On behalf of the African working class around the world the African People’s Socialist Party stands with the peoples of Russia, Syria, and the struggling masses of the Middle East and the world in denouncing the shooting down of a Russian plane by the U.S.-backed Turkish government on Nov. 24, 2015.
This dangerous, provocative assault, which included the serious war crime of the murder one of the pilots as he was parachuting out of the flaming plane, exposes the reckless actions of a desperate U.S. imperialism that is the strategicenemy of the majority of the population of the earth.
We unite with Russia’s statement that this was a “planned provocation,” as the Turks are justifying their attack by claiming that the SU-24 plane was in Turkish skies for all of 17 seconds.
This attack is one more example of the serious crisis of imperialism brought about by the resistance of oppressed peoples everywhere in our just struggle for national liberation and self-determination free from imperialist occupation, war and exploitation.
This latest U.S.-backed assault takes place in a region that was carved up for the geopolitical colonial advantage of Western imperialism more than a century ago when European countries imposed false borders—as they did in Africa—on an area where Arab and middle eastern peoples had peacefully lived together as Muslims, Jews and Christians for hundreds of years.
Since 2011, the U.S. has funded, armed and trained proxy forces that they used to foment a brutal war on the people of Syria with the backing of U.S. lapdogs in Turkey, the illegitimate white settlerstate of Israel and the Gulf oil states. The imperialist goal is to reset the unfavorable balance of forces in the Middle East and the world by overturningthe presidency of Bashar al-Assad who was democratically re-elected by a landslide vote earlier this year.
This war is also an attack on Iran, Iraq and Russia whose president, Vladimir Putin, has gained the respect of the world for his diplomatic and straight forward handling of the U.S.-instigated crisis in the region which has killed over 210,000 Syrian people in the past four years and caused the forced migration of millions more.
This attack comes at a time when world respect for the U.S. and the Obama administration is at its lowest ebb and follows on the heels of murderous colonial violence against the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Occupied Palestine and much of Africa. The provocation also follows the 2014 U.S.-backed and inspired coup in Ukraine and the build-up of NATO weapons surrounding Russia as a frontal attack on it sovereignty.
The African People’s Socialist Party recognizes that U.S. and European imperialism rests on the economic and political foundation of the enslavement of African people, the genocide of Indigenous peoples and colonization of the majority of humanity for the benefit of the white world. This was the basis for the birth of the capitalist system.
We recognize that African people are colonized inside the borders of the U.S. and wherever we have been forcibly dispersed throughout the world through the trade in African human beings, which brought untold wealth and the capitalist system to Europe.
In the self-defined democracy of the United StatesAfrican people are gunned down by police forces and other representatives of the U.S. state at a rate of about three a day and we are massively rounded up into colonial prisons by the millions on discriminatory colonial sentencing laws.
The African People’s Socialist Party joins with the peoples of the Middle East, Russia and all struggling peoples to demand that U.S. and European imperialism must immediately withdraw their military forces from the Middle East and allow the people to determine their own fate on their own terms.
African, Indigenous, Arab and Asian peoples have a right to struggle in our own interest to liberate our land, our resources, our culture, our destiny through self-determination and sovereignty free of imperialist intervention anywhere.
Solidarity with the Russian Federation against Turkey and U.S. aggression!
Victory to the people of Syria against the U.S. CIA funded and trained terrorists!
Down with US imperialism!
Victory to the struggling peoples of the planet!
Izwe Lethu i Afrika!