Bangladesh Is in Literal Chains

In 2012, it was estimated that between 330,000 and 360,000 of our brothers and sisters in Bangladesh are enslaved. Bangladesh is in the top ten countries in which slavery is practiced.

Slavery has historically been concentrated in the countryside, where feudal conditions and traditions are strongest. Landlords hold much of the land and power in the countryside.

We are so poor that we live on a razor’s edge. Many of our families have lost everything, and we all toil under a constant threat of suffering the same fate. We are driven off lands. We are hungry. We are sick. We fall into debt that we can never escape from.

Children are not spared the cruelty of the brutal exploitation. They, as us, are slaves to local landlords, usurers, capitalists, and criminal organizations.

Many flee to the city for a better life only to be met with disappointment. There the feudal barbarism mixes and mingles with the cruelty of liberal capitalism. The city overlords are no more enlightened. Just like the country overlords, they, too, make their living turning our children into beasts of burden. The innocent suffer the most. Sex traffickers steal and force women and children into bondage, at times exporting them to be consumed on the global market. The bodies of our people are just another commodity to empires.

The First World is happy with our people’s slavery. They do not have to feel or see our pain. And they are pleased with cheap goods that fill their homes.

Global corporations say it is good for business to keep the population controlled. Our sweat and tears fuel imperial prosperity. Corrupt politicians do not care about our pain. They do not hear our cries, but only listen to their imperial masters’ orders that pay them well to keep us in chains. Islamists are not touched by the plight of the poor. In their crazy minds they declare slavery to be acceptable and would have us be slaves to their barbaric caliph who feeds on the blood of the people. Feudalists and local capitalists profit from our misery and hold imperial whips. Liberal NGOs use our pain to extend capitalist control over our lives.

We say NO to slavery, poverty, hunger, violence, disease, ignorance, cruelty! We are the ones who create the wealth, who work, who grow the food. We are the vast majority. They need us. We do not need them. We can have the power if we have the courage.

And we say YES to liberty, land, homes, prosperity, health, jobs, education, dignity! Today we are planting seeds in ourselves, in our families, in our communities. Total liberation, total revolution, for our children and their children. We will harvest a revolution, a better world. The future is ours. One fight. One land. One people. One organization.

As anarchists, we are striving for a better society, where all voluntarily give according to their abilities and take according to their needs, without a state, without masters nor slaves.

Join the fight with us! For the social revolution!

BASF – Bangladesh Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation