Labour Party Pakistan sixth two days congress concluded here at Aiwan Iqbal Lahore on 8^th April 2012. The congress discussed the international capitalist crisis and tasks ahead for Socialists, the political, economic and social scenario of Pakistan and the organizational priorities for LPP. It discussed various constitutional amendments also. Adeel Burki, a nationally known artist sung several poems of Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

The congress elected 25 members Federal Committee. The Federal Committee in its first brief meeting just after the congress elected Younas Rahu as general secretary of Labour Party Pakistan unanimously. Younas Rahu hails from Moro, Sindh and has been in the leadership of LPP since 1999. Former general secretary Nisar Shah and spokesperson Farooq Tariq were elected to the Federal Committee. They both had completed their two terms constitutional requirement on the main office bearers and both thanked the comrades and assured their full cooperation with the newly elected leadership of LPP. This was to build the internal life of LPP on more democratic basis on practical terms.

Younas Rahu, newly elected general secretary LPP at the congress

140 Delegates and few observers participated from the different federating units of Pakistan including Punjab, Saraiki Waseeb, Khaiber Pukhtoonkhawa, Baluchistan and Sindh. There were also delegates from Gilgit Beltistan and Kashmir who spoke and participated in the congress.

The congress opened with the three international observers – Pierre Rousset, member of the leadership Fourth International, Tony Iltis, from Socialist Alliance Australia, and Arif Afghani, from the Revolutionary Labour Organisation Afghanistan – presenting fraternal greetings to the congress. Several international messages of solidarity were read at the congress.

The first session was on international perspectives and comrade Farooq Tariq read the document presenting the international capitalist crisis and tasks for Socialists. A very live discussion took place on the nature of the capitalist crisis and responses from various classes and states, the 99 percent anti capitalist movement, the crisis in European Union, the crisis in the third world countries, the implementation of neo liberal agenda at world level, the linkages of the movements, the nature of present era and analogies with the situation facing the world before the establishment of First International by Karl Marx and Engels. Over a dozen comrades participated in the discussion including Pierre Rousset.

The second session was on Pakistan Perspectives and comrade Bukshal Hallo read the documents presenting the nature of the present situation and our tasks. The discussion remained focused mainly on national question, the movements of the working class and their directions, the nature of Pakistani state, the emergence of new capitalist formations, the crisis of the bourgeoisie parties and the Left in Pakistan. Over thirty comrades participated in this discussion which went on for over six hours.

The last session was on organization and comrade Nisar Shah read the organizational document. It explained the history of the Labour Party Pakistan, the roots and ways ahead, the present organizational priorities of linking the organization with social movements of the working class, the relationship with social movements and organization, the parliamentary priorities and participation of LPP and left in the forthcoming general elections.

Newly elected federal committee LPP

The discussion was very live and over 40 comrades participated in this discussion.

Several constitutional amendments were presented and the Federal Committee was empowered by the congress to take a final decision on the amendments after thorough discussions on the amendments.

One of the main features of the congress was the finance appeal which raised an amount unprecedented in the history of LPP from such a gathering. Comrade Farooq Tariq told the congress that this is his last finance appeal as spokesperson of LPP, he will no more stand on this office as per constitution and appealed to all comrades to donate as much as possible. A total of 490,000 Rupees ($5500) were collected including pledges by the comrades. Comrade Toni Iltis from Socialist Alliance Australia donated 180,000 Rupees (AU $ 2000), the largest in the congress.

Baba Jan imprisoned comrade in Gilgit jail was elected to the Federal Committee along comrade Samee Birjah from Gilgit. Baba Jan and five other comrades in Gilgit jail, the Faisalabad six, the labour leaders convicted to 590 years and the 12 Karachi power looms workers were assured the full solidarity by LPP and a commitment to continue national and international campaign for their release.

