The League of Filipino Students extends its warmest internationalist solidarity to the Egyptian students and people in their historic struggle to oust the 30-year US-Mubarak regime.
Despite the media and internet blockade by the Mubarak regime, the world over has witnessed thousands upon thousands of students, youth, and working people trooping to the streets in different Egyptian cities, not only in Cairo, but in Alexandria, Suez, among others.
The active participation of Egyptian students and youth provides the Filipino students much impetus to fulfill its historic role in supporting and contributing to the nationalist and democratic aspirations of the Filipino people, particularly the defeat of US imperialism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism.
The continuing struggle in Egypt today provides an opportunity for Egyptian anti-imperialists to weaken the grip of US imperialism in Egypt and reverse the neoliberal economic policies which had been entrenched because of the thirty-year collaboration of the US and Mubarak government.
The free market economics being implemented in Egypt has made millions out of work, with the youth experiencing double-digit unemployment despite high percentages of the youth graduating from colleges and universities. It had also closed down many factories and enterprises, especially in the wake of the global economic crisis.
Such pro-imperialist policies had not only enriched the Mubarak family and bureaucracy, it had enabled the US and Israel to extract superprofits from the labor and natural resources of the Egyptian people. However, these policies had also served as the basis for the growing poverty, unemployment and anti-imperialist and anti-dictatorship sentiments among the people.
In the last thirty years, the people’s struggle against the US-Mubarak regime had been met by fascist attacks by Egyptian security forces. With the unraveling of the anti-dictatorship people’s movement, Mubarak and his minions cannot anymore reverse the revolutionary tide against his regime.
However, while Mubarak’s and his minions’ days are numbered, it does not mean that US imperialism in Egypt will finally have been defeated. Absolute care must be done in dealing with the Egyptian military as it had been fully supported by US imperialism in the last thirty years, as seen by the massive military aid given by it, second only to Israel. They must reject the intervention of a US-supported military as such would only mean a continuation of the same puppetry and fascism as the Mubarak regime.
They should also not allow another US puppet to lead their country, even if such puppet appears reform-oriented or democratic-minded. An imperialist puppet shall serve his master first and foremost, and never his people.
In any event, US imperialism appears determined not to lose Egypt as its premiere semi-colony in the Middle East. Until now it had failed to condemn the Mubarak regime’s crackdown of the Egyptian uprising that left more than 150 dead and thousands injured. Together with other imperialist powers, it had sent solidarity messages, not to the Egyptian protesters, but to the dictator.
The Egyptian students and people must never allow US imperialism and its agents to hijack the revolutionary gains and victories being achieved by the people’s uprising at present.
Nonetheless, we firmly believe that the Egyptian people shall overcome. They shall soon defeat the Mubarak regime, and provide great opportunities for anti-imperialist and revolutionary movements to broaden their base, membership and political activities.
With clenched fists we salute the martyrs of the uprising and all Egyptian students and people who are now facing the entire weight of fascist attacks but remain fearless, resolute and resilient.
The Filipino and Egyptian peoples have a long shared history — first in the defeat of Western colonialism through revolutionary struggle, and the long, continuing people’s struggle against US imperialism, and for national freedom and democracy.
We stand firmly on their side in this historic moment of their great but difficult struggle.
History has shown that even the most formidable of empires fall — even modern Pharaohs like Mubarak. And we shall be with the Egyptian people, not only until Mubarak has fallen, but until US imperialism has been defeated in Egypt, and in the rest of the world.
