An Extraordinary International Anti-Repression Forum

Organizations and representatives from 24 countries participated this Saturday, the 26th, in the international anti-repression forum, launched following a call signed by the Workers' Party (PO) of Argentina, the Revolutionary Internationalist Tendency (TIR) ​​of Italy, the Socialist Laborers' Party (SEP) of Turkey, the Communist Liberation of Greece, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) of the United Kingdom, and the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD).

In addition to these organizations, Eduardo Belliboni and other leaders of the Argentine piquetero movement participated, along with relatives of Lucas Escalante (disappeared in Florencio Varela), national representative Vanina Biasi (PO-Left Front), lawyer Ismael Jalil (Correpi), the International Campaign in Solidarity with the Villalba family (Paraguay), Cecomún of Mexico (Center for Popular Communication and Collective Action) and the Revolutionary Action Group (GAR) of that same country, Mónica Baltodano (Sandinista commander, exiled and opposed to the current Nicaraguan government), from Communists Cuba, the Vilcapaza Group of Peru and a leader of the transporters of that country, the October 18 Force of Chile, the Costa Rican Movement in Solidarity with Palestine, Classist Tribune of Brazil, Socialist Democracy of Puerto Rico, UFCLP of the United Front Committee for a Labor Party of the United States), the Communist Caucus (left-wing faction of the DSA in the United States), the November 7 Unemployed Movement (Naples, Italy), SI Cobas (Italian trade union center), SERETE of Greece (university researchers union), Socialist Workers Network – People Before Profit (SWN-PBP, Ireland), the Platform for the Freedom of the Zaragoza 6 (Spanish State), organized migrants from Germany and Spain, OKDE of Greece, OKDE Spartakos of Grece, RCIT (Revolutionary Communist International Tendency), BYP of Cyprus, miners and security workers from Namibia, Communist Workers Party of Iran, The Class Struggle of Pakistan, and Workers Solidarity of South Korea.

From the SEP in Turkey, SEP leader Güneş Gümüş and Emrecan Konyalı participated in the Forum.

Emrecan Konyalı, who has been under house arrest for 5 months, referred to the large popular mobilizations unleashed after the arrest and removal of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, preceded by numerous other interventions by opposition municipalities. The repression was fierce against leftist sectors, with hundreds of arrests. “The government is dismantling democracy and police violence is increasing,” he said, “but the youth have not given up; this persistence gives us hope.”

Aydın Deniz, the Chairman of the Turkish Alevi Bektashi Federation, spoke about the situation of the Alevi people who are facing ethnic cleansing and massacres under the jihadist Golani regime that the imperialists brought to power as a result of the long years of imperialist war in Syria.

Meanwhile, a member of SERETE in Greece, a union formed in 2021 by teachers and research institute workers, commented on the struggle against job insecurity and the privatization of these spaces. He reported that 10 students and two researchers, falsely accused of causing riots during demonstrations, will be put on trial.

Alassa Mfouapon, a Cameroonian refugee in Germany and human rights activist, questioned the attempts at mass deportation. From Spain, a comrade from the Platform for the Freedom of the Zaragoza 6 (imprisoned for confronting a protest by the far-right Vox group) pointed out that "the PSOE-Sumar government (and neither the PSOE-Podemos government before it) did not repeal the repressive laws" of the previous PP government.

Brian, from the SWN-PBP in Ireland, denounced the repression and arrests during protests for Palestine on the island and, in contrast, the protection of far-right demonstrations by police forces.

From Cyprus, an island divided into a northern zone under Turkish influence and a southern zone under Greek influence,  Ali Şahin from the BYP argued that the south is being used as an imperialist base to attack Palestinians and the peoples of the Middle East. He advocated for a unified Cyprus and a position that was both anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.

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OKDE-Spartakos contributed to the forum with the union struggle of the teachers and persecution of the militant teachers in Greece by the Mitsotakis government. 

Latin America

Eduardo “Chiquito” Belliboni, leader of the Polo Obrero (Workers' Pole), participated alongside other comrades from the Polo leadership, as well as “Mecha” Martínez (CUBA-MTR and PRML), Daniela Calarco (MTR Votamos Luchar por el Cambio Social), and the Plenary of Retired Workers. Mecha stated that “there is a common enemy, and it is causing the people to rise up.” Calarco, detained during the protests against the Ley Bases (Bases Law), stated that the Piquetero Struggle Front—which brings together the aforementioned and other unemployed organizations—“has not stopped fighting against all capitalist governments, including Milei's. It's good to know that there are many of us fighting against this system that represses and persecutes everywhere.”

Belliboni, meanwhile, who will stand trial along with other Polo Obrero comrades in a government-sponsored case, stated that “judicial persecution and repression in the streets (as evidenced by the repression of retirees) is a systematic policy that is increasing and is related to a global offensive by the capitalist class that attacks workers' rights and seeks to make them pay for the crisis,” for example through regressive labor reforms. He argued that the historical dichotomy being posed is “socialism or barbarism.”

Romina Escalante, sister of Lucas, who disappeared on December 9, 2022, in Florencio Varela, along with a friend who was found murdered and tortured a week later, participated. Eleven people have been charged in Lucas's disappearance, nine of them members of the Buenos Aires Police. The chief of that force was required to testify in the case. “From the beginning, there was a police cover-up and institutional violence,” Romina said, alluding to mistreatment by the justice system and the police. “This is a case of forced disappearance,” she summarized.

Paola Ramos, from Cecomún, explained the extremely serious case of lawyer Kenya Hernández Montalbán, a community activist originally from Guerrero, Mexico, who for years promoted an organization in defense of the territory and against violence against women. In October 2020, the federal government, the state government, and a highway concessionaire initiated legal proceedings against her for occupying toll booths, a widespread form of protest in the Aztec nation. She has spent several years in detention and faces up to 20 years in prison. A committee is organizing the fight for her freedom. Meanwhile, Diego, from the Revolutionary Action Group (GAR) in the same country, read a report on the persecution of migrants. “Mexico has become another link in the United States' anti-immigrant policy,” he said, noting that the López Obrador administration has already sealed the border.

From Venezuela, where she is in exile, Myrian Villalba recounted the brutal persecution her family is suffering for political reasons. In September 2020, one of her daughters and one of her nieces (aged 11) were executed by the Paraguayan State's Joint Task Force (FTC). "Lichita," 14, who survived that operation, disappeared a few months later. Meanwhile, Laura Villalba, Carmen Villalba, and Francisca Andino have been detained in a maximum-security prison for six months, in inhumane conditions. "We call it the Paraguayan Guantánamo," she explained. There is an International Campaign fighting for the liberation of the comrades.

Mónica Baltodano, who was a commander in the Sandinista revolution, said that in 1979, a people led by a guerrilla organization (the FSLN) shook off a US-backed dictatorship (that of Anastasio Somoza). The FSLN was ousted from power in the late 1980s and returned to power in 2007, but "as a brand, controlled by Daniel Ortega," as part of a personal power struggle. Exiled in Costa Rica, Baltodano denounced Ortega's establishment of a regime that fiercely repressed environmental, peasant, and labor movements. She noted that this regime was challenged by a popular uprising in 2018, during which repression left more than 350 dead. "Since then, we have been living in a de facto state of emergency. Nicaragua lives under terror; it's a huge prison," she explained. In 2023, there were more than 200 expulsions and "denationalizations." There are political prisoners and missing persons. Frank García Hernández, of the Communists of Cuba, denounced that the island's penal code punishes the dissemination of propaganda, whether printed or digital, with up to six years in prison and mentioned that Cubans are under the crossfire of imperialism and the Cuban bureaucracy.

For his part, César Zelada, of the Vilcapaza Group, pointed out that "in Peru, we have dozens of people murdered by the Dina Boluarte dictatorship" following the ousting of Pedro Castillo's government. Meanwhile, Walter Carrera Alvarez, a transport worker from the Andean country, mentioned his sector's struggles against government repression, extortion, and murders by criminal gangs. Olga Aguirre, of the 18th of October Force in Chile, stated that in the trans-Andean nation, "the Pinochet legacy has not been dismantled": political prisoners, a militarized Wallmapu, and a state that advances repressive laws, such as the "anti-seizure law," which criminalizes those fighting for housing, and a "trigger-happy" law that guarantees impunity for the Carabineros in their actions. Luis Guilherme Giordano, of Tribuna Classista in Brazil, also spoke. Cristina, from the Socialist Democracy of Puerto Rico, reviewed the persecution of the independence movement throughout the 20th century and defended her people's right to self-determination.

Africa and Asia

In the case of Iran, the persecution, arrests, rigged trials, and hundreds of executions carried out by the regime against fighting movements, including the labor movement, were denounced. “The Iranian regime has declared war on the working class,” it was noted.

The Slingers Collective of Iran has drawn attention to the ongoing crackdown on political prisoners in Iran and called for international solidarity to halt the executions.

From Pakistan, a member of the group The Class Struggle criticized “the policies of capitalism that generate harm, unemployment, and poverty.”

