Pakistan

The Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA) organized a three-day Marxist School on 5, 6, and 7 August, 2016, in Rawalakot, Kashmir. 104 youth and workers from all over Pakistan came to participate, reaching Rawalakot on 4 August.

More and more sections of the working class are coming out to protest for their demands as the economic crisis deepens in Pakistan. Last week saw huge protests of school teachers in Lahore against the privatization of schools. This week more protestors gathered in Lahore from various sections of society despite scorching heat and high temperatures of around forty-eight degrees celsius.

Privatization is top of the government’s agenda in Pakistan. All public sector institutions are being privatized rapidly, leading to unemployment of millions of workers. As a result, millions of families in Pakistan are being deprived of their small incomes and pushed further into poverty and misery. Along with that, the already shabby and dilapidated social infrastructure is being handed over to the vultures of private capital, who are tearing it apart, leaving the whole fabric of society in tatters.

On 27 April, the Baloch Students Organization (Pajjar) organized an event commemorating the 38th anniversary of the Saur Revolution of Afghanistan. The event was held in Baluchistan University. Besides students from the Baloch Students Organization, there were also students from the Pashtun Students Federation, the Baloch Action Committee along with progressive teachers, writers and intellectuals. All participants congratulated the BSO for organizing such an event.

The special 2016 May Day edition of Worker Nama, the paper of the IMT in Pakistan, is available now.

On April 7th police brutally attacked protesting young doctors in Quetta, in which more than fifteen young doctors were severely injured and twenty arrested. Some of the injured doctors are in a serious condition and could lose their eyesight or become permanently paralyzed as a result of this attack.