The Peoples Empowerment Party (PEP) will definitely be supporting the August 17 protest march being staged by the Clement Payne Movement (CPM) and other community-based organisations against the imperialistic military assault on Libya by the United States of America, Britain and France.
According to information put out by the CPM, marchers will assemble at the United States Embassy in Wildey, St Michael, at 10 a.m. on Wednesday,
August 17, and will deliver a “protest letter” before making their way down Collymore Rock to the British High Commission, where several short addresses will be made and a similar “protest letter” delivered.
The PEP would like to urge all right-thinking Barbadians to come out on August 17 – birthday of the great Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey – and lend their support to this very important “public march” designed to send a very strong message to the ruling elite in Washington, London and Paris.
It is clear to us that nothing good can come out of the unprincipled and destructive NATO attack on Libya!
To begin with, Libya – the most developed country in Africa – is being destroyed, civilians are being killed by NATO bombs, and the society is being plunged into a protracted civil war that will consume many lives and breed permanent enmities.
Secondly, the very image, reputation and credibility of the United Nations is being destroyed! On March 17, the UN Security Council passed a resolution which authorised member nations to impose a “no-fly zone” in Libya for the sole purpose of protecting civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack.
There was absolutely no mention of any authorization to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi, to go to war against Libya or to impose a “regime change” on Libya! Yet, this is precisely what the United States, Britain and France are attempting to do!
If responsible members of the international community sit idly by and allow these three imperialistic nations to highjack and pervert the good name and authority of the United Nations for their own narrow, neo-colonialist purposes, they will be merely condoning the utter destruction of its credibility in the eyes of billions of people all over the world.
The world community also needs to pose a question as to the true identity of the people who are the driving forces behind the violent, heavily-armed Benghazi-based attack on the government of Libya!
Gaddafi has identified them as al Qaeda-linked Islamic fundamentalist fighters, many of whom were trained and radicalized by the military establishment of the US during the decade-long military campaign against Soviet Union troops in Afghanistan.
As long ago as 1999, Gaddafi publicly informed the world that many of these fundamentalist Mujahedeen fighters from Afghanistan had entered Libya “desperate and destructive, and had adopted killing and explosives as their profession, according to the training they received from American Intelligence”.
Are these the kind of people that any sane person would wish to instal in power in Libya by force?
