The Worker’s Party of Massachusetts stands resolutely alongside our comrades of the recently founded Communist League of Uganda, who have faced arrest, harassment, and death threats from the neocolonial government of Yoweri Museveni as retribution for organizing the working class of Kampala.
On the 13th of September this year, three cadre of the Communist League were arrested in the destitute working class neighborhood of Banda in Kampala while allegedly organizing a protest against the government planned bulldozing of the very homes in which they live with their family and fellow citizens. The reasoning given by the fascist government of Museveni was that the slums of Banda are an eyesore which must be removed in anticipation for an upcoming football game. This represents a vicious attack on the working people of Kampala, many of whom live in poverty while the ruling class of Uganda continues to become rich selling off the precious resources of Uganda to the imperial core for discount prices, while the people of Uganda continue to pay premium prices for substandard consumer goods.
This wave of arrests followed a prior wave on the 29th of August, when members of the league were accused of organizing a protest during “National Cleaning Day” in Bugiri. Members including the chairman of the CLU were violently arrested with one member experiencing violence from authorities after being taken into custody.
Yoweri Museveni, as president of Uganda
sees the organization of independent working class political power as a threat to his regime. Museveni is just another example of a corrupt leader who once proclaimed socialism and anti-imperialism, but has long since betrayed the ideals which brought him to prominence as a guerrilla leader and a statesman, despite his continued flaunting of these revolutionary credentials. As an agent of imperialism, Museveni has held total political power in the country since 1986, only allowing the formation of bourgeois political parties in 2005. Despite this narrow “allowance”, the promotion of Marxism-Leninism, and other anti-bourgeois political tendencies remains highly criminalized.
The CLU began much like our own formation. Like the Worker’s Party of Massachusetts, The Communist League of Uganda was formed by a handful of proletarians, everyday people who united out of the necessity to create and promote a vehicle of independent working class power. Despite thousand of miles separating our organizations, we see revolutionary comrades and siblings in our Ugandan comrades, who are valiantly carrying the bright torch of liberation in the face of brutal repression. We refuse to remain silent while working people anywhere in the world face capitalism and its most extreme aspects, imperialism, neocolonialism, and unequal exchange. We ask all party members, supporters and sympathizers to spread awareness of the situation facing the working class in Uganda, and to provide support for their struggle if and when requested.
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