The twenty five member’s elected federal committee includes

1. Talat Rubab, ( Rawalpindi)
2. Alia Bukhshal, (Hyderabad)
3. Azra Shad, (Lahore)
4. Riffet Maqsood, (Lahore)
5. Nasir Mansoor, (Karachi)
6. Mushtaq Ali Shan, (Karachi)
7. Bukhshal Thallo, (Hyderabad)
8. Latif Lighari, (Hyderabad)
9. Farooq Tariq, (Toba Tek Singh)
10. Nisar Shah, (Islamabad)
11. Noor Nabi, (Okara)
12. Mian Abdul Qayum, (Faisalabad)
13. Agha Abdul Sattar, (Rawalpindi)
14. Maqsood Mujahid, (Lahore)
15. A R Adil, (Gojranwala)
16. Suhail Javed, (Multan)
17. Rana Tahir, (Chishtian)
18. Faman Ali Khan, (Hashtnagar, Charsada)
19. Abdul Jilal, (Swat)
20. Kafait Khan, (Murdan)
21. Baba Jan, (Gilgit Beltistan)
22. Samee Birja, (Gilgit Beltistan)
23. Younas Rahu, (Moro, Sindh)
24. Faun Ahad (Swat)
25. Faazil Mohmmend. (Swat)

Comrade Younas Rahu was elected as general secretary of LPP in a broief meeting of the federal committee just after the congress. Comrade Farooq Tariq will remain coordinator of international contacts; a four member’s finance committee was elected.

Farooq Tariq

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Solidarity Messages from different International organizations and parties

Three international observers participated in the congress; they were Pierre Rousset, member of the leadership of the Fourth International, Tony Iltis, from Socialist Alliance Australia, and Arif Afghani, from the Revolutionary Labour Organisation Afghanistan. The congress opened by the fraternal greetings presented by these comrades.

Following messages of solidarity were read at the congress by Comrade Aman Kariapper.
· Workers’ International Network (UK)
· Socialist Alternative (Australia)
· Avaye Zan (Iran)
· Uprising Pamphlet Committee (Iran)
· Radical Socialist (India)
· Alternative Magazine Editorial (Iran)

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Workers’ International Network (UK)

On behalf of the Workers’ International Network, I send warmest solidarity greetings to the Labour Party Pakistan on the occasion of its 2012 conference.

Comrades, the era of the world revolution has begun. On 15^th October 2011, demonstrations were held in more than 950 cities in 82 countries, inspired by the “Arab spring”, the Spanish “indignados”, the Greek general strikes and the worldwide Occupy movement. Around the same time there were simultaneous mass occupations in over a hundred countries; mass street protests in Russia; local strikes and uprisings in China; general strikes or other mass strikes by millions of workers in Greece, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, France, Hungary, Romania, Britain, and beyond Europe in every continent, from Israel to Nigeria to Chile. A new era opened with the revolution in Egypt: the beginning of a new wave of revolutions like those of 1848, 1917-21, 1968 and 1989.

What can capitalism offer the world today? Only a new economic crisis more devastating than the 1930s, repression as bloody as anything seen even then, and a rush to war more terrible than 1939-45. But first it will have to defeat a worldwide movement of the 99% who are only just beginning to rise to their feet.

Everywhere capitalism is hated. In Greece, 33% of the population want “revolution”. Even in the USA, recent polls show that 37% of all Americans think “socialism is superior to capitalism” and 49% of American youth “view socialism in a favorable light”.

Never before has there been such a widespread and generalised hatred of capitalism throughout society. At a time when not a single significant political party in most countries of the world questions the capitalist system, millions of people worldwide have been taking to the streets to protest against it.

The Labour Party Pakistan wears the badge of honour, as perhaps the only significant party in the world to challenge capitalism – not just in May Day speeches, but in direct and open confrontation with some of the most brutal capitalists and landlords. Workers far beyond Pakistan honour the sacrifices made by the heroic men and women of the LPP and send their solidarity to those languishing today in Pakistani jails.

By their example, the Labour Party Pakistan has shown the way to the generation that constitutes the “new” working class in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Five-sixths of the world’s working class today are based outside the traditional industrial countries of North America, Western Europe and Japan. They have yet to put their stamp on history, but today the Labour Party Pakistan is showing them the way.

The relocation of industry through globalisation has transformed the world’s working class. Of the world’s three billion wage workers, for every one worker in the West, there are now five based in China, the Indian sub-continent, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and South-East Asia. The proletariat is now for the first time a majority of the world population.

There are well over 100 million industrial workers in China – more than twice as many as in all the G7 countries put together. Since the beginning of the current recession in the West in 2008, during which production has been stagnant or declining, China’s economy has grown by 42%! It is in the factories of China and the rest of Asia, and their nascent underground trade unions, that the future salvation of humankind is being forged right now. A new, stronger, more cohesive international class is being built, bestriding every continent, and rapidly learning anew the strategy and tactics of the class struggle.

When tens of millions of workers and young people protest, on the same issues, with the same slogans, often on the same day, sometimes in internationally synchronised action, that means that the world party of the future is almost a reality now.

