is sometimes reported instead as being a farmers’ protest only. As discussed to great effect in the recent FRFI article, the majdoor, dalits and landless remain under-represented in the movement and are further disempowered and exploited in society more generally. Struggle for inclusion and a shared understanding of the threat of new agricultural bills and labour codes has nonetheless yielded a tense, imperfect, yet inspiring solidarity between these groups and the kisaan – landowning farmers of the small-hold majority to medium and large holders. It is important to recognise the limitations and contradictions of the movement whilst being careful not to minimise majdoor roles and pointing to the remarkable examples of caste and working-class solidarity. Taking direction from the slogan that has come to define the movement, and helped establish international attention, can be useful in this regard ‘kisaan-majdoor ekta zindabaad! – long live farmer-labourer unity!’
Saajan
BIRMINGHAM
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Free the Craigavon two
Originally convicted on 30 March 2012 in connection with the 2009 murder of Constable Stephen Carroll, John Paul Wotton and Brendan McConville are still in jail. Still proclaiming their innocence and still unsupported by many liberals who claim justice in the system is the cornerstone of democracy. Well, liberals you can keep your democracy. While John Paul and Brendan are wrongly imprisoned there is no justice and certainly, we are living with a democratic deficit.
Having heard all the appeal evidence, I was amazed the young men were convicted in the first place. Unreliable and uncorroborated witness testimony was challenged, I thought successfully, during the appeal process coupled with circumstantial forensics evidence which proved very little.
Twice this case has come before the court and twice justice has failed. John Paul and Brendan sit in prison serving the remainder of their 14-year and 25-year sentences. The British establishment is convicting its political opponents. The message is clear: get involved in political resistance to the state and you will be convicted on the slightest of evidence.
I call for the immediate release of these two innocent men and I condemn the state for their brutal unjust actions. Justice for the Craigavon Two, NOW!
Fra Hughes
IRELAND
Send letters of support and solidarity to Brendan and John:
Brendan McConville (Roe House, Roe 4) / John Wootton,
Maghaberry Prison,
17 Old Road,
BT28 2PT
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Support for Cuba and FRFI
Thank you so much for sending me a copy of your new Cuba pamphlet, I am really enjoying it. Clive and I had a wonderful holiday there years ago – the music, that’s what I remember more than anything. In Havana everybody seemed to be rehearsing music out of every doorway. In the last issue of the paper, Hannah Caller’s article ‘NHS buckling under the pandemic’ was such a very good article and Patrick Casey’s article ‘The Fumbling Temeraire’ was so witty!
Cilla Dunn
PORTUGAL
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Mafapo – campaign for justice
Jaime Castillo earned a living selling goods at Bogotá’s busy traffic signals. On 10 August 2008 he was seen entering a red car, following a promise of informal work. This was the last time anyone saw Jaime alive. Two months later, his sister Jaqueline would be on a 400-mile bus journey to the remote place where Jaime’s body was found, falsely registered by the Colombian army as an insurgent guerrilla fighter ‘killed in combat’.
Jaime is one of the more than 6,402 civilians murdered under the series of massacres colloquially known as the ‘false positives.’ This was a country-wide strategy of executions of non-belligerent civilians, selected from working class districts, lured away under false promises of jobs, murdered in cold blood, piled up in mass graves and then presented as ‘killed-in-combat’ between 2002-2009.
Jaqueline and a group of courageous women, relatives of the executed, formed the Mafapo (mothers of the false positives) organisation. They have led a 13-year battle against the state, seeking to bring to justice those responsible for organising the killing fields of Colombia. Their battle cry is ‘We must know who gave the order’. This fight has taken place in ordinary courts, peace tribunals, congress, street demonstrations – any arena is valid. They have faced army generals, presidents, and war ministers – they are not afraid.
They are currently pushing for a bill in Congress that would recognise 20 September as the annual day of commemoration of the victims of state-sponsored extrajudicial executions. In the words of Mafapo, ‘heart-broken women can become world-changing warriors’. To learn more and get involved contact us via [email protected] or https://twitter.com/MafapoT
Yonatan Mosquera
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Save the John Carroll centre!
FRFI supporters in Nottingham have joined the community campaign to Save John Carroll leisure centre and swimming pool. Local people are fighting back against the closure of this vital resource in Radford, an inner-city ward with high levels of poverty. John Carroll is one of the last public centres left in the area and is a lifeline for many, hosting groups for vulnerable and elderly people and providing sporting activities and programmes.
The Labour-run Nottingham City Council voted to close the centre in early March as part of £15.6m in cuts to public services. The support that Labour councillors Hassan Ahmed and Phil Jackson expressed for the campaign proved hollow, as neither showed up to the vote, both too cowardly to defy Labour Party discipline.
The campaign recently held a socially distanced morning of exercise outside the John Carroll centre; chalking the streets, giving speeches and lively chants, and starting up an outdoor Zumba dance class. This campaign is more than a fight for a single leisure centre; it is a fight for public health being a right for all. Weekly Zoom meetings happen on Thursdays at 7pm. More information at
www.savejohncarroll.co.uk
Beckett
NOTTINGHAM
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 281 April/May 2021
