Press Statement of Pakistanis for Palestine

Today, after waiting for three hours at Wahga border, we were finally informed by our Indian friends that the Caravan was denied permission to cross over into Pakistan even though 34 of them had finally been issued visas by the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi.

The whole episode needs to be outlined so that the public has the facts in hand:

1. More than two weeks ago, the Pakistani High Commission had assured Feroze Mithiborwala of the Asian Peoples Solidarity for Palestine that the Indian members of the caravan would be granted visas. On the basis of that assurance, the Caravan members started applying for visas for the four Asian countries to our west.

2. Eventually on Wednesday, 1st Dec., the Pakistani High Commission rejected the visa applications of the Indian participants citing security reasons.


3. After hectic lobbying, the Pakistani authorities finally gave them permission but only to come up to Lahore. This threw all our plans for receiving the Caravan in Lahore and Karachi into confusion and meant that the Caravan would have to fly to Iran from Lahore – which effectively meant increasing the cost of the Caravan by around 650,000 PKR.

4. Having done its share in hampering the Asian solidarity process, the Pakistani pawns passed the baton to their Indian brethren.

5. The Indian government today betrayed the legacy of the great leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, Mahatama Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who always supported the cause of Palestinian liberation and were the major sponsors and driving forces of the Non Aligned Movement and of all initiatives of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the Third World.

6. They did this by utilizing an instrument of control inherited from the British Empire, in service of the new American Empire and its partner in the region, Zionism. This instrument is a piece of paper issued by the Interior/Home Ministry that the government of both countries insist is a requirement for any group to cross over into the other country.

Thus, this Caravan has already fulfilled the basic requirement of being a true people'a movement: it has exposed the reality that two major countries of Asia have been hijacked by cliques who pay lip service to slogans like democracy and sovereignty while bowing down completely to American imperialism and its policies of 'divide and rule'.

The people of Asia want to see Palestine freed from Zionist occupation while their governments see such a movement as a threat to their own complicity with Empire. Hence, these puppet governments deny the expression of the will of the people for a global system based on justice.


Reaction of the Asian Caravan participants:

Both on the Indian side and the Pakistani side of the Wahga crossing, the participants of the Caravan demonstrated vociferously against the colonial bureaucratic systems that control the live of the citizens in both countries. We garlanded the Pakistani participants in the Caravans in lieu of our missing comrades who were protesting on the other side of the border and raised slogans in favour of Palestinian independence and against the aggressive Zionist policies of apartheid and occupation.
Later, here in Lahore, we held a press conference at the Press Club in which we reported on the day's events and the unmasking of imperialism in the subcontinent and at the same time called for an overhaul of the visa regime between India and Pakistan.

We take this opportunity to wish the Pakistani participants of the Caravan (1) good luck in their historic mission as representatives of the voice of the Pakistani working class conscience responding to the cries of the oppressed Palestinians.

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