ILPS Condemns US and ROK FOR Anti-DPRK Provocations As Attack on Korean Sovereignty and Peace in East Asia

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples’ Struggle

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) hereby condemns in the strongest terms the US and its South Korean puppet government for a crescendo of provocations against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). These provocations constitute an attack on the national sovereignty of the Korean people and threaten the peace in East Asia and the whole world.

The sinking of the Cheonan was obviously perpetrated by the US in order to stem the tide of popular opposition in Japan against US military bases and to justify a series of hostile actions of the US and its South Korean puppet government against the DPRK and the national sovereignty of the Korean people and the just position of the DPRK for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and reunification of the Korean people.

The hostile actions of the US and the puppet Republic of Korea (ROK) include the baseless accusations against the DPRK for the Cheonan sinking, the announced holding of joint US-ROK military exercises against the DPRK and the adoption of new sanctions against DPRK in relation to its program of nuclear research and development for national defense, pursuit of peace and economic development.

The US is an old hand at fabricating incidents in order to justify US aggression, such as the February 4, 1899 incident in the Philippines, the August 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident and similar incidents in Asia and elsewhere. It is obvious that the US staged the Cheonan sinking several months ago in order to justify and escalate US military presence in East Asia, to generate new tensions in the region, to prepare for a bigger act of aggression against DPRK and divert attention from US military failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US and ROK are poised to undertake a series of largescale military exercises. The first one called Invincible Spirit is meant to humiliate DPRK, force it to take the blame for the US criminal act of sinking the Cheonan and accept talks on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles under US terms. The next military exercise called Freedom’s Guardian would immediately ensue. It is planned to be more aggressive and more challenging even to China.

The forces being mobilized for Invincible Spirit include the USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group and ROK Navy ships, aircraft fleet from the US Seventh Air Force, the George Washington Air Wing, the new F-22 Raptor aircraft, the ROK air force and ROK anti-submarine aircraft. In the meantime, the US and ROK forces are escalating psychological warfare along the 38th parallel as complement to the war preparations.

The sanctions being prepared by the US will aggravate and expand the existing financial, commercial and travel sanctions already imposed on the DPRK. Additional categories of DPRK personnel, assets and transactions will be banned or frozen. Even the diplomatic privileges of DRKP personnel will be curtailed. More aggressive actions are being planned against DPRK ships and planes.

In view of the extremely hostile actions and war plans of the US, the DPRK is fully justified in developing its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in order to counter the longrunning nuclearization of South Korea by the US and the continuous military and nuclear threats from US military bases in East Asia and the Pacific. The Korean people can never forget how the US collaborated with Japan to allow the latter to colonize Korea in the first half of the 20th century and how the US murdered more than three million Koreans in the US war of aggression against Korea from 1950 to 1953.

The people of East Asia have suffered so many gross acts of brutality and violations of human rights unleashed by US imperialism. These include the killing of 1.4 million Filipinos in the Filipino-American War, the killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands in the US atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the killing of millions of Chinese by the US-supported Guomindang in the Chinese civil war, the killing of more than three million Koreans, the killing of more than six million Vietnamese and other Indochinese and the massacre of three million Indonesians by the US-supported Suharto fascist clique.
It is a gross act of hypocrisy and malice for the US to be prating about peace and stability in East Asia while it casts false accusations against the DPRK in order to obscure a long history of US aggression in East Asia, to justify continued US military presence in the whole region and to push forward a new plan of aggression against the DPRK and the Korean people.

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle stand in solidarity with the Korean people of both north and south in their struggle against US imperialism and its renewed acts of aggression against them and against the DPRK. We call on the people of the world, the member organizations and allied forces of the ILPS to make manifest their support for the national sovereignty of the Korean people, condemn the aggressive presence of US imperialism in the Korean peninsula and demand its withdrawal. (Bulatlat.com)