The fight for a workers’ international is the fight to unite the struggles of the workers of all continents, social, gender and ethnic groups; to link with the environmentalist and anti-capitalist protest movements, and to build worldwide solidarity. We have not only ’a world to gain’ but a world to save from annihilation.

Roger Silverman
Workers’ International Network
April 2012

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Socialist Alternative, Australia

Dear comrades

Socialist Alternative sends comradely greetings to the Labour Party Pakistan on the occasion of its sixth national congress.

We salute the LPP for its ceaseless campaigning for the rights of workers and the oppressed of Pakistan and the efforts that it has made in fighting the capitalists, reactionaries and pro-imperialist forces of various stripes in Pakistan.

In Australia, all we hear about Pakistan in the mainstream news is the latest developments in the so-called “War on Terror”, which is just another name for US imperialist aggression. The LPP tells us that there is a different Pakistan, the Pakistan of the workers, the poor and the oppressed and their struggles for freedom and social and economic justice.

We in Socialist Alternative are doing our bit to fight for the cause of international workers’ revolution in Australia. Your congress coincides with “Marxism 2012”, Australia’s biggest left wing conference, hosted annually by Socialist Alternative, which will this year attract more than 800 socialists and activists from around Australia and New Zealand, along with guests from all over Asia, as well as Europe and the United States. The annual Marxism conferences are one way that we can contribute to building a stronger revolutionary left in the Asia-Pacific region, in which our government plays a consistently militaristic and aggressive imperialist role. We look forward to developing closer bonds with the comrades in the LPP.

We wish you best of luck with your deliberations at your congress.

Workers of all lands unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win!

Tom Bramble, On behalf of the National Executive, Socialist Alternative
www.sa.org.au
www.marxismconference.org

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Avaye Zan (Iran)

Iranian Women´s Bulletin, Box 51 25, 163 05 Spanga, Sweden, Tel 0046-70 7228083, E-mail: avayezan gmail.com, Homepage: http://www.avayezan.org

Message of solidarity to the 6^th Congress of Labour Party Pakistan, 7/8^th April 2012,

Dear Friends,

Our long struggle for social justice, equality and freedom unites us in Pakistan and Iran. The suffering of women in our countries and their heroic struggle for human dignity and equal rights tells us that we, as neighbouring countries with shared history and culture, have common causes to fight for. Our people share the same dreams and those dreams shatters by the same kind of oppressors. So let us join our forces, recognise the crucial importance of our unity and solidarity and act upon them.

There will never be a true democratic Pakistan or Iran without the true freedom of its women. Women’s equal legal rights are very important first step; but women of our countries must gain the control over their own lives by organising themselves. Without a mass movement of women and their social participation, there will never be a progressive mass movement demanding social justice and socialism in our region.

Dear Friends at LPP 6^th Congress please accept our warmest greetings for your Congress and our admiration and support for your struggle. We wish your party progress, more achievements and victory.

Sholeh Irani
Women rights activist
Chief Editor of Iranian Women Magazine, “Avaye Zan”
Uprising Pamphlet Committee (Iran)

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Uprising Pamphlet Committee (Iran)

Message of solidarity to the 6^th Congress of Labour Party Pakistan, 7/8^th

April 2012, Lahore
با درودھای انقلابی به رفقای پاکستان

With revolutionary greetings to our comrades in Pakistan

Dear Comrades,

We are living in an era of deepest capitalism crisis. In a period that organising revolts and political economical protests all over the world has become an important task of revolutionary forces. Working class and its different strata are engaged by daily struggle against the ruling system, a system that brings us nothing but poverty, unemployment and religious reactionary. Working class is fighting against this system and its victory depends on the efforts of those political forces who demand nothing less than fundamental changes.

The people of our region are producing and maintaining the needs of the rest of the world and therefore kept under the bloody feast of the rulers, both imperialists and the regional reactionary and religious states, themselves productions of the capitalism system. Although working class and other oppressed people are fighting all over the world, but the protests in our region, despite the harshest oppression, has not become objective, vast and obvious enough.

The Iranian regime jails and tortures Workers’ rights activists and hinder the workers to organise themselves in their independent unions. In Iran, the working class is engaged in a bloody struggle for it’s rights. We are trying to increase our abilities and organise ourselves in order to join the international struggle against the capitalism system. Our activists in their struggles are facing a regime that jails and tortures those who dare to educate workers in order to higher their class consciousness and realize the importance of organising.

