[Imc-uk-reports] 3rd Che-Leila delegation leaves for Palestine!

[alexandra bean]

Dear Friends,

May we apologise for the lack of contact for the lack of contact recently. 
We can assure you that this has not been becuase we have been inactive! 
Che-Leila Youth Brigades, the internationalist youth movement to support 
peoples resistance by sending volunteer brigades, has been growing very fast 
throughout Britain and the world. Since its inception in April 2002 in 
occupied Ramallah it has branches in at least 10 cities across Britain as 
well as branches being set up and/or active in the USA, France, Pakistan and 
Belgium. We have also sent a delegation to Vietnam (report below) and have 
had nearly a permanent presence in Palestine throughout the summer (a report 
below).

There are several reports and statements from Che-Leila Youth Brigades below 
and more will follow in the next few days.

Firstly, may we congratulate the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its 
supporters for organising an important student conference in London on the 
15th June. Hundreds of students from dozens of Universities attended and it 
succeeded in a big step forward for a broad and inclusive solidarity movment 
for Palestine amongst students. We thank the organisers for inviting 
Che-Leila Brigadistas to share our experience with those who attended. The 
focus now is the national demonstartion on the 28th of Sept for Palestine in 
London.

Che-leila Youth Brigades will be active in 7 universities including Oxford, 
Manchester and UCL where we will able to assist in whatever way we can the 
anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist movement. Please get in touch if you are 
interested.

We would also like to send greetings to the solidaity campaigns for Cuba, 
Colombia and the newly established Congo Solidarity Campaign. Che-Leila 
Brigadistas will do what we can for these movmements.

The third Che-Leila Youth Brigade delegation in one year to Palestine left 
on Saturday morning: The four Brigadistas are presently in Ramallah and will 
be proceeding to Jenin. We send them our best wishes and hope they will work 
hard in their practical application of solidarity and internationalism. 
Other reports from Palestine, past months acitivities and news and reports 
from the present delegation in Palestine will be forthcoming.

With warm solidarity greetings
Che-Leila Youth Brigades (Britain)

_____________________________________________

1. Che-Leila Portland USA fight of racists and Republican politicians.
   Report Sent 24th August 2002
2. Che-Leila Youth Brigades condemn cowardly killing of Muhammed Sadat
3. Che-Leila Youth Brigades in Ramallah all summer.
   Report drafted 26th August 2002
4. Che-Leila update from Vietnam 24 July 2002 "How we desire day that in 
Palestine, like today in Vietnam, we can celebrate our struggle and freedom 
in peace and with out the enemies terror"


1. Che-Leila Portland USA fight of racists and Republican politicians.
   Report Sent 24th August 2002

Che-Leila Portland USA fight of racists and Republican politicians.
Report Sent 24th August 2002

I imagine that by now you have heard about the demo against Bush's visit to 
Portland this past thursday. It was small (1,500) but sucessful. We stopped 
several Republican delegates form entering. One House Representative wanted 
to swing and fight his way in which turned out to result in him being gently 
removed by the crowd to a block away. The event was at first uneventful. 
Anti-war chants were clear and obvious. Some right wingers came in with 
anti-immigration sign. We Che-Leilas, along with the Longshoreman [a docek 
workers union], removed them from the place. This is a historic action 
because the Longshoremen here in Oregon are under security survelliance for 
a pontential strike (soon and likely) which Bush promises to break up by any 
means necassary (yes, he said it just like that.) The threat is to use the 
navy to unload things form the docks or to protect scabs. As you can clearly 
see this is an obvious front for the local Che-Leila's particularly sense 
for our own purposes we need the Longshoreman for our international labor 
front agaisnt the AUC death squads and coca-cola [The USA is conducting a 
similar campaign of repression against the peoples of Colombia as it does 
for the Palestinians. Hundreds of peoples leaders are assasinated every 
month, and the USA provides all the military and financial backing for this 
repression. The AUC is a death sqaud which has close links to the Colombian 
army which massacres activists, peasants and thos thought to have sympathies 
with liberation fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces - the 17,000 
strong guerilla force which is fighting US imperialism and repression in 
Colombia].


