Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International
Reposted below is the ICFI Statement published in the World Socialist Web Site on 13 August 2025.
The International Committee of the Fourth International welcomes with pride and enthusiasm the establishment of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International) as the Turkish section of the World Party of Socialist Revolution.
The formation of the section of the ICFI in Turkey is an event of immense historical significance. Although it was on the island of Büyükada (Prinkipo) in 1933 that the call for the building of the Fourth International was issued, the establishment of the SEP marks the first time that a party has been formed in Turkey based on the internationalist program and principles of Trotskyism.
The establishment of the Turkish section is the outcome of an intense and systematic process of theoretical, historical and political clarification. The foundations for the formation of a Trotskyist party in Turkey were laid by the late comrade Halil Celik, who initiated political discussions with the International Committee. Halil’s contact with the ICFI and his commitment to building its Turkish section resulted from his conclusion, drawn from years of painful experience with various forms of Pabloite opportunism, that relentless political struggle against these tendencies was necessary.
In 2014 the ICFI formally endorsed the efforts of comrade Halil, who had begun the education of a group of young socialists in the history of the Fourth International, to establish a section in Turkey. In 2018 the Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu (Socialist Equality Group) was formed.
Halil Celik (1961-2018)
Halil undertook the translation of major publications of the International Committee into Turkish. He wrote:
In a country where the working class and socialist movement in general have been dominated by Stalinism, Maoism and petty-bourgeois nationalist tendencies for decades, these books are of prime importance in developing socialist consciousness among workers and youth. Publications of the contemporary Marxist literature produced by the world Trotskyist movement in Turkish, we believe, will contribute to laying the theoretical and political foundation for the building of the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).
Despite his untimely death on December 31, 2018, Halil had by then recruited and educated a cadre of Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu that was determined to carry forward the fight for Trotskyism.
In June 2022 the SEG submitted its application to join the ICFI. The resolution motivating the application stated:
The building of a revolutionary party in any country is possible only on the basis of an international perspective, program and party. The only solution to the major problems in Turkey, which is in a critical position in terms of global geopolitics and class struggle, is the international socialist revolution. The founding of the SEP (Turkey) will be an expression of the global expansion of the ICFI, the only political tendency that assumes the task of solving the great historical problems.
The International Committee accepted the application of the SEG. This posed before the Turkish comrades the challenge of elaborating the historical foundations and principles of the new section. As there had never been a Trotskyist party in Turkey, this required the most exacting political work. It demanded not only a thorough assimilation of the history of the Fourth International, but also an analysis and explanation of the complex political and strategic issues that confront the Trotskyist movement in Turkey.
While pursuing this theoretical work, contributing significantly to the editorial work of the World Socialist Web Site, and continuing their ambitious program of publishing critical works of the International Committee, the SEG undertook important political initiatives to expand the political presence of the ICFI. Of particular importance was the SEG’s organization, beginning in 2023, of annual meetings on the island of Büyükada to commemorate the life and work of Leon Trotsky.
In April 2025 the International Committee voted to approve the transformation of the SEG into the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi and its recognition as a section of the World Party of Socialist Revolution. This vote was taken following a careful review of the organization’s document, The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party (Turkey).
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal held its founding congress in Istanbul on June 13-15, 2025. In addition to the historical document, the SEP also adopted a Statement of Principles and a constitution. In accordance with Turkish law, the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal was obligated to apply in Ankara for formal recognition as a party by the state. The official certification was received in August.
In a video statement announcing the formation of the SEP, posted on the World Socialist Web Site, its national chairman Ulaş Sevinç states:
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi is unlike other political parties. We are part of the World Party of Socialist Revolution. We reject all forms of nationalism and fight for the international unity of workers, who have common interests and enemies worldwide. We reject petty-bourgeois identity politics, recognizing that the fundamental division in society is class-based.
All fundamental problems facing humanity are global problems stemming from the capitalist system. Since one cause of these problems is private ownership of the means of production and another is the division of the world into economically obsolete nation states, the solutions must also be international. The working class, as an international class, is the only social force capable of implementing these solutions. Rather than pursuing a “multipolar” capitalist world, the alternative to the nation-state system that leads to imperialist war and genocide is a federation of world workers’ states that will eliminate borders.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza is the most striking manifestation of the barbarism of the capitalist system and the decay of all parties defending it. As with other critical issues, it has become clear that the Palestinian question cannot be solved within the existing capitalist nation-state system. The same applies to the Kurdish question, which is an international issue. The only valid, progressive solution to these questions is a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, which will be established through the revolutionary mobilization of workers of all nationalities.
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi unequivocally rejects the “lesser evil” policy and fights for the political independence of the working class. This means rejecting class-collaborationist “popular front” politics, which subordinate the working class to bourgeois parties and interests.
Regardless of their differences, all capitalist parties are in complete agreement on two fundamental issues: allegiance to imperialism and hostility toward the interests of the working class. For this reason, by their very nature, they cannot resolve any fundamental political issues, including the Kurdish question. They cannot establish a democratic regime, ensure social equality, or pursue an anti-imperialist foreign policy. As Leon Trotsky explained in his theory of permanent revolution, these tasks fall to the working class in the struggle for socialism. That is, the struggle for democracy is inextricably linked to the struggle for socialism.
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi rejects the capitalist establishment parties and the pseudo-left parties that claim there is no alternative to collaborating with them. We call on workers and youth to build the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi as their own revolutionary party.
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi is a “party of history.” Our party stands in the tradition of classical Marxism of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, as well as the tradition of the October Revolution of 1917. Since its founding in 1923, the Trotskyist movement has defended and developed this tradition against Stalinism, whose “national socialism” betrayed the revolution in the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy’s “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism that led to the collapse of the USSR; against Social Democracy, whose reactionary program of reforming capitalism has failed; and against petty-bourgeois nationalism, which results inevitably in capitulation to imperialism and defeat.
The aim of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi and the International Committee of the Fourth International, with which it is in political solidarity, is summed up in the following statement of Trotsky, founder of the Fourth International: “… the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited through the socialist revolution.”
Join us in this struggle that determines the fate of all humanity. Visit sosyalistesitlikpartisi.org, review our documents, and join the party!
The foundation of the Socialist Equality Party in Turkey extends the work of the Trotskyist movement into a country that stands at a key strategic juncture of not only global geopolitics but also of the international class struggle. The massively powerful multi-national proletariat of Turkey is destined to play a gigantic role in the global struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
Moreover, the raising of the banner of Permanent Revolution by our comrades in Turkey will inspire a new generation of workers and the most principled elements among the youth and intellectuals in the “emerging” countries of the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. The political bankruptcy of the national bourgeoisie—i.e., its subservience to imperialism and inability to satisfy either the democratic aspirations or social interests of the masses—is vindicating every day the insistence of the Fourth International that the future of humanity depends upon the socialist revolution and the transfer of power to the working class.
Long Live the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi!
Long Live the International Committee of the Fourth International!
