“BlackRock and other multinational companies are modern day Dutch East India Companies. Its CEO, Larry Fink, is a modern day Christopher Columbus.” – Nova Felder, Bridging Africa and Black Americans

GegarAmerika expresses its unconditional solidarity and support to pro-Palestine activist Mythreyar who has launched a hunger strike in front of the Malaysian parliament at 9am, 10th of July, to oppose the privatization of Malaysian Airport Holdings under Blackrock.

A working-class activist in the airport industry, Mythreyar has been on hunger strike for almost 130 hours to protest the proposed acquisition of MAHB by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) in a joint consortium with Khazanah, EPF/KWSP, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which will place Malaysia’s airports under the direct control of the infamous war-mongering firm Blackrock.

In a scathing report by UN independent experts, Blackrock has been recognised as a major sponsor of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, funding Zionist weapons manufacturers and defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co, Raytheon Co, General Dynamics Corp, and Northrop Grumman Corp. For decades, Blackrock has funded America’s overseas wars of aggression, which has claimed the lives of over 4.5 million civilians in Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen since 9/11.

In an age of global Western domination and militarist wars, Lenin’s analysis of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism remains apt. Under the highest stage of capitalism, economic competition concentrates financial capital in the hands of a few global monopolies which enrich the capitalist class in the Global North while stealing the resources and labour of the poor and oppressed in developing countries.

Western financial institutions like Blackrock encroach upon the economic territories of oppressed nations in the Global South; exercising control of economic resources and decisions through predatory investments and unequal trade, impoverishing the working-class through debts and loans, and profiting from genocide, militarism, and imperialist wars across the globe.

The privatization of Malaysian economic assets under Blackrock not only implicates the Malaysian state in the ongoing genocide in Gaza: it allows imperialist entities like the U.S. to continue its neocolonial domination of our socioeconomic systems.

Progressive and socialist forces in Malaysia must mobilise to defend the Global South against the genocidal war economy and the neocolonial institutions that ravage our people and planet for profit. The rakyat have spoken: Reject U.S. imperialism, stop Blackrock!

Kamal Aarif Kamaruddin

GEGAR AMERIKA Organising Committee member

&

Pemuda Sosialis Member

15 JULY 2024