2. Che-Leila Youth Brigades condemn cowardly killing of Muhammed Sadat

Che-Leila firmly denounces the killing of Muhammad Saadat, the brother of 
jailed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader Saadat, 
yesterday in Al-Bireh near Ramallah . Muhammad Saadat was killed when 
leaving a shop : an Israeli undercover unit stopped near him and six 
soldiers got out. Realising they had come for him, he ran and defended 
himself with a handgun. He was shot dead. The systematic assassinations of 
political leaders fighting for the liberation of the Palestinian people has 
been one tool for the Israelis to try to destroy any political future for 
Palestine : by erasing or putting in jail the leaders of Palestinian 
organisations, the occupying power aims at making impossible for any 
Palestinian state to exist with a strong political leadership, and shows a 
specific intention to get rid of the most popular Palestinian figures. The 
killing of Saadat´s brother is also part of the Israeli policy of collective 
punishment that has escalated throughout these last months , the destruction 
of suicide-bombers´ families houses being the clearest example, along with 
the constant curfews and closures imposed on the whole of the palestinian 
people. The Israeli occupying forces, will have to understand that these 
murderous practices only serve to further strengthen the Palestinian peoples 
Intifada. Throught the heroism and sacrifice of their people in the 
liberation struggle, many more Faris's, Mohamed Al-Durrahs, and Muhammed 
Sadats are being born every minute. Ofcourse, Israel cannot come to 
understand through logical thinking, thats why the Palestinians knock 
reality into the foolish heads of the Israeli reactionaries by means of the 
Intifada.

The Israeli logic is to provoke a Palestinian reaction that could enable the 
Israeli government to carry on with its so-called policy of « self-defence » 
.The same logic prevailed for the killing of Shaheed Sheikh Shehada, the 
military responsible of Hamas, when a F-16 dropped a bomb on the building he 
was staying in a popular and crowded part of Gaza, killing 15 people and 
wounding many more. It is of utmost importance to point out that such a 
killing is not an isolated and targeted assassination but is part of a whole 
policy that consists merely in a never-ending harassment and provocation of 
the Palestinians. Far from these acts securing any kind of ‘security’ for 
the Israeli people, the Israeli people will never sleep peacefully until the 
legitimate rights of the Palestinian people are granted.

Che-Leila Youth Brigades
22 August 2002


3. Che-Leila Youth Brigades in Ramallah all summer.
   Report drafted 26th August 2002

A Che-Leila Youth Birgadista in Ramallah has been working with the 
Palestinian people in Ramallah for the whole summer. The Brigadista has been 
involved in an audio-visual documentary of education under occupation which 
focuses on the attack on the ecuation rights of the Palestinians by the 
Israeli state. The documentary focuses on Bir-Zeit University. This is done 
by the military checkpoints, actual destruction of educational buildings and 
their contents – books, computers files etc. It also includes the military 
attacks on schools and student demonstrations.

The Brigadista has, with joy in his heart for the Palestinian, faced curfews 
and occupations of this city shoulder to shoulder with its residents. The 
Brigadista, while having a profound love for the Palestinians, has felt 
first hand the brutality of the Israeli army which has inspired a profound 
hatred for the occupying forces. Attacks on the residence of this Brigadista 
meant that he had to lie on the floor alongside Palestinian friends while 
anti-tank bullets and machine gunfire from the Israeli army shot at their 
windows. No-one was seriously injured int he building.

He says that he has been greatly inspired by the peoples confidence under a 
brutal military occupatin, and very impressed by the high level of 
politicisation in the politics of poeples resistance in the Palestinian 
people. More reports will follow.


4. Che-Leila update from Vietnam 24 July 2002 "How we desire day that in 
Palestine, like today in Vietnam, we can celebrate our struggle and freedom 
in peace and with out the enemies terror"

Six Che-Leila delegates (Britain) along with 90 other international 
anti-imperialist delegates are in their third and final week in Vietnam. We 
have completed our work on the Ho Chi Minh road for a week in the central 
mountainous area of Nam Giang. The Ho Chi Minh road is the first proper high 
way linking the country together, it is along the same route as the famous 
Ho Chi Minh Trail which was the udnerground supply route fromt the liberated 
north Vietnam (liberated from the French Imperialists in 1954) to the US 
occupied south, supplying the southern bothers and sisters with weaponary 
and personnel to liberate the country.