Also participating was Lourens Sorobeb, a leader of the Namibian miners, who suffered the intentional burning of his own hut and legal proceedings against him due to his union activism. Security workers from this southern African country, who were persecuted when they began to organize, also spoke. These groups are preparing an event for May Day.

There was also a speaker from Workers Solidarity of South Korea, a group affiliated with the IST (International Socialist Tendency, which also includes the British SWP), who mentioned the extraordinary popular mobilization that defeated the coup attempt by President Yoon Suk-yeol in 2024, which resulted, like a boomerang, in his own ouster from power.

Palestine

The genocide against the Palestinian people was the subject of a specific bloc. Vanina Biasi, a national deputy for the Workers' Party-Left Front, referred to the prosecution handed down by the federal courts for her tweets against the massacres in the State of Israel, and alluded to other similar cases in the country. "We have to confront the Zionist narrative, which is a discourse serving the advancement of imperialism," she stated. Also speaking was Ismael Jalil, a member of Correpi (Coordinator against Police and Institutional Repression) and lawyer for Alejandro Bodart (leader of the MST), who received a six-month suspended prison sentence—also for tweets expressing solidarity with Palestine. Jalil refuted the false identification of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, which seeks to silence criticism of the genocide, and considered the Zionist state a terrorist state. He also proposed the formation of an international committee of jurists and defenders of the Palestinian cause.

Tatiana Gamboa, of the Costa Rican Movement of Solidarity with Palestine, said she was arrested in the West Bank a few years ago by the Israeli army and expelled to Costa Rica, where she was detained several times and put on trial for supporting Palestine. She lost two of the three trials against her, and therefore faces a five-year suspended sentence.

Charlie Kimber, of the SWP in the United Kingdom, where up to a million people demonstrated in defense of Palestine, noted that the genocide unleashed a wave of solidarity with Palestine worldwide, and pointed out the cases of arrests in the United Kingdom against pro-Palestinian activists. Jan, of the MLPD in Germany, referred to the regulations that prevent criticism of the Israeli state in her country.

Michael Pröbsting, leader of the RCIT (Revolutionary Communist International Tendency), commented on his conviction by the Austrian courts following a political statement by his organization expressing support for the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist state. Paulin Bubullima, of Greece's OKDE, said that the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis is one of Israel's most important allies in Europe.

A professor at the University of California, an institution closely linked to Zionism and one of its major contributors, explained that she has suffered threats of losing her job for her activism on behalf of Palestine. A member of the Communist Caucus (a left-wing faction of the DSA, Democratic Socialists) in the United States, who spoke in the first block, referred to the eviction of protest camps in 2024, the arrests, and the threats of deportation against university students who support Palestine.

The Closure

The plenary also featured denunciations of the repression of environmental struggles and the LGBTI community, with specific interventions on the topic, such as that of a comrade from the British SWP.

In the closing segment, Pablo Heller (leader of the PO) highlighted the success of the forum. As one of his conclusions, he stated that “the enemy of the people is within each of our borders: it is the capitalist class, which is unleashing a terrible offensive against the workers.” This criterion also applies to the war between Ukraine and Russia, where the goal is to overthrow Zelensky and Putin and open a way out through the unity of the exploited. He also concluded that “the repression we are denouncing is not solely the preserve of right-wing governments,” as demonstrated by the cases presented in the plenary of Cuba and Nicaragua. He proposed a series of specific resolutions and the formation of a liaison committee to carry out the proposals.

Günes Gümüş, the SEP Leader, maintained that “the real monster is not a man (like Milei or Trump) but the capitalist system, which is what creates these monsters. There must be a radical class movement to overthrow capitalism, as this is the only solution for the current crisis of our world." 

Steve Zelter, of the UFCLP in the United States, referred to the decline of the United States and called the Trump administration a "fascist government."

The approved proposals included the preparation of a report on the plenary session; a declaration against the persecution of those who denounce the genocide in Palestine, and the promotion of a coordination of defenses; a specific declaration against the persecution of the Polo Obrero (and the sending of letters and demonstrations to embassies when the trial begins); a petition in support of the Greek investigators; support for the May 1st mobilization in Namibia; against the death penalty and persecution in Iran; against ethnic cleansing in Syria; support for the May 3rd protests against the persecution of journalists; and rejection of the repressive measures in Italy and other cases mentioned above.

Related: 

RESOLUTIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL FORUM AGAINST POLITICAL PERSECUTION AND REPRESSION

https://socialistmiddleeast.com/resolutions-of-the-international-forum-against-political-persecution-and-repression