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class and peasant organizations, for the confiscation of imperialist property by the revolutionary workers, for the division of the big estates among the poor peasants and for the repudiation of imperialist debts.

Only in this way can the workers of Britain and the colonial masses free themselves from the imperialist chains of MacDonald and the National Government.

The Congo Uprising
by HUISWOOD.

    Once again revolt is sweeping the Belgian Congo.  In 1925, again in 1928 the revolt of the native masses was ruthlessly drowned in blood by Belgian imperialism. But despite the slaughter, the terrible oppression of the native masses of the Congo has once more forced them into revolt.
     The economic crisis in the world of capitalism has greatly intensified the already existing crisis in the Congo.  For example, the Union Minière du Katanga, which exploits seven copper mines, one iron mine, two tin mines and one radium mine, as well as several quarries, where over 20 thousand miners are employed, has greatly reduced production, with the result that the majority of the

[[image]] British police in India on horseback ride through a crowd [[\image]]
While Gandhi is in London betraying the Indian masses, the British police are shooting and beating up the workers in Bombay and other towns

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workers have been thrown on the streets to starve. No form of social insurance exists in the Congo.
     The same situation prevails in the coal mines of the Luena Colliery Company, the tin mines of Upper Luapula district and the diamond works of the Forminière Company, in Kosai, where some 30,000 natives were formerly employed.  All of the agricultural companies have also laid off hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers.  This has created a starvation situation especially in the districts, where Lever Brothers hold tremendous palm Kernel concessions.  Added to this, the peasants are unable to sell their crops and other raw products collected in the forests.
      The great mass of natives who were driven from the lands to make way for the plantations of the Belgian and British imperialists and their social democratic agents are now helplessly herded together into the cities without jobs.  Their plight is extremely miserable.  Added to starvation, disease is playing havoc with the masses.
     Without any hope of unemployed relief, and faced with the additional burden of still having to pay taxes to the government, the workers have been goaded into desperation and have openly revolted against their oppressors. Even some of the chiefs, the traditional agents of the imperialists who are still being compelled to squeeze taxes out of the workers who have absolutely no means of paying, have joined the revolt which is spreading from the cities into the villages and across the frontiers, into the French Congo and Angola.
     The heaviest fighting between the revolutionary forces and the government troops took place in Kosai province, where 4000 natives, armed with muzzle-loading riffles smuggled into the Congo, defended the native villages again overwhelming forces armed with the most modern devices of warfare. Fierce fighting also occurred in the Kikuit district of Kwango, where the natives, unable to obtain arms were forced to fight for days with bow and arrows, but were finally overwhelmed by the military and their huts burnt to the ground after the villagers had retreated into the surrounding territory. It has been estimated that over 300 natives were massacred in this encounter. A Belgian official named Hallot and a few soldiers were killed by the insurgents. 
     In the Tukusu district, the peasant under chief Misugu had an encounter with 310 soldiers under European officers and drove them back for over two weeks before they were forced to surrender due to lack of ammunition. 
     Despite the butchery carried on by the Belgian soldiers against the natives, they have not yet been able to completely subdue all of the rebellions districts. New sections of the country are joining the revolutionary forces daily.  According to the radios received by the Brussels paper "Soir", new revolts have again broken out in the Kwango district, where three trading factories, owned by the Kosai Company, have been burnt down by the rebels who are also attacking the Catholic missionaries, the religious agents of the Belgian capitalists and social democratic concession holders who have millions of francs invested in the Congo. Only the communists and the revolutionary trade unions in Belgium have shown solidarity with the African workers, by exposing the terrible exploitation of the natives and demonstrating in support of the revolt. 
     The Belgian imperialists are trying their best to crush the rising tide of rebellion, but the revolts of the native masses in Africa today have far greater possibilities of success than ever before.  They come at a time when a Soviet Government has been established in China; when the Indian masses are in motion against the blood-thirsty British imperialists and when the working masses in the imperialist countries are taking up the counter-offensive against the starvation programme of world capitalism. 

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