Katuwana Massacre Victims – From right: Sisiliyana, Edwin, Nilmini, Mathangalatha, Sujithaseeli, Chandraleka and Niranjala. Chulananda, first from the Left, was assassinated in 1990.
On August 27, at Katuwana, in Hambantota District, the relatives of the seven family members, who were massacred by Sri Lanka Army in August 1989, held an event of commemoration of their loved-ones, at the same location where they were bombed. This was the first time a commemoration event was held in remembrance of these victims of state terror after 36 years of impunity and oppression. theSocialist.lk reporters were present at the occasion.
On that fateful night, three and half a decade plus one year ago, Sri Lanka army of the Singha Regiment – 6th Battalion invaded the house of the family, where the only male who was at home at the time was the 63 year old father, J.H.A. Edwin, a Sinhalaese traditional medical physician. The others were the 53-year-old mother, H.A. Sisiliyana; the three young daughters, namely J.H.A. Nilmini Asoka (25), J.H.A. Mathangalatha (20), J.H.A. Sujithaseeli (15); a niece, W.A. Chandraleka (24), and the 6 year old granddaughter, N.A. Niranjala Wilson. All were ethnic Sinhalese. The army killed them all on the spot or, according to some witnesses—who were also killed later—the four young girls were carried to the army camp, raped for three days and killed. The house was bombed and the family was burnt with the house.
The relatives displayed the pictures of their loved ones and lit candles. Two surviving daughters, their husbands, grandchildren and their families and friends observed minutes of silence. Even decades later, their tears have not dried. Vimukthi, a grandson of Edwin addressed the gathering. He stated as follows:
“This is the first time in 36 years that we have been able to gather here publicly to speak their names…They were silenced by guns and disappeared into the shadows of mass graves and tire pyres.
For 36 long years, we could not hold this historic event in commemoration of their memory. We could not come here, speak their names, and mourn openly. The state of terror, the climate of repression, and the continued threat against those who sought truth and justice kept families like ours silent. But silence is not forgetfulness. These years have only deepened our grief and strengthened our determination.
Today we break that silence… Those who carried them out—from the military, death squads and the police to those who directed them—must be held accountable before history, if not yet before law.
Our relatives’ blood cries out not for revenge, but for truth and justice. It cries out for recognition that these lives mattered, that the poor, the villagers, the youth killed in those years were not expendable.
We carry your names and the memories of cruelties inflicted on you forward as a profound mark of protest, so that such crimes must never be repeated.
May your memory give courage to all who fight for truth, justice and dignity and against State repression.”
He also read out the name of J.H.A. Chulananda (22), the only son of Edwin and Sisiliyana, whom he stated was “a young man who aspired to justice and social equality but was misled by the reactionary political forces of the era”, and who was killed by Beliatta Police in October 1990. He was said to be a member of fascist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) during the 1988-1990 insurgency. When the Army failed to capture or kill him, evidently, the massacre of his entire family was orchestrated as an act of reprisal and terrorization.
Family members of the Katuwana Massacre victims commemorate their loved ones, marking 36 years of impunity.
Testimonials
We talked to the victims’ relatives. Edwin’s eldest surviving daughter Chandani (63) related to us her harrowing story of years of pain, endurance and struggle:
“People called my father Weda Mahattaya. He was very much loved by people. He was a very innocent, kind and honest man. He walked slowly, smiled pleasantly, spoke gently, and wore a sarong and the national dress. Formerly, as a monk, he had published a number of Ayurvedic books. Many people who received medicinal treatment from him have met me and told me about the compassionate, and often free, treatment they received from my father and mother.
Our family is a large one of six daughters, and my brother, Chulananda, was the only son. Our family’s economy was founded on meager but stable earnings from my father’s Ayurvedic practice. We had paddy land and acres of coconut, cinnamon and citronella land, which my father cultivated and managed. Due to litigations on land disputes, which my father all won, he lost financially, and his businesses collapsed. We all lived in a thatched house, made of wattle and mud. However, my father could still afford to feed all of us well, educate us, and also help the needy.
By 1971, my father was a strong supporter of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Sirimavo Bandaranaike. However, by 1977, he was fed-up with and dissatisfied with the United Front government and voted for the United National Party, whose leader J.R.Jayawardene promised a “Dharmista Samajaya” [A society led by noble principles].
We all went to Katuwana Maha Vidyalaya (school). My brother did not continue his education after grade seven. He was very kind-hearted, sociable, and very helpful to the villagers. He cared for his friends and neighbors more than his own family. He often stayed away from home longer than he stayed at home. He was outstanding, intelligent, fair-looking and, naturally, the youth considered him as their leader. He wanted to do a job, but also never wanted to leave the village. I think he had made connections with the JVP since late 1987.
My brother had earned the wrath of village thugs and father’s former opponents. Once they even attempted to take his life by stabbing him. He narrowly escaped with his life, but his friend succumbed to the injuries.
In 1979, I married a teacher and lived separately. One of my older sisters married a police officer and went to live in Welimada in early 1989. All other sisters were with my parents at home, Loku (Sujithaseeli), the next to youngest preparing for her Ordinary Level Examinations. Hichchi (Mathangalatha) was studying for the Advanced Level (A/L) examination. Neela (Nilmini) was attending vocational training courses after A/L in expectation of a job.
During the school vacation in August 1989, my two elder sisters [Nilmini and Mathangalatha] came to visit us at our residence at Walasmulla [17 km from Katuwana] by bus. Our parental home was just about half a kilometer away from the Army camp located in the Katuwana Govi Jana Seva [Aggrarian Services Center] premises. While my sisters were passing the army camp, some soldiers had shouted and remarked, “well, go, have a round and come”. That was on 26th August, a Saturday.
My sisters had lunch with us. That was our last meal together. All my three children were much fond of staying with their grandparents and aunts. So, all three were crying and pleading to go with their aunts. Finally, my daughter, Niranjala went with them.
On the morning of August 29th, my husband went to Katuwana with a friend to bring our daughter back home, as school vacation was ending. My husband saw the bombed house; he saw burning human flesh and a skull. Nobody was alive, including my child.
After the incident, I went to lodge a complaint at Walsamulla Police, as there was no police station in Katuwana at the time. The police refused to record my complaint. The Officer in Charge (OIC), K.M. Premathilake put his pistol to my mouth and shouted, ‘You woman, keep your mouth shut. Those who take arms will perish by arms.’
Exactly on my 28th birthday, on October 22, 1990, my husband received information from one Silva that my brother had been killed by Beliatta Police. Dasanayake, OIC of the Beliatta Police, who had shot my brother, had quickly informed K. Danapala, the newly elected Provincial Councillor (PC), about the killing. Danapala [who expired a few years ago] feared my brother would pose a threat to his life, which was never the case. My brother’s body had been burnt on a tyre-pyre, after the body was shown to the satisfaction of Danapala.
Danapala too had had a land dispute with my father a long time ago. He lost a court case he had filed against my father. There was also a caste difference between Danapala and us. My father, and almost that entire block of the village, belonged to a higher caste than Danapala’s. Katuwana had a number of such blocks of houses called “Mandi”, where people of different castes lived.”
Chandani’s husband, Chamal (69), related his traumatic experiences as follows:
”On the morning of 29 August, I went with a friend of mine in his car to Katuwana to bring my daughter back home. My friend wanted to meet Danapala Manthree (PC) and request his help to get his nephew released from Walasmulla Army camp. At the road barrier at the Katuwana Army Camp, the army stopped our car. My friend told them we were going to meet Manthree Thuma (Danapala). So, we were allowed to proceed.
When we reached the place where the house was situated, I could not see the house. I could only see the smoke. I went closer. I could not believe my eyes. The house was demolished and everything was burning. I could see human flesh burning inside the house close to the main door. I saw a skull burning. I could not stand up. One or two villagers came to me and held me tight. A sister of my mother-in -law came to me and said, ‘Nobody is alive. Everybody is burnt’. I shouted, calling my daughter’s name. The aunt told me, ‘You should leave now. If the army comes and finds you, they will kill you too”. My friend then pushed me inside the car and brought me back home. I told my wife everything. She was devastated.
A couple of weeks later, Gamini, one of Danapala’s home guards [Grama Arakshaka – members of government’s Civil Security Force], told me that he and another guard were present with the army when they committed the crime, and asked me not to search for the family as everybody was killed by the army. He told me that the four sisters were taken to Katuwana army camp, raped and tortured there for three days, and then killed. It was not long afterwards that I came to know that both those guards were assassinated.
During the same period, we were trying to lodge complaints at police stations and even searched for them at army camps, as we believed they were still alive in some detention center. When my wife and I went to lodge a complaint at Walasmulla Police, we were chased away. I even dared to go to Walasmulla army camp to meet Captain P.L.U. Buddadhasa of the 6th Battalion, Singha Regiment, to find out some information about my relatives. He just told me, ‘Do not search for them. They are all dead. Do some religious observances for them’. When I went to complain to the ASP [Assistant Superintendent of Police] office at Tangalle, ASP Ekanayake warned me, saying, ‘You are a teacher; do not try to search for them. Otherwise, you will lose your own life.’
I was able to lodge a complaint at Middeniya Police only in late September 1994, after Madam Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected President. We were also able to complain to the Presidential Commission on Disappearances. The Muttetuwegama Commission’s final report contains the seven names of our relatives.
However, the court case never proceeded after 1998. We have learned that the Police had colluded with Danapala to systematically bury the case, four years after the collection of samples from the massacre site.
Due to the lasting psychological shock my wife and I had to endure, I could not continue my work as a teacher with sincerity. Therefore, I decided to retire under the Circular No.44/90. Thereafter, the conditions of our family worsened. I had to struggle for sustenance for my family of four children.
Chandrika soon resumed the war with the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam]. By 1998, we learned of the crimes committed by the Sri Lankan army against innocent Tamil people in Jaffna. The case of Krishanti Kumaraswamy and her family’s murder at Chemmani shook our souls. Then we realized the extent of the crimes Tamils must have been forced to suffer in the North, sometimes even beyond the crimes committed against our family. Later, Mahinda Rajapaksa continued the war, and his and all succeeding governments praised the mercenaries as ‘Rana Viruvo’ [war heroes]. Throughout, we were silenced.”
He also told us about his experience with the false “human rights” crusaders of the time:
“The orphaned youngest sister of my wife was studying and living with us during that period. Once, in early 1997, I went with her to meet Mahinda Rajapaksa at his Carlton office, seeking his help to find a job for her. My parents had worked for D.A. Rajapaksa and I myself had, as a youth, campaigned for Mahinda’s elections. So, I knew him personally. After waiting a long time to meet him, we forcibly entered his room and informed him of our predicament after the massacre of the family. He shouted at us: ‘Look, these people have worked for the JVP and got themselves killed, and now have come seeking my help to get jobs’. My sister-in-law was crying. She never received a job from him, nor any assistance.”
The other surviving daughter, Indumathi expressed her first hand experience of the wrath the local politician had toward the family:
“Since my father supported the UNP in elections in late 1988 and early 1989, after the general elections, my father went with me to talk to Danapala Manthree. Our parental home was just a few yards away from his residence. He was the uncle of Ananda Kularathna, then UNP cabinet minister from the Mulkirigala seat. We later came to understand that my brother was at that time full time engaged in the activities of the JVP, which had ordered people not to vote at elections [the provincial council election in the Southern Province was held in June 1988]. Danapala seemingly saw his life as threatened by the JVP and its military wing, Deshapremi Janatha Viyaparaya (DJV). However, villagers say my brother never left any room for harm to be inflicted upon anybody in the village, not even on those who envied our family. Danapala ferociously denied any help in finding jobs for me or anyone else in our family. He shouted: ‘There is a terrorist in your house. If it were not for Weda Mahattaya, you and your house would already have been reduced to ashes.’
But, neither my parents nor anybody even dreamt of an impending massacre, because we had not heard of such incidents before.
About two days before the bombing of our home, my elder sister Neela sent me a letter saying that the previous day there had been a bomb blast in the area targeting the army, which had killed several soldiers. My sister wrote that now they felt their lives were also in danger. I think the day she posted that letter was the day she and Hichchi visited my eldest sister at her home in Walasmulla. When she sent that letter, our youngest sister was with me at my house. So, her life was saved.”
Sunitha, the youngest surviving daughter and now a teacher, tearfully recalled her loving parents, her brother, and the harassment by the armed forces:
“My father was a Bodhisattva [a reference to the noble lives of Buddha before enlightenment]. As a skilled physician, sought after by people from different parts of the country, I witnessed how miraculously he saved the lives of many patients who had been brought after snakebites. I also saw how skillfully he cured limb and arm injuries caused by various accidents. My mother was the perfect match for my father. Like a goddess, she was dedicated day and night to treating patients.
Our father had written and published a couple of Veda Grantha [medicinal books]. They were written in verse form. Sarpa Visha Sanharaya I and II [Neutralizing Serpent Venom], Bilindu Roga Sanharaya [Treating Pediatric Illnesses] were very popular, and Manthra Sathakaya [Hundred Mantras] is a book still being sold in bookstores.
He never harmed anybody, not even an insect. I cannot understand how cruel one must be to aim a weapon at such a man of glory and kill him. This world is cursed!
My brother was very handsome. He was always helpful and empathetic toward others. He was a leader to the village youth. Sometimes, village youth even betrayed him, not because of any wrongdoing he committed, but to save themselves when they were arrested for small disputes and fights.
About ten months before the massacre of our family, the chief of the Katuwana Army Camp came to our former house with other soldiers and asked my father to remove all necessary belongings, as they were going to burn our house at 7:00 p.m. that night. My father pleaded with him: “Do not harm us. If my son has done anything wrong, you may punish him.” But they burned our house. The house by the side of Rukmalpitiya Road, where our family was living at the time of the massacre, was built later, about a hundred meters away from the former house on the same road.