We strongly believe that the solidarity of workers and the revolutionary forces in our region could pave the path of common struggle against the reactionary capitalists of our region. Therefore we would like to ask the working class of Pakistan and Labour Party to show solidarity with Iranian working class in their struggle for their rights. Today our fellow fighter, Reza Shahabi, Ali Nejati, Mohammad Jarrahi and Shahrokh Zamani, all working class rights activists, are in prison as political prisoners, suffering from torture and harassment. We would like to ask your support for our demand
for their immediate release.

Dear Congress delegates, we wish you a successful congress.

شبنامه قيام
Shabnameye Ghiam,
Uprising Pamphlet Committee
(A group of young revolutionary Iranian, working underground for the rights of working class to
organise.)
http://www.enghelab.blog.com/

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Radical Socialist (India)

Dear Comrades,

Radical Socialist greets the 6^th Congress of Labour Party of Pakistan!
Indeed, it is unfortunate that we could not be there to be part of the historic occasion due to permanent political antagonism and hostility between the Indian and the Pakistani states which is also a sub-continental concern. The nuclear arsenal possessed by both the states is a matter of serious disquiet in the region. We urge that the working classes from both these nations must come forward and break the impasse. We must consistently reinforce proletarian internationalism to defeat the devious designs of the ruling classes which survives by narrow nationalism and fragmentations.

We strongly believe that the Congress will live up to the expectations of the working class and other oppressed of Pakistan. Our comrades have proved time and again that they are conscious and capable of taking up the twin challenges of the military dictatorships and the clientalism of the Pakistani bourgeoisie and the feudal classes on one hand and that of the Islamic fundamentalism on the other.

The struggle for democratisation, the fight against religious bigotry, the struggles by the working classes especially those waged by the workers in brick kilns, subjected to slave-like conditions in the countryside, or textile workers in the economic centre of Faisalabad are testimonies to the fact that working class in Pakistan is rising to its feet. Apart from the urban populations, the farmers of Punjab and Sindhi fishermen are strongly fighting the military. There are strong women’s movement resisting daily longstanding patriarchal oppression or the recent rise of religious fundamentalism. There are progressives in all walks of trying to defend democratic freedoms and human rights. All these amply indicates that socialists must not only lead these movements in the sub-continent but also build mass working-class movements based on the ideas of the emancipation and the working class and all other oppressed. We must fight for a unified working class response to the pressures of capitalism (especially its neo-liberal incarnation) and war and hope to be able to offer an alternative of the existing system.

Long live revolution!
Long live the Fouth International.

Alternative Magazine Editorial
(An Iranian Communist Youth Group)

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Alternative Magazine Editorial (Iran)

Solidarity Message from Iran to Labor Party of Pakistan Congress

Dear comrades,

Let us extend our very warm regards to your current congress. We hope this year’s congress will strengthen LPP struggle politically, organizationally and ideologically at national and international level.

Years ahead are wonderful years for our common struggle and fight in order to build 21^st century socialism. It is in this very moment we are convinced more than any time before that there will be no other way out of this crisis of capitalism unless the whole reorganization and transformation of the system and society undertaken in a radical way. We are more convinced that even a small reform needs political revolt; political mobilization of the people to enter and decide their own political interest.

The daily struggle of working class in our countries, Iran and Pakistan, to be organized and fight against military capitalism, the fights of people in Europe against the austerity measures and terrible economic cut downs especially in Greece, Spain and Portugal, the ongoing struggles of the Working class in Latin American countries, the revolt unfolding in Arab world for deepening their revolution and anti imperialist struggle, creating a real alternative beyond capitalism, all inspire our common fight in Middle East.

We are under attack: economically, politically, social-culturally and spiritually. The future of our struggle for socialist alternative will depend on our intervention and by fighting back and organizing working class together with all democratic and left forces against all the shapes of exploitation, fundamentalism and dictatorship, at national, international and regional level.

Finally, we are happy that we have started recognizing our common struggle, and hope to continue maintain it together. LPP is an important left revolutionary force in Pakistan and we would like to learn from your experiences and success or even failures, since your success or failure is also our success and failure in struggle to create socialism in 21^st century. Let us learn from each other and from other revolutionary and democratic left forces around the world. We look forward to a regional socialist conference as an additional tool for our mutual learning process and solidarity.

Long live the struggle for revolution; for socialism in 21^st century.

Comradely
Alternative Magazine Editorial
(An Iranian Communist Youth Group)

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