The Maruti Suzuki frame-up and the history of international labor defense campaigns
By
Shannon Jones
5 July 2017
The call by the International Committee of the Fourth International for a worldwide campaign in defense of 13 Maruti Suzuki autoworkers who were condemned to life in prison in India rests on a long tradition of international workers’ action on behalf of the victims of capitalist “justice.”
The 13 workers were convicted March 10 in a frame-up trial in Haryana state based on bogus murder charges stemming from a 2011 altercation at the company’s Manesar car assembly plant in which a manager was killed. Twelve of the 13 workers were members of the leadership of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) formed by the workers in opposition to the pro-company, stooge union at the factory. Another 18 workers were convicted on lesser charges.
The frame-up is aimed at intimidating workers and suppressing resistance to the Indian ruling elite’s efforts to transform the country into a cheap labor platform for transnational corporations. The convictions came in the face of evidence presented by defense attorneys of fabricated evidence, collusion between company officials, the police and prosecutors and the coaching of witnesses. The concocted character of the case is further demonstrated by the fact that the manager killed in the altercation was the only management official sympathetic to the workers, and the fact that the judge was forced to exonerate 117 of the 148 originally accused because of the lack of even fabricated evidence.
In the best tradition of the socialist workers movement, the ICFI is seeking to mobilize the working class in every country and all defenders of democratic rights to demand the freedom of these workers.
In…