I remember, during the period of state terror, the army often intruded into our home and searched everywhere inside. We were always terrorized. They knew very well that my brother was not there, and that only our elderly parents and we girls were present. They questioned us about our brother and even searched for books. Sometimes, they even came in the middle of the night while we were sleeping. Then they would ask us to turn off the lamps (kerosene lamps) and search here and there.”
A systematized killing spree
In both the South and the North, the Sri Lankan ruling elite deployed the full apparatus of the state—the military and police, death squads, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and Emergency Regulations—to eliminate perceived threats to capitalist rule from the political right and, above all, against the innocent rural poor and the oppressed. Theorizing the causes of large scale disappearances during the period, Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report in December 1997 stated,
“[U]nder the emergency regulations, all restraints on law enforcement officers were removed, and the power to dispose of dead bodies was left to the sole discretion of these officers. Judicial supervision was suspended. There were no provisions even to keep records of the disposed bodies.”
The report further stated as follows:
“Disappearances were the result of a very deliberate policy and were implemented meticulously according to a plan. Law enforcement officers received instructions to arrest, kill and dispose of the bodies. Enacting emergency regulations made this legally possible. The police were constantly coached to carry out killings, and there were methods of supervising how many were to be killed in each area. Incentives were given through the distribution of money for killer squads.
Liquor was also provided to these squads to keep them in a mood conducive to participation in such activities. Lists of those who were to be killed were distributed. Special interrogations were held in special places for interrogation. In many instances, the decision to kill was made during these interrogations, and people were murdered in the secret surroundings of these places. Law enforcement officers mingled with illegal elements in undertaking these activities. Politicians were given direct access to these groups so that they could execute the wishes of these politicians.”
The Commission Report and the Buried Lists
In November 1994, president Kumaratunga appointed three presidential commissions to inquire into incidents of involuntary removals or disappearances of persons after 1 January 1988. The commission chaired by Manouri Muttetuwegama inquired into incidents in Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa Provinces.
In response to the Commission’s request to provide information on the officers who were attached to the Katuwana Army Camp at the time, on 30 June 1997, the Army replied “not mentioned” in their records—the same answer given in response to most of the other camps. The Commission did not take any further steps to obtain the information from the Army.
The alleged perpetrators of these crimes were shielded by the very recommendations of the Commission itself. While the Commission “found the information and material upon which the allegations of the witnesses were based to be prima facie credible,” it nevertheless stated: “we recommend that the lists of names of persons alleged to have been responsible for involuntary removals or disappearances sent by us under separate cover be not published,” until further investigations were carried out. No such “further investigations” were ever undertaken by Kumaratunga’s government or by successive governments, thereby granting the perpetrators lifelong impunity and protection to commit further crimes. To this day, these confidential lists and the witness testimonies remain undisclosed to the public.
theSocialist.lk has pointed out the class character of the government’s policies of repression during the counterinsurgency in the South, which were later carried forward against the ethnic Tamil population in the North and East, in order to defend the capitalist unitary state and the interests of finance capital.
These atrocities of the capitalist state cannot—and could not—be prevented, nor justice established, without the abolition of the parasitic state, its military, police, laws, and capitalist class rule. This is the historic task of the working class, rallying behind it the petty bourgeoisie and the oppressed masses, as part of the united struggle of the South Asian and international working class for socialist policies.
Chemmani Mass Graves on August 01, 2025. Photo courtesy of Kumanan Kana Facebook page.
At the close of the 28th day of the second phase of excavations at the newly uncovered Chemmani–Ariyalai “Siththupaththi” Hindu Cemetery mass grave in Jaffna, 147 skeletons have been exhumed—among them toddlers, children, and babies less than twelve months old. The remains were unearthed in a pit as shallow as two feet, scattered without order—some bodies stacked atop one another, some with bent limbs suggesting they were buried alive. All were stripped of clothing, with clear signs of on-the-spot killings of women alongside their babies, hurried burials, and accompanied by chilling artifacts: a school bag identical to those donated by UNESCO in the 1990s, a baby’s toy and a feeding bottle, small glass bangles, socks, slippers, a suspected machine gun barrel, and fractured skulls. These discoveries, together with already available reports and evidence, leave no doubt that these were not the victims of natural disaster or random violence, but of a systematic, state-organised campaign of mass murder.
The ongoing excavation, conducted under the supervision of Jaffna Magistrate A.A. Anandarajah and led by archaeologist Professor Raj Somadeva, was temporarily halted on August 6 and is scheduled to resume on August 22. On August 3 and 4, this writer visited the site and spoke directly with the Magistrate; J. Thathparan, Executive Director of the Office of Missing Persons (OMP); and Professor Somadeva. All confirmed the significance of the discovery—not only for the scale of barbarism and human tragedy it reveals, but also for the irrefutable evidence it provides of crimes committed against innocent civilians.
From left at the Chemmani grave site, August 3, 2025: Jaffna Magistrate A.A. Anandarajah; J. Thathparan, Executive Director of the Office of Missing Persons (OMP); and the writer. Photo credit Kumanan Kana facebook page.
Chemmani from 1998 to today: Linking State Military to the Graves
One does not have to grope around to relate these mass graves to the Sri Lankan armed forces who occupied Jaffna after 1995. It is an indisputable fact—even acknowledged by ultra-right Sinhala racists—that mass graves exist and massacres were carried out by the state military. Alarmed by the Chemmani exhumations, racist warmonger Udaya Gammanpila, leader of the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya and a former minister, told the media: “The North is war-ravaged, so mass graves will appear anywhere. Digging them up and commenting [on them] is pointless and a waste of money.”
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reported in December 1997: “The fate of about 600 people who disappeared from Jaffna Peninsula in recent times is unknown”. The name “Chemmani” entered the world’s attention in July 1998, when Sri Lanka Army Corporal Dewage Somaratna Rajapaksha, convicted for the rape and murder of 18-year-old Tamil schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, told the Colombo High Court: “We didn’t kill anyone. We only buried bodies. We can show you where 300 to 400 bodies have been buried.”
In Jaffna Magistrate Court, just prior to exhumations in June 1999, he said, “I can show you how people were arrested in Ariyalai, tortured and buried…I can show you 10 places in Chemmani where bodies are buried. The other four convicted with me can show another six places.”
Rajapaksha’s testimony exposed a network of clandestine mass graves in the Jaffna area, containing hundreds of civilians who had “disappeared” following the Sri Lankan military’s recapture of the peninsula in 1995. In the late 1990s, limited excavations at Chemmani confirmed the remains of 15 individuals, but political obstruction, witness intimidation, procedural impediments, and the deliberate tampering with evidence ensured that most sites remained untouched for over two decades—like many other mass graves scattered across the country.
