The African Socialist International (ASI) calls on urgent support for the freedom struggle in Guinea-Conakry; raises the slogan, “Touch One! Touch All!

The following statement comes from Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the Interim Committee of the African Socialist International (ASI). The African Socialist International is an international party of African revolutionaries. The ASI has as its historical mission the unification and liberation of Africa under an all-African socialist government under the leadership of the African working class and poor peasantry.

The ASI calls on all who receive this document to forward it to as many contacts as possible and distribute it around the world in order to lend support to the just struggles on the ground in Guinea-Conakry, West Africa.

For more information, contact the African Socialist International:
Omali Yeshitela, ASI Chairman
1245 18th Avenue South
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705
USA

Luwezi Kinshasa, ASI Secretary-General
BILT Mansions
4-16 Deptford Bridge
London SE8 4HH
United Kingdom
20 8265 1731 (land) / 077 8412 1709 (cell)
uhur...@aol.com
www.asiuhuru.org

Look for regular updates on the situation in Guinea-Conakry on UhuruRadio.com .
(This page is asiuhuru.org/guinea )

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February 14, 2007

Uhuru! A’mAfrika;

A critical test is upon us. We have the opportunity to directly involve ourselves in the struggle to defend the interests of Africa and forward the international African Revolution for the liberation and unification of Africa and our people worldwide. Our test is to determine whether we will continue on the road of near-meaningless conferences and empty talk fests concerning African unity or whether we will become genuinely involved in determining the future for Our Africa and Our People.

The test is in Guinea-Conakry, where a rotting, repressive, inept and avaricious neocolonial regime is tottering on the brink of extinction in the face of unrelenting protests from the masses of our people. Already government buildings, official centers and institutions have been assaulted and sacked in different sections of the country, including Conakry, the capital.

This follows a several-weeks-long general strike, first called by the trade unions, whose opportunist leadership has vacillated, first one way then the other, after negotiated deals with the Lansana Conte regime proved more or less advantageous for the leadership. However, neither the vacillation of the union leadership nor its subsequent attempts to halt the strikes have been able to stop the motion of the masses whose suffering and growing emiseration have continued to push them forward to the current state of open insurrection.

Guinea is a West African territory of approximately 8 to10 million people that was a formal French colony until independence in 1958. Like most of Africa, it is rich in minerals even as its population subsists on approximately one US dollar a day. The natural resources of the territory include bauxite, gold, iron ore, uranium, diamonds, coffee, fish, hydropower and agricultural products. In fact, Guinea produces about half of the world’s bauxite, the mineral necessary for the production of aluminum.

Like most of Africa, Guinea’s vast material and human resources benefit American, European and other imperialist corporations to further the interests and advance the development of their countries and societies at the expense of Africa and African people. Infamous corporations like De Beers, the cartel notorious for its exploitation of African diamonds, and Alcoa Aluminum and its subsidiary, Reynolds of the U.S., and Alcan of Canada, are major beneficiaries of Guinean assets at the expense of the impoverished masses of our people there and elsewhere. However, the imperialist exploitation of Guinea is not limited to De Beers and U.S. and Canadian corporations. French, German and Australian corporations are also serious exploiters of Guinean mining interests.

Because of their expropriation of so much value from these resources, the corporations and the imperialist governments that work for them have huge stakes in the outcome of any struggles that occur in Guinea, the West African region and Africa as a whole. Indeed, generally speaking, they are intent on preventing any meaningful changes that would forward the capture of Africa’s resources for our own benefit.

It is in their interests to keep the situation in Guinea just as it is in terms of power relations, regardless of what individual comes to power. In fact, there are some indications that some imperialist forces are disgusted with the Conte regime because of its inefficiency in protecting their interests and the openly corrupt practices that serve to mobilize the masses in opposition to the regime. This leads to what the neocolonialists and imperialists like to refer to as “investment insecurity.