The Communist Party USA expresses solidarity with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the democratic movement facing brutal state repression, in the context of struggle against mass disenfranchisement under the BJP government’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter records. We fully support this organized response to the disenfranchisement of 130 million votes, most of whom are economically on the margins, women and Muslim citizens.
The mass arrests and brutality against protesters organizing in response to the SIR, including CPI(M) cadres and leadership, represent a grave escalation of the BJP/RSS assault on rights of speech, assembly and protest. Young women are joining the struggles in unprecedented numbers, and facing specific targeting of sexual harassment by police forces. In addition to targeted stoppage of public transit, banning of protests in Jantar Mantar and now deregistering New Delhi for any protest. The mass arrests of journalists and opposition figures in the Cockroach Janata Party as well as members of Left Parties of CPI and the CPI(ML) are ongoing. The joint activities of Delhi Police and RSS paramilitaries expose the BJP’s violent hostility to any democratic expression and dissent.
As noted by the CPI(M), the SIR’s unilateral purge of 130 million registered voters without due process undermines confidence in India’s electoral system. The same tactic is widely applied by the extreme right in the United States, depriving millions of their right to vote through arbitrary and unconstitutional means. The coordination of far-right forces in India and the United States has intensified the scale and severity of these efforts in both countries. These attacks also illustrate reactionary fears of mass democratic mobilization, and their inability to maintain power without resorting to manipulations of electoral process, gerrymandering and other illegal means.
The CPUSA joins calls for the immediate release of all protesters still imprisoned.
Hands off the communists of India! Hands off the students who are fighting for their future! Hands off the rights of women to protest! Hands off the Indian people who demand the right to vote!
Image: Communists of India demand removal of Chief Election Commissioner. CPI(M). International Communist Press.
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The Communist Party USA is a revolutionary working-class political party founded in 1919 in Chicago, IL.
The Communist Party stands for the interests of the American working class and the American people. It stands for our interests in both the present and the future. Solidarity with workers of other countries is also part of our work. We work in coalition with the labor movement, the peace movement, the student movement, organizations fighting for equality and social justice, the environmental movement, immigrants rights groups and the health care for all campaign.
But to win a better life for working families, we believe that we must go further. We believe that the American people can replace capitalism with a system that puts people before profit — socialism.
We are rooted in our country's revolutionary history and its struggles for democracy. We call for "Bill of Rights" socialism, guaranteeing full individual freedoms.
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