A WORLD TO WIN    #21   (1995)

 

Save the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal!

- Statement by the Committee of the
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement

7 August 1995

As the following statement by the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement was being released, news came of a stay of execution for Mumia Abu-Jamal. The RIM Information Bureau welcomes this partial victory, which is the fruit of determined protest against this outrage from inside the US and around the world. But it should also be clearly stated that this is only a partial, temporary victory, and that the US ruling class will certainly hit back. The struggle to save the life of this revolutionary political prisoner will also surely reach new heights.

The Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement expresses its full support for the U.S. revolutionary political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, unjustly sentenced to death for allegedly killing a police officer in 1981.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, who had been a radical journalist and a member of various U.S. revolutionary organizations of Black people, was sentenced to death after a mockery of a trial in 1981. Mumia has continued to speak out for the oppressed even from prison, including taking a firm stand to defend the life of Chairman Gonzalo of the Communist Party of Peru. Now, after many years, the authorities are preparing to execute Mumia for his uncompromising revolutionary stance and as part of their overall attack on the masses and revolutionary forces in the U.S.

U.S. imperialism's exploitation and oppression within its own borders and throughout its far-flung empire ultimately rest on its arsenal of death and destruction. The U.S. imperialist state is driving this truth home by moving to carry out the first legal execution of a political prisoner in nearly half a century. With this brutal threat, it is spreading a message of terror to all of its victims in the U.S. and across the world who would dare expose and resist this vicious system.

People from all walks of life and in many countries are fighting to stop the blood-drenched U.S. ruling class from adding yet another name to the list of political prisoners they have executed - including John Brown, the Haymarket martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, and Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg. In the United States, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, a participating party in RIM, has been fighting to defend Mumia as part of its overall revolutionary work and preparations. The CoRIM salutes this struggle and joins its voice to those who demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal's life be saved and that he go free.