We worked with many patriotic young workers from ethnic minorities, from far 
away cities and university students. One worker told us that he has come to 
work here on this road as his father was a restistance fighter and told him 
of all the heroic stories of their resistance, so he has come here to help 
fight for a better peace after they have fought against the war which ended 
in the complete liberation of Vietnam in 1975.

We had many cultural exchanges where the local ethnic minorties who 
displayed their dress, song and dance, all linked to the national resistance 
against imperialism. One thing stands out in Vietnam, which comprises over 
40 different peoples, that imperialism failed, and is still failing to 
disunite these people in their struggle for a better Vietnam. Also the 
Vietnamese Peoples Army came to the remote mountainous area of Nam Giang at 
the local sports stadium, on their annual national tour where they perform 
different patriotic songs, dances and comedies free to the people of the 
area. The performaces were both modern and traditional. In front of the two 
thousand local people we, the international delegation of anti-imperialist 
volunteers expressed our thanks and solidarity to the people and the Peoples 
Army. To great cheers of the the people at the event we chanted 'Ho Ho Ho 
Chi Minh, Like Vietnam we will win!'. (Ho Chi Minh is the revolutionary 
leader of Vietnam who lead the struggle for independance and freedom until 
his death in 1969)

We noticed in the mountainous areas while travelling through the jungles to 
villages and rivers, that unlike many other countries who are oppressed by 
imperialism like Pakistan and India, Nepal, Egypt, Peru, Colombia etc, that 
the people of the mountains, the national minorities have ownership of the 
produce of the land and the rivers, that they all have electricity, literacy 
and that nowhere did we smell the stench of open sewers which is so 
prevalent in the above named countries. These people have gained immensely 
from their struggle, but the price was heavy, over three million martyrs. 
The Ho Chi Minh road will further improve the living conditions of the 
people through better connections with the surround area and better economic 
conditions for their trade and cultivation. One thing I noticed on the road 
while working was the metal chaing tracks that the building machinery left 
on the road. It remonded me of the tank tracks in Ramallah on the delegation 
to Palestine in April 2002 where the Che-Leila Youth Brigades were 
established, and I thought of the contrast. That in Palestine machines are 
used to oppress and massacre a people, but in Vitenam these tracks represent 
the opposite, the use of technology to liberate and improve the condtions of 
the people. This is what people can do when they have overthrown imperialism 
and its occupations like the people of Vietnam have done, and the people of 
Palestine are doing today.

Leaving Nam Giang we went into the low lands to the city of Danang in 
central Vietnam, we missed our fellow workers and local people. On the road 
to Danang, we saw in every community beautifully built martyrs cemeteries. 
Again, I remembered how in Palestine that in the Ramallah hospital that the 
bodies of the martyrs had to be buried in the car park as the Zionist 
occupations forces were strangling the city for over two weeks, and how many 
of the resistance fighters in Palestine have to be buried nearly under the 
guns of the tanks and Apaches helicopters of the Zionist Army. How we desire 
the day that in Palestine, like today in Vietnam, that we can celebrate our 
struggle and freedom in peace and with out the enemies terror. The people of 
Vietnam are very well aware of the Palestinian struggle, and the whole 
country, through all its bodies, youth organisations, communist party and 
government support the Palestine liberation struggle, 100%. The Palestine 
liberation movement are frequent visitors on official trips to Vietnam (at 
least once a year) and build the rock solid solidarity between the two 
peoples against imperialism and Zionism. Returning to Danang we were treated 
to a great cultural party by the Ho Chi Minh Youth organisation of Danang 
where they performed different songs and dances, of the minority peoples and 
of modern popular music as expression of their appreciation of the FIRST 
international volunteer delegation to the Ho Cho Minh Road from any 
imperialist country. We returned this appreciation by chanting 'Mera Naam, 
Tera Naam, Vietnam! Vietnam!' (in Urdu and Hindi, the immensely popular 
anti-imperialist slogan - my name, your name, Vietnam! Vietnam!'

Sukant,
on behalf of Che-Leila Youth Brigade in Vietnam
24th July, 1143am, 2002, Tra Nang







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