The present Ariyalai mass grave—only a short distance from the original Chemmani site—confirms the truth of Rajapaksha’s claims and directly links the Sri Lankan army to these atrocities. Media reports from the period documented hundreds of Tamil civilians vanishing after being stopped at military checkpoints and round-ups. The close proximity of the central army camp at Chemmani at the time, few yards away from the burial site, random placement of the skeletons, absence of clothing, a military item found with the bodies, and evidence of blunt force trauma all fit the established pattern of military abductions, torture, and summary executions.
The fractured skull of a victim found on August 6, 2025 at the Chemmani mass grave. Photo credit: Shabeer Mohamed.
State repression: from the North to the South
The AHRC documented the systematic nature of disappearances, noting in December 1997 that more than 16,700 cases had been verified in the South during the 1988–90 counterinsurgency against the fascist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). Only in isolated instances were prosecutions initiated against the perpetrators, and almost all of these resulted in no convictions. In both the South and the North, the Sri Lankan ruling elite deployed the full apparatus of the state—the military and police, death squads, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and emergency regulations that served as a legal licence to kill and dispose of bodies with impunity, along with the use of mass graves—to eliminate perceived threats to capitalist rule from the political right and, above all, against the innocent rural poor and the oppressed.
There were, however, differences in the methods of disposal. In the South, tyre pyres—burning corpses in public—were used to terrorise the population and demonstrate the cost of defiance. In the North and East, the army often concealed its crimes, burying the bodies in remote or controlled areas to evade scrutiny while continuing the repression.
These were not “excesses” or “aberrations,” but the outcome of deliberate class policy. The AHRC identified seven patterns behind disappearances, including direct political decisions to eliminate thousands as a precondition for introducing free-market economic policies, and the use of 1965 Indonesian-style mass killings as a model for repression.
Successive governments, shared crimes
The Chemmani mass graves, like nearly two dozen others uncovered around the island, indict not only the military but every government—UNP, SLFP, SLPP, and now NPP/JVP—that has presided over a regime of impunity for state violence.
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which today attempts to posture as a “clean” and democratic force, played a key role in the nationalist, chauvinist, and militarist campaigns that legitimised repression in both the North and the South—at least since July 1987, when the reactionary Indo–Sri Lanka Accord was signed. The JVP did so while entering into coalition governments with former presidents Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. The JVP’s hands are soaked in the blood of Tamils. Its current silence on Chemmani speaks volumes about its real class allegiance—to the capitalist state and imperialism, which it defends against the working class and the poor.
Militarization, Intimidation, and Suppression
In the South, it was only after 1994—when President Kumaratunga came to power with phony pledges of truth and justice to the families of the disappeared—that limited space was opened for victims of state terror under the UNP government and of JVP fascists to lodge even police complaints. Soon, the military was elevated to the highest esteem by the People’s Alliance (PA) government in resuming the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The continued militarization and repression in the North did not spare the South, where abductions were commonplace under president Rajapaksa’s reinvigorated war, keeping the working class and all dissenters in a state of terror. All throughout, the JVP waged a sinister chauvinist campaign supporting the war. Today, retired military officers have largely found a safe haven under the JVP/NPP government. These were the conditions that prevented the aggrieved relatives of the disappeared from pursuing judicial processes, while the police and military actively intervened to block prosecutions.
Nationalist traps and the dead-end of appeals to imperialism
Neither Tamil nationalist organisations operating in the North or Colombo, nor the Tamil diaspora—whose real aim is to secure an elite self-rule in the North and East to safeguard their privileges against the Tamil working class and poor—offer any way forward. Their appeals to the United Nations, Western governments, and international human rights bodies have only been pretexts, largely for US imperialism to exert pressure on Colombo into submission. These are the very same imperialist powers that provided military, intelligence, and diplomatic backing to Colombo during the war.
Similarly, Sinhala nationalism justifies past and present massacres under the cover of “protecting the unitary state” and defending “national security.” Both ethnic nationalisms serve to divide the working class, the only social force capable of ending the cycle of repression and impunity.
Massacres as class war
Like the massacres in the South during 1988–90, those in the North and East during the 1983–2009 anti-Tamil civil war were not simply crimes committed against an ethnic minority, but primarily acts of class war. The victims—whether rural Sinhala youth accused of JVP links, or Tamil villagers suspected of aiding the LTTE—were overwhelmingly drawn from the working class, unemployed youth and oppressed rural poor. Their elimination was intended to crush political opposition and terrorise the masses into accepting the “open economy” policies demanded by the local bourgeoisie and international finance capital.
As the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has emphatically explained, there has been—and will be—no justice for the victims of the South without justice for the victims of the North, and vice versa. The capitalist state, founded in 1948 on communal division, cannot and will not prosecute itself.
The way forward: a socialist programme for the working class and the Oppressed
The ICFI advances a clear perspective for ending repression and securing genuine justice: the independent political mobilisation of the working class, uniting Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim workers in the struggle for a Sri Lanka–Eelam United Socialist States, as part of the Union of Socialist Republics of South Asia.
This requires building a revolutionary party grounded in the Trotskyist programme of permanent revolution, fighting to unite the oppressed rural and urban poor, along with unemployed youth, behind the leadership of the working class. The middle class and petty bourgeoisie must break from nationalist illusions and join forces with their true class brothers and sisters, both nationally and internationally.
The truth is that justice will not come from The Hague, Geneva, or Washington, but from the victory of the working class over the capitalist system that breeds war, dictatorship, and mass murder. The graves at Chemmani are not merely relics of past atrocities—they are a warning of what the Sri Lankan state will resort to again if the working class suffers another defeat. This is not a distant possibility but a living reality, demonstrated before our eyes in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians by imperialist-backed Zionist Israel.
Reposted below is the WSWS.org Perspective published here on August 08, 2025.
Palestinians struggle to get food and humanitarian aid from the back of a truck as it moves along the Morag corridor near Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025 [AP Photo/Mariam Dagga]
The decision by the security cabinet of Israel’s fascistic government to expand its military occupation of the Gaza Strip will mean death for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and presages their final ethnic cleansing. Workers and young people who want to stop this barbarism must construct a socialist movement in the working class against the Zionist regime and its imperialist patrons.
The phased plan proposes the military conquest of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, Khan Younis and other refugee camps, where at least a million displaced Palestinians are located. Responding to tactical concerns expressed by the Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir of an unnecessary loss of military personnel and endangering the 20 hostages still held by Hamas, open talk of permanent annexation has given way to a proposal to hold the captured areas for five months with a new security perimeter set up inside the enclave, while Hamas is eliminated and the remaining hostages are freed. This is to be followed supposedly by some unspecified form of Arab control.
Behind this rhetorical shift, mass murder and ethnic cleansing are still on the order of the day. The IDF has already issued new enforced displacement orders in parts of Gaza City in the north and Khan Younis in the south. A military spokesman said ground troops were preparing to “expand the scope of combat operations.”
One million people, around half of the enclave’s population, will initially be driven south toward the Mawasi “humanitarian zone”—a concentration camp—after which a military offensive will be launched in the ethnically cleansed area. Many of these people, who are already starving and have been displaced multiple times since the genocide began, will die en route.
