Vol. 80/No. 4      February 1, 2016

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

February 1, 1991

TOKYO — Forty-six years after the end of Japan’s colonial rule over Korea, Koreans in this country still face deep discrimination and denial of basic rights.

During the past decade many protests targeted the mandatory fingerprinting of all Korean residents in Japan, most of whom are considered “aliens” by the government. Not limited to recent immigrants, the measure extends to second- and third-generation Korean residents.

On January 10 the Japanese government announced an agreement to end the fingerprinting requirement next year. However, it will still require identity cards bearing photographs.

Discriminatory policies have driven the 680,000 Koreans, along with an increasing number of immigrant workers from elsewhere in Asia, into inferior economic and social conditions in Japan.

January 31, 1966

Since last October the Indonesian army and right-wing terrorists have perpetrated one of the worst peace-time fratricidal blood baths in history. It is comparable — though on a larger scale — to the reprisals taken by the French capitalists against the Paris working class following the Paris Commune in 1871.

Indonesian President Sukarno admitted Jan. 15 that 87,000 persons were known to have been killed since Oct. 1 in the chain of islands that make up the country, almost all of them members or sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) or of mass organizations affiliated with it. Sukarno said the death toll “was bigger than that of the current Vietnam war.”

All this bloodletting against civilians has taken place without the slightest protest from governments or the press in the capitalist world, including the United States.

February 1, 1941

With this first edition of our enlarged paper, the banner on our masthead is changed from Socialist Appeal to THE MILITANT.

By returning to this name, we symbolize before the workers of America and the revolutionary proletariat throughout the world that our party proclaims today that program of uncompromising international class struggle which we inscribed on our banner from the first moment of our existence.

By this banner, THE MILITANT, we make known to the revolutionary vanguard everywhere that we remain loyal to our common goal and principles.

Our original name was never more appropriate than now. “Militant” implies proletarian activists in the very midst of the class struggle. Our party is today made up of such proletarian activists, and every sign testifies to a new stage of the class struggle in America.  
 
 
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