Health Care Is A Right!

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Health Care Is A Right!

In Defence of the Sovereignty of the DPRK

Today, Saturday, September 9, there is an important demonstration and rally in Birmingham in support of the campaign to Keep Our NHS Public! promoted by the West Midlands Pensioners Convention. See WDIE of September 5 for details.

Throughout the country, there is a growing awareness that the government’s policy of “investment with reform” is leading to the destruction of the National Health Service and the rejection of people’s right to publicly funded health care. As a result numerous campaigns of health workers, patients and concerned communities have arisen in opposition to the direction being imposed on the NHS by the government as it advances down the road of privatising health care as part of its overall strategy of opening up the state’s coffers as a source of profits for the rich, regardless of the destructive impact this has on the public good.

            In order to facilitate the implementation of its programme, the government and corporate media are creating hysteria about “budget deficits” in the NHS and using these as a justification for cutting staff, closing wards and hospitals, and wrecking the existing health care services. This hysteria is entirely fraudulent. It takes no account of the right to health care of the human beings in society, but seeks to impose legally-binding budget restraints on hospital trusts that the working class and people have had no say in deciding. The government is negating the human factor and imposing entirely inappropriate and callous budget criteria, treating the hospital trusts as though they were competing businesses.

            The health service is funded by means of the application of a portion of the social wealth created by the working people as a whole. They have a right to this health service funded by their labour. It is an outrage that the government should deny them the exercise of this right through fraudulent and anachronistic constraints.

            But, of course, this is not all. The government is further forcing the NHS to sign contracts with privately-owned treatment and diagnostic centres and diverting investment away from the NHS to pay the profits of these companies. The government is enabling the private sector to utilise public services as a source of huge profits. Meanwhile, hospitals are under-funded, the cuts are being stepped up, staff are overworked, and the whole blame for the crisis is being put on the shoulders of dedicated health staff. This situation must be brought to an end!

            WDIE congratulates everyone who is resisting the cuts in funding and the privatisation of the health service. Together we are fighting for the future of our health service, hospitals and health care, in which health care is a right, and ill people are not consumers but human beings who have claims on society. Now is a critical time in this struggle. The watchword of our resistance is that Health Care is a Right! Everyone has a right to effective health care at the highest level that society can provide without discrimination on any grounds. Investing in the National Health Service and outlawing the involvement of the private sector is the way to safeguard the future of the NHS.

Health Care Is A Right!

Safeguard the Future of the NHS!

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea celebrates the 58th anniversary of its founding on September 9. The founding of the DPRK marked the culmination of the long and bitter struggle against Japanese colonialism led by the Kim Il Sung.  It also marked a great victory over the criminal efforts of US imperialism, in violation of the 1945 agreements and by occupying the south of the country, to frustrate such a triumph.  It is a great testimony to the Korean people that successfully resisted the 1950-53 imperialist aggression, that they have consistently defended the sovereignty of their country, have persisted in the building of socialism and the have never given up their aspirations for the reunification of their homeland.

            At the present time, the leaders of Anglo-American imperialism are taking unprecedented steps to blacken the name of the DPRK, to stifle it and to prevent the reunification of the Korean peninsula. The DPRK has been outrageously branded as an “outpost of tyranny”, and disinformation is poured out about the so-called “nuclear issue” and the “human rights issue”.

            The Six-Party Talks on the “nuclear problem” have been blocked as a result of financial sanctions imposed by the US administration on the DPRK, totally in contravention of the agreement adopted at the fourth round of talks in September 2005. In fact, this agreement in principle, based on the guideline of simultaneous action of the parties concerned, stipulates that they should normalise their bilateral relations, coexist peacefully, sign a peace treaty, that the DPRK should receive light-water reactors and that it should abandon its nuclear programme. The objective of the first phase of the fifth round of talks in November 2005 was to confirm the agreement, and the parties thus agreed to engage in bilateral and multilateral talks in order to create necessary conditions for the application of the agreement. But, the US has reinforced its pressure and sanctions on the DPRK, in particular by blocking its financial assets, and has so far refused to discuss this issue directly with the DPRK.

            The DPRK has reaffirmed its stand and denounced this attitude of the US administration, whose objective is to oblige the DPRK, with these new sanctions, to abandon its nuclear programme before engaging in talks. A statement by the DPRK Foreign Ministry said: “If the USA has adopted a political decision to apply the joint agreement we would like once again to invite the leader of its delegation to come to Pyongyang and explain it directly,” and it points out that as far as the DPRK is concerned it has already reached a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear programme and this can be seen in the joint six-party agreement. The statement concludes: “If the US intensifies its pressure and continues applying its hostile policy on the DPRK we will have no other choice but to adopt harsher measures to protect our existence and sovereignty.”

            To frustrate the moves of the US imperialists for an invasion of the DPRK is very urgent and important in preventing a war on the Korean Peninsula and ensuring peace in Asia and throughout the world. The doctrine of pre-emptive attack is at the heart of the US imperialist policy of aggression, and their attempt to make a pre-emptive attack on the DPRK has become clearer in the Bush administration’s unfolding war scenario. The US has, for example, been stepping up the production of smaller nuclear weapons to be used in such a scenario.

            In these circumstances, the Korean people are vigorously developing the movement in defence of independence and for reunification, for peace against war and for national unity under the banner of "By our nation itself" to frustrate the US imperialists' provocative moves towards war, and to open a new phase for the reunification of the country. The Korean people today, as in the past, are united as one in defending the dignity and sovereignty of the Korean nation from a position of strength.

            On this occasion of the National Day of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, WDIE pledges to do its part in contributing to the defence of the sovereignty of the DPRK, and to strengthening the bonds of solidarity between the peoples of Britain and the DPRK in their common cause of defeating aggression and war and overcoming all the attempts of reaction to prevent the progress of humankind.