Hanjin Heavy Industries & Bus of Hope Movement; Chomsky, Hard-Line Suppression and "Alliance of Hope" 

[논둑길맨발로]

Hanjin Heavy Industries & Bus of Hope Movement; Chomsky, Hard-Line Suppression and "Alliance of Hope"

Posted on : 2011-07-11 14:4

The police fired water cannons at citizens' peaceful protests at early hours of July 10. Participants of the Bus of Hope movement were shot by tear-gas water cannon, purported to crack down on protestors, fired by the police at a crossraods at Bongrae-dong, Youngdo-gu, Busan.
About 50 participants out of 10,000, who gathered to cheer up Kim Jin-sook, who staged a protest at a high sky at a giant crane, were apprehended as flagrant delictors. (Photo by Kim Young-min)

Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) needs no special introduction as the conscience and the intellect of our era.

Chomsky has sent a special message to the "Bus of Hope" event currently in progress in the southeastern port city of Busan.

He expressed his support for the courageous and honorable actions and efforts for peace and justice of the Korean citizens allying with fired workers at Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction (HHIC), and hoped that there would be no "sabotage such as the use of governmental force."

Chomsky's hopes that the citizens' just efforts would not be met with sabotage, however, were betrayed by indiscriminate and hard-line suppression on the part of police.

On Saturday (July 9), the police sprayed water containing dissolved tear gas, now known to have been mixed with a carcinogenic substance, at around 10,000 "Bus of Hope" participants who were heading to HHIC's Yeongdo shipbuilding yard.

Participants, including disabled people, were arrested at random. Police did not hesitate to engage in excessive behaviour, including constantly striking down with their shields upon citizens who had fallen over after being pushed back, while those that were hit by teargas-infused water jets are said to have shown symptoms of chemical burns.

In this process, Democratic Labor Party president Lee Jung-hee and others blacked out after being hit by tear-gas water, while several tens of participants in the rally were injured.

It is impossible not to feel anger and regret at the police's outdated behaviour in using such hard-line suppression, as if carrying out a military operation, on citizens who were trying to hold a peaceful protest.

The identity of those who gave the order for and those who carried out such anti-humanitarian suppression must be revealed, and they must be made to take heavy responsibility.

Despite, to use Chomsky's expression‎, the "sabotage" by the police, hope for Korean society could be felt among the warm, firm alliance shown by the participants in the Bus of Hope.

These included prominent opposition party politicians and civic movement leaders, but the majority of them were just everyday people.

They consisted of fathers who took the bus with their high school student daughters to show them what kind of place the world really was, teachers who believed their students must see for themselves the kind of irregular employment and staff curtailment that awaited them, and disabled people that regarded the HHIC situation as a universal human rights problem.

More precious of all was the fact that these people did not regard irregular employment and staff curtailment as targets for pity and compassion, but as "my problem and our problem," and were rallying as comrades in arms of the fired workers.

The authorities and HHIC must now face the fact that the staff curtailment situation has caught the attention of the world's intellectuals and foreign news agencies, and must take active steps to solve the problem.

The "Bus of Hope" has already gone far beyond the level where it will disappear from public view after just firing tear-gas water from cannons and forcibly dispersing crowds.

The more this spontaneous movement on the part of citizens is suppressed and ignored, the more powerful and wide-ranging the "Alliance of Hope" will become. (Editorial, The Kyunghyang Daily News. July 11, 2011)