This is a genocide carried out by the Zionist regime but made in Washington, Berlin and London.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to escalate the extermination and expulsion of the Palestinians is made possible by the unconditional support his government enjoys from the imperialist powers that have flooded weapons and other war materiel to the Zionist regime. Indeed, President Trump greenlighted Netanyahu’s plan when he declared on August 5, “So Israel is going to have to make a decision. … It’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.”
Since the outset of Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza in October 2023, the imperialist governments have combined their arming of Israel with efforts to crush popular opposition to the genocide at home by deploying police violence and smear campaigns branding anti-genocide activists as “antisemites.”
But the decades-long support for the Zionist regime by the imperialist powers goes back to the creation in 1948 of a Jewish-exclusivist state in the British mandate of Palestine. As the Fourth International explained in May 1948, the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and Arab territories “is a compromise between the imperialist robbers” in the US and Britain aimed at securing their positions in the region. Partition would “throttle the anti-imperialist fight of the masses, while Zionists and Arab feudalists will vie for imperialist favours,” the Fourth International warned.
Nearly eight decades on, the imperialists can only preserve Israel as a bridgehead for their domination over the Middle East by backing the annihilation of the Palestinians.
The determination on the part of Washington and its European accomplices to facilitate the genocide and crack down on any opposition flows from their desperate striving to advance their predatory economic and geopolitical interests amid a global capitalist breakdown. The same antagonisms between the major powers that led to two world wars in the last century have created the conditions for a third imperialist world war, which threatens the very survival of humanity.
The initial stages of this conflict are well underway, with the genocide of the Palestinians serving as a component of US imperialism’s push to secure unchallenged hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. At the same time, the imperialist gangsters are waging a war against Russia with the aim of reducing it to a semi-colonial status and preparing a war on China to block its economic rise. The imperialists’ readiness to sanction the slaughter of an entire people provides an indication of the barbarism of which they are capable in pursuit of raw materials, markets, pools of labour and geostrategic influence.
The despotic Arab regimes continue to vie for imperialist favours and are deeply complicit in mass murder. For the Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi and other Gulf ruling elites, their main concern is to serve as junior partners in Washington’s war of regional conquest and plunder, forming an anti-Iranian alliance, without provoking an upsurge of the oppressed Arab working class against their rule. Thus their refusal to offer any opposition to the genocide beyond hypocritical statements of concern and proposals to orchestrate the expulsion of the Palestinians, i.e., carry out a crime against humanity more “humanely.” On the very day that Netanyahu discussed the expansion of military operations in Gaza with his security cabinet, Egypt inked a joint deal with the Zionist regime for the export of natural gas worth an estimated $35 billion.
The Zionists and their imperialist paymasters have succeeded for nearly two years in carrying through their criminal “final solution” of the Palestinian question thanks above all to the despicable conduct of the social democratic parties, trade unions and their political hangers-on. Parties like Labour in Britain and Germany’s Social Democrats that are in government have supplied Netanyahu’s fascist regime with weapons and military equipment and outlawed popular opposition. The trade unions in all of the major imperialist centres have systematically suppressed opposition in the working class to the genocide, ignoring the appeal of Palestinian trade unions at its outset for global solidarity actions to halt Israel’s onslaught.
Millions of workers and young people have taken to the streets around the world to express their outrage over the genocide. However, the social democratic and Stalinist parties, as well as the pseudo-left organisations and campaign groups in their orbit, have shackled protesters to the bankrupt strategy of moral appeals meant to pressure the very imperialist war criminals responsible for butchering the Palestinians.
The urgent task facing the working class in the imperialist centres is to mobilise its immense social power to halt the Gaza genocide and the war machine responsible for its implementation. Workers throughout manufacturing, transportation, and other key sectors must organise themselves in defiance of the union bureaucracy to fight for the following demands:
An immediate halt to shipment of all weapons to Israel.
The boycott of all trade and other economic activity with Israel.
US, European and other corporations assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide must be indicted and prosecuted.
The arrest of Israeli officials for war crimes.
The end of repression of the opposition to the Gaza genocide.
The immediate and unhindered access to Gaza for the supply of aid via all available land crossings.
These demands can only be enforced through the initiation of an industrial and political struggle by the working class. This week’s strike at Boeing, at the very heart of the US war machine, underscores the real basis for the development of a mass movement against imperialist war and the horrendous crimes it produces.
Strikes and a refusal to produce and handle goods destined for Israel must be combined with sustained efforts to broaden the struggle to other sections of workers and young people. Resolutions should be adopted by workers and delegations sent to other workplaces aimed at mobilising the working class all over the world to stop imperialist barbarism by taking up the fight for socialism.
Reposted below is the article published on wsws.org here on July 11, 2025.
President Donald Trump meets with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at Trump Tower, Sept. 27, 2024, in New York. [AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson]
In a complete about-face from the position his administration declared last week, United States President Donald Trump announced on Monday that his government would continue to send weapons to Kiev in order to fuel the ongoing proxy war against Russia that has killed hundreds of thousands in its over three-year history.
“We’re gonna send some more weapons we have to them, they have to be able to defend themselves, they’re getting hit very hard now,” Trump told reporters during a meeting of US and Israeli officials at the White House.
Later that day, the Pentagon released its own statement confirming more war materiel would be sent to Ukraine, likewise contradicting its previous statements that aid had been paused.
“At President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops,” it stated.
While initial reports from Politico cited Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby as the Trump official responsible for the weapons halt last week, shortly thereafter NBC News named Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the individual who made the decision, as part of a “capability review,” to unilaterally halt shipments to Ukraine starting on July 2.
According to the Washington Post, included in the items being held back from Ukraine were over two dozen Patriot air defense missiles, over two dozen Stinger air defense systems, precision artillery rounds, Hellfire missiles, drones and more than 90 AIM air-to-air missiles that Ukraine launches from F-16 fighter jets. These were reportedly already in Poland and being prepped for delivery to Ukraine when the order to cease was declared.
The move, which was roundly criticized by the Ukrainian government, was later confirmed by both the Pentagon and White House, with Trump’s press secretary stating that the decision “was made to put America’s interests first following a (U.S. Defense Department) review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe.”
As has become typical of his crisis-plagued, criminal presidency, Trump later performed an about-face while speaking to a NY Times reporter last Friday.
“Why did you pause weapons shipments to Ukraine?” the journalist asked Trump as he was boarding Air Force One.
“We haven’t,” Trump replied, flatly contradicting multiple previous statements from his own government. “We’re giving weapons.”
Trump’s 180-degree foreign policy turn is being publicly celebrated by the right-wing dictatorial government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, following a disastrous public meeting at the White House between the two presidents, who was just months ago was accusing Trump of living in a Russian “disinformation space.”
On Tuesday, Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s closest presidential advisor, vociferously hailed Trump as the “only leader” who can pressure Russia to end the war on Ukrainian terms in an interview with the NY Post.
“I always knew that the two presidents share a lot in common. They have many of the things that they see the same way—they just need to talk more,” he said. “There was a brilliant meeting in the Vatican, and then several phone calls, and then meeting in The Hague, and so all that is the work to understand each other more deeply.
“And you know, certain events had to unfold, certain conversations had to happen—including conversations with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”
Yermak’s glowing description of Trump is a tacit admission that both the war and the Zelensky government itself are highly dependent on the continuation of US military and financial aid.
Despite having been allocated $182.8 billion in US support since the beginning of the full-scale war in February 2022, the Ukrainian government continues to be totally dependent on foreign aid to function.
Speaking Wednesday at the 2025 Ukraine Recovery Conference, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal underlined the critical financial situation of the country.
“The total financial resource for defence and security in 2025 will amount to nearly US$50 billion. That is 26% of GDP,” the prime minister stated.
The weapons procurement budget is also at a record-high $16.4 billion, while the state’s own revenue is projected to be just $48.5 billion.
“Thus, external financing is critically important for us, as it allows Ukraine to allocate its own resources directed at defending our country,” Shmyhal said.
Shmyhal also noted that Ukraine has already secured $22 billion in foreign aid for 2025. But it needs more for next year.
“Meanwhile, 2026 remains a challenge. Our external financing needs will stay above $40 billion. The key task is to develop mechanisms and instruments that will make it possible to raise these funds.”
As Trump has demonstrated, despite his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours,” he is just as committed to war as his predecessors, as long as it maximizes the interests of US capitalism.
Reposted below is the article published on wsws.org here on July 04, 2025.
The House of Representatives gave final approval to President Trump’s tax and spending bill Thursday, with a 218-214 vote that fell nearly along party lines. Republicans backed the legislation by 218-2 and all 212 Democrats opposed it.
The bill cuts taxes for the wealthy by $3 trillion, slashes more than $1 trillion from social spending on Medicaid and food stamps and pours $300 billion more into military violence abroad and domestic repression, particularly against immigrants.
Trump plans to sign the legislation Friday morning in a fascist-style ceremony drenched in Fourth of July hoopla, topped off with a flyover by B-2 bombers, the same warplanes that he ordered to attack Iran barely 10 days ago.
The bill was unchanged from the version passed by the Senate two days before, despite the clamor from the fascistic House Freedom Caucus that it did not sufficiently cut the federal deficit, while more than a dozen Republican “moderates” deplored the cuts, particularly in Medicaid, as too large.
In the end, however, nearly every Republican fell in line with the dictates of the White House, with Trump threatening to purge anyone who voted against his principal legislative initiative by supporting primary challengers against them. Underlying the political bullying was the deluge of online threats against anyone who might oppose the bill, including threats of violence.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, addressing the House just before the vote, delivered an anti-communist tirade in which he declared that the United States was the first country to be founded on religious principles, pointing to the slogan “In God We Trust” embossed on the wall of the chamber (put up not by the Founding Fathers but by the McCarthyite witch-hunters of the 1950s and early 1960s).
As the WSWS explained when the bill passed the Senate:
The bill is one of the largest transfers of wealth from workers and the poor to the oligarchy in US history. It calls for $930 billion in cuts to the Medicaid program, which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will deprive 11.8 million low-income and disabled workers of medical care.
It also includes $285 billion in food stamp cuts, a 20 percent reduction in a program on which 40 million Americans rely to feed themselves and their families. Nearly 11 million people, including 4 million children, could lose food assistance.
While the Democratic Party claimed to oppose the bill and every Democrat in the House and Senate voted against it, there was no serious effort by the party leadership to mobilize popular opposition.
The Democrats did not call a single protest in Washington or in any way alert the American population to the onslaught against their living standards and right to access healthcare services that this legislation authorizes. Instead, they engaged in a handful of futile gestures on Capitol Hill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delivered an eight-hour and 32-minute “speech” opposing the Trump bill, breaking the previous record for such a performance, but this only delayed passage in the House until Thursday afternoon. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did even less, making a parliamentary point of order that led to a change in the name of the bill, which the Republicans wished to call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” in tribute to Trump’s sloganeering.
The real attitude of these gentlemen to the fascist in the White House was demonstrated in the weeks leading up to the passage of the tax and spending bill.
In the Senate, Schumer intervened to break a parliamentary deadlock over a so-called Continuing Resolution, legislation required to provide funds to keep the government running. He led a group of Democrats to give the Republicans a 60-vote majority needed for passage.
In the House, Jeffries mobilized a majority of the Democratic caucus to vote against a resolution to impeach Trump for ordering air strikes on Iran without seeking congressional authorization, let alone the constitutionally required declaration of war.
If the congressional arithmetic were reversed, with Democrats holding a narrow majority in each house over the Republicans, the Democrats would not even have attempted to push through their supposed priorities over Republican opposition.
It should be recalled, for example, that the Biden administration was unable to enact either an increase in the federal minimum wage, significant debt forgiveness for college student loans, or measures to curb police violence after the nationwide protests against the police murder of George Floyd, because one or two right-wing Democratic senators blocked the legislation.
The spinelessness of the Democratic Party cannot by itself explain the passage of this monstrous legislation. The Democrats were responding to their real constituencies, Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, and not to the working people whom they claim to defend.
The corporate oligarchs wanted the Trump tax cuts, enacted in 2017 and set to expire at the end of this year, made permanent. The legislation guarantees the 21 percent corporate tax rate and includes a treasure chest of other pro-corporate provisions that allow giant companies and billionaires to pay taxes at lower rates than factory workers and school teachers.
There is considerable discontent on Wall Street that the tax cuts will be financed largely through borrowing, since the spending cuts are to be phased in over a 10-year period and in any case do not come close to the $4 trillion windfall for the wealthy. But it is well understood that the cuts in Medicaid and food stamps are only a down payment, and that even more savage cuts are being prepared in future years, targeting Social Security and Medicare, the two largest social spending programs.
As to the military-police aspects of the legislation, roughly equal sums of about $150 billion each are provided for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS funds will go to finish building the wall on the US-Mexico border begun during Trump’s first term, and to build a network of concentration camps to detain the millions of immigrants Trump and his fascist aides Stephen Miller and Tom Homan plan to round up and expel.
The Pentagon funds will be used at least in part to begin work on Trump’s proposed anti-missile program. This is not a “defensive” measure but a direct preparation for nuclear war, since it would encourage a US nuclear attack on a foreign antagonist, such as Russia or China, in the illusion that the US would survive a retaliatory strike.
The Democrats have said virtually nothing about either measure, because they support the massive build-up of both the US military machine and the apparatus of domestic repression directed against immigrants and the working class as a whole. They have criticized Trump only for his most overtly fascistic methods of attacking immigrants, and for his shifting the focus of US foreign policy away from the war against Russia in Ukraine and towards the Middle East and China.
