By Jerónimo Carrera
Introduction and translation by Marion Baur
At the UZ Festival of 2009 in Dortmund I met Carolus Wimmer (see last edition of Unity). The German-born international secretary of the Communist Party of Venezuela was one of the most interesting representatives of sister parties at the Fest. During a discussion of the worldwide political situation Carolus drew my attention to the following piece of writing by Jéronimo Carrera, president of the Venezuelan party.
In a situation where the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—isolated and constantly boycotted by the capitalist world as it has been for over fifty years now—is being targeted by an increased hate campaign, driven by the warlords of the “free world,” it seems very important to me that communists create counter-publicity. Unfortunately, even on the political left many people turn silent when it comes to the DPRK, and especially the country’s ownership of nuclear weapons.
For space reasons I have slightly abridged Jéronimo Carrera’s article.
Amongst the loud noise and constant “excitement” of political debates, in Venezuela and elsewhere, things have become quiet—too quiet—concerning one of mankind’s biggest and most dangerous problems: the existence of nuclear weapons. Internationally we observe a growing tendency to accept these arms as a normal and justifiable addition to conventional weapons. People are made to take it for granted that it is a certain small group of big countries that have the right to own and produce these weapons—the privileged imperialist members of the nuclear club and a few of their selected satellite states.
The astonishing acceptance of this dangerous and illegal situation by large parts of the “international community” must be challenged. International law (see the charter of the United Nations) is based on the equality of states and doesn’t separate them into big and small, more or less powerful, etc. I think the demonisation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea doesn’t event stand the test of their own international law.
When some of the imperialist satellite states—Israel, India, Pakistan—obtained nuclear weapons there was no scandal, no accusations.
We need to ask very publicly why nuclear warheads in the hands of large powers, especially those of the United States and Russia, are supposed to have stopped being a threat to world peace whilst posing such a threat when being owned by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (and Iran for that matter).
And we need to condemn over and again the dirty attempt by the rulers of the USA to make the world forget that their country has been the only one to use nuclear weapons for attack.
Many years have gone by since those days in August 1945 when US warplanes attacked the people of Japan—civilians, not soldiers—and murdered hundreds of thousands in the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The memory of these nuclear mass murders must be kept alive for generations to come.
Of course it is our aim to abolish all weapons of mass destruction. But in the present situation the position of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a challenge against the absurd and imperialist-driven separation of the world into “good” states, which have a right to manufacture and own nuclear weapons, and “bad” ones, which don’t—like separating the world into grown-ups and children.
To stand up against this separation, to challenge it, is pure bravery by our Korean comrades. I wish to applaud it.