[R-G] Ramsey Clark on Nandigram

[viren]

> Ramsey Clark: On the Significance of Nandigram
>
> Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General, anti-imperialist campaigner
> and President of the US-based International Action Center, was in
> Kolkata to attend the Anti-Imperialist International Conference and
> rally organised by the All India Anti-Imperialist Forum from 27th to
> 29th November. On 29th November, he visited Nandigram for a first-hand
> experience of the situation there. Returning to the closing session of
> the Conference, he made the following brief speech on the significance
> of Nandigram:
>
>
> I had an extremely moving and enlightening experience at Nandigram
> today. What happened in Nandigram reveals most aspects of the crisis
> facing all people in the planet today, something that is not quite
> understood by merely reading about it. People who have lived on the
> lands of their ancestors going back 1500 years, a beautiful people,
> attacked by their own Government, killed, injured, their homes burnt-
> 119 homes in one part of Nandigram, we saw the homes and talked to the
> survivors, their property taken or destroyed, many still missing. I
> saw a boy hit by a bullet in the front forehead, I could also see the
> exit wound. He was able to stand up, but was unable to talk. The death
> toll is far greater than what we are told. In one small area that we
> visited, people were sure of a hundred.
>
> Why? Why is the Government doing this to its people? It is doing it so
> that powerful foreign interests can come on to the lands of the Indian
> people to exploit not only people of India, but people of the whole
> world. In the SEZ they are planning, you will find chemical companies,
> perhaps Dow Chemicals again. Can you imagine Dow Chemicals returning
> to India after Bhopal? That's exactly what's being planned, to pollute
> life, to exploit resources. One plan is to manufacture munitions
> there. To kill Iraqis, perhaps? What nations will be assaulted with
> these munitions?
>
> We have to be united if we hope to stop the march of imperialism. The
> concentration of power that comes from imperialism becomes so
> dramatically clear in Nandigram. People utterly impoverished have lost
> all they had, their loved ones, their homes, so that wealth can come
> in, poison the environment there, exploit the rest of the country,
> concentrating wealth in fewer hands, while the masses get poorer and
> poorer.
>
> How incredibly courageous the movement has been! As of this moment,
> they have successfully defied enormous power, at tragic cost to
> themselves. They say they can't make it without our help. We can't
> make it without the help of each other and without reaching out to
> more and more people. During our civil rights movement in the US, the
> oppressed African-Americans said, `Power to the people'. They had it
> wrong. Power is in the people. The people must have the will and the
> intelligence to exercise that power. Who can defy the people? In the
> winter of 1978, I was in Teheran. The people shut down the city- the
> factories, markets, transport, colleges – the people were out on the
> streets, 4 to 5 million of them, marching. The Shah of Iran had 68
> million dollars worth of arms from the US, the Shah had more tanks
> than the British Army. But with all his power, his soldiers, his
> tanks, he could kill only 48,000 people, he could not kill all the
> people. So as the people shut down the whole country, the Shah finally
> got up and left on his plane.
>
> I am not sure we will find a better battle cry today that brings
> everything together than Nandigram- a struggle against power that
> destroys people and places for its own enrichment while impoverishing
> others. I hope we can carry the banner of these people, not just to
> help them, but to save ourselves from the march of imperialism which
> is at its most dangerous today.
>
> We have a great debt of gratitude to all the good people who have put
> together the All India Anti-Imperialist Forum. I hope it is all-India
> and all the people always in the struggle against imperialism. I am
> sure we will find ways to unite our action and our energies, and we
> then shall overcome.
>
>