There are a raft of anti-democratic measures incorporated into the 950-page bill, which the WSWS will analyze in the coming days. One provision stands out immediately: The bill authorizes the Trump administration to terminate all federal funding for healthcare services through Planned Parenthood clinics. That is a longstanding demand of the fascist right, which seeks to bankrupt Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion services, by cutting off funding for its non-abortion healthcare operations as well.
We repost below the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board statement published on wsws.org here on June 23, 2025
A B-2 stealth bomber conducts a flyover on the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, July 4, 2020, in Washington. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]
June 22, 2025 is a day that will live in infamy. In a massive and unprovoked assault, the United States launched a sneak attack on Iran, dropping the most powerful non-nuclear bunker-buster bombs ever used in combat on Iranian nuclear energy facilities. This act of aggression is the continuation and escalation of the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, and threatens to engulf the entire Middle East and set the world on fire.
Codenamed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” the assault involved more than 125 aircraft, including at least eight B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, backed by fighter jets, refueling tankers and surveillance aircraft, in what was the largest B-2 strike operation in US history.
The centerpiece of the attack was the deployment of the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 13.6-ton bunker-busting bomb—the most powerful non-nuclear weapon of its kind ever used. Twelve MOPs were dropped on the heavily fortified Fordow uranium enrichment site, and two more on Natanz. These were accompanied by numerous 2,900-pound Tomahawk missiles, which rained down on both facilities as well as the Isfahan research complex.
US President Donald Trump justified his attack in a four-minute homicidal, lying rant, delivered Saturday night. Announcing that US forces had struck three nuclear facilities, he claimed they were part of a “horribly destructive enterprise” which was supposedly necessary to “stop the nuclear threat” posed by Iran.
In fact, these sites are part of Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program, developed in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and subject to international inspection. For years, the United States’ own intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran was not actively pursuing nuclear weapons. But in the tradition of the Bush administration’s lies about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Trump once again invoked fabricated threats to justify extraordinarily reckless acts of unprovoked aggression.
Trump boasted of the “spectacular military success” of the attack, which he intended to serve as a message to the entire region, declaring that “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.”
The reference to Iran as the “bully of the Middle East” turns reality on its head. For over a third of a century, US imperialism has been at war and carried out regime change operations throughout the region, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Over the past two years, the Israeli government has waged a genocidal war in Gaza with continuous US support, slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians. This has been merely a dress rehearsal for a broader campaign of mass murder.
Having just launched an unprovoked military strike against a sovereign nation in flagrant violation of international law, Trump now demands “peace”! By this, he means “unconditional surrender,” as he demanded last week—that is, the turning over of the country to direct imperialist dominance. On Sunday, Trump explicitly called for “regime change” in Iran, following his threat last week to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei.
Trump declared, “For 40 years”—since the overthrow of the US-backed Shah—“Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel,’” and proclaimed that “hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East … have died as a direct result of their hate.” The carnage Trump blames on Iran is in fact the outcome of successive US wars and interventions, under Democrats and Republicans, that have devastated entire societies. It is not Iran that has inflicted “hundreds of thousands” of deaths—it is the United States.
The strikes were directly coordinated with the fascist Israeli government, which is continuing to launch missile attacks on Iran. As Trump stated, “We worked as a team as perhaps no team has worked before.” Just prior to Trump’s remarks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement hailing the US airstrikes and thanking Trump, declaring that the two were pursuing a policy of “Peace through strength: First comes strength, then comes peace.” In other words, slaughter and terror must precede submission.
Trump concluded with a naked threat of further violence: “There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran. … Remember, there are many targets left.” The logical next step in this campaign of destruction is the use of tactical nuclear weapons—an option the Trump administration has repeatedly declared is “not off the table.”
Saturday’s attack makes clear that there are no red lines for American imperialism, which will stop at nothing. Its criminality knows no limits. No government has so openly and flagrantly violated international law since the Nazi regime.
The bombing of Iran is a central component of an escalating global war. It is not a question of warning of the danger of a new world war—it has already begun. American imperialism is seeking to resolve its deepening internal social and political crisis through military aggression. Having targeted Iran, the logic of imperialist war is leading inevitably to confrontation with China. Regime change in Iran is aimed at securing unchallenged control over the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the broader Eurasian landmass—regions rich in oil, gas and critical trade routes.
Trump hailed the strikes as a “spectacular military success,” but in reality, he has embarked on a catastrophic and utterly reckless course of action. Whatever short-term calculations were made by the White House and Pentagon, they have now launched a war whose consequences they cannot control. They have sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind. As with the war against Iraq launched in 2003, American imperialism has a rendezvous with disaster, but on a far larger scale.
It remains to be seen how Iran will respond, as well as its close allies, Russia and China. Iran’s parliament has moved to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant share of the world’s oil supply passes—an action that will send global energy markets into turmoil and could trigger a global recession. For years, the passivity of the Iranian bourgeois government—marked by appeals for negotiations and the avoidance of direct confrontation—has emboldened US imperialism.
Whatever the immediate response of Iran, Russia and China, however, the decisive issue is the reaction of the international working class. The most significant and far-reaching impact of Saturday’s attack will be on the consciousness of billions of people throughout the world. This act of imperialist aggression is already provoking mass outrage, expressed on all social media platforms and through initial protests that took place throughout the US on Sunday.
The war on Iran follows nearly two years of expanding global opposition to the genocide in Gaza. It exposes beyond any doubt the thoroughly criminal character of American foreign policy. The United States is increasingly seen by billions of workers throughout the world as a criminal government that operates outside of all legal restraint. The myth that American imperialism defends “freedom” or “democracy” lies forever in the past.
The war will pour gasoline on the already raging social and political crises in the United States, across Europe and around the world. It is the action of a regime ruled by and for the financial oligarchy. As it bombs and murders abroad, the Trump administration is dismantling democratic rights at home and erecting a political dictatorship. The Democratic Party, the so-called opposition, is paralyzed and complicit—paralyzed by its fear of the working class and complicit in the aims of imperialism.
Mass opposition is emerging. Just one week before the bombing of Iran, millions participated in the largest anti-government demonstrations in American history. The question is not whether opposition exists, but how it can be organized, directed and armed with a political perspective. The immense anger and revulsion provoked by the bombing must be transformed into a conscious political movement of the working class, linking the fight against war and dictatorship to the struggle against capitalism.
The working class is the social force that must be mobilized to stop imperialist barbarism. The criminal war being waged against Iran is not an aberration, but the product of the entire capitalist system. It must be halted through the unified global struggle of the working class, organized across all national boundaries.
The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties call for an immediate end to the US-Israeli war against Iran and the dismantling of the entire imperialist war machine. We urge workers and youth to organize protests, walkouts and strikes in every country.
Imperialism is plunging the world into barbarism and criminality. It is not a matter of reforming a bankrupt system, but of overthrowing it through the conscious and organized struggle of the working class for power. The alternative to war and dictatorship is socialism. What is needed is the building of a new revolutionary leadership to lead this movement forward, and to make socialism—the democratic control of the economy by the working class in the interests of all humanity—the guiding principle of a new social order.
