International Panel from Around World Join Against Repression

Dozens of organizations from around the world join the International Forum Against Repression and Political Persecution on

April 26 6:00 AM PST/8:00 AM CST/9:00 AM

Since being launched, the call to organize an International Forum Against Repression and Political Persecution to be held online on April 26 has garnered the support and commitment of dozens of political, trade union, social, and human rights organizations from four continents and more than 25 countries.

This is an expression of the need to advance in networking to collaborate in the organization of practical solidarity among working-class organizations in the face of repressive advances that are being experienced to varying degrees in all capitalist countries under the impulse of the tendency toward war, political and social polarization, and the attempt by the capitalists to survive their terminal crisis by unloading its effects on the masses in the form of austerity policies and an attack on their historical gains.

Significantly, organizations from Russia, where a representative of the Political Prisoners Support Fund and the magazine Stormbringer will participate, and from Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Workers' Front (Marxist-Leninist) will participate, have confirmed their participation and will speak. Exiled comrades from the post-Soviet left linked to the Left Bloc will also speak from both countries. What imperialism and reactionary governments divide on the battlefield, the working class is working to unite in the framework of the common struggle against the exploiters. Comrades from Azerbaijan will speak about their efforts to organize the Courier union (delivery workers) under very repressive conditions.

In Greece, where two important general strikes have recently taken place, speakers from the political organizations Communist Liberation and OKDE-Spartakos, both from the anti-capitalist left front Antarsya, as well as from the organization OKDE, have confirmed their participation. The union of university researchers, SERETE, as well as the teachers' union, have also confirmed their participation.

In Italy, where there is a huge struggle against the advance of the security law that attacks the right to demonstrate, the Forum has confirmed the participation of the grassroots union SICOBAS, the Libere/i di Lottare network, the November 7th movement of unemployed workers in Naples, and the TIR and Iskra Political Laboratory.

From the United Kingdom, comrades from the SWP and the SP will speak, representing the movement against genocide in Palestine, which is facing police repression and legal persecution under the Starmer Labour government, as well as participants in the campaign against systematic police infiltration of the trade union movement.

From Germany, comrades from the MLPD will speak in a context of growing repression and confrontation with the far right. From Austria, comrades from the RCIT, who have recently suffered court rulings for denouncing the genocide in Palestine.

Comrades from the Socialist Workers Network of Ireland, a member of the People Before Profit coalition, will speak. Members of the Assembly of Argentines in Zaragoza have confirmed their participation from Spain.

In Turkey, where the repressive leap of the Erdogan regime is being confronted by mass mobilizations and intense street fighting, we will have representation from organizations that have been on the front lines fighting and suffering police arrests and raids, such as the SEP and the Alevi Bektashi Federation.

(BKP) of Cyprus—a nationally oppressed country divided since the 1974 Greek and Turkish invasions and situated amid African and Middle Eastern conflicts, and imperialist tension over oil resources in the Eastern Mediterranean—will be joining. They also represent strong opposition to Erdoğan’s political Islamist influence and pressure on the island.

The Slingers Collective of Iranian women who have been promoting the unionization of textile workers and leading the campaign against the death penalty for Sharifeh Mohammadi have confirmed their participation. Representatives of the Hoshino Defense Committee will speak from Japan. The USP organization will speak from Sri Lanka.

Representatives of Namibian Workers United will speak about the repression of trade unionists in Namibia. From Nigeria, where there have been intense struggles against the government and political and trade union organizations are suffering severe persecution, there will be representatives of the Revolutionary Socialist Movement and the Democratic Socialist Movement. We will have reports from South Africa from independent journalists on the repression and murder of activists and trade union organizers.

From the United States, where the Trump government is pushing fascist measures of illegal detention and deportation of hundreds of activists from the Palestine movement and is waging a fierce offensive of layoffs and restrictions on union activity, members of UPTE Members For Palestine, PSC-CUNY, and the political groups UFCLP, Speak Out Now Socialist, and members of the Communist Caucus within the DSA have confirmed their participation.

From Argentina, where the year and a half of the far-right Milei government has been a constant struggle of the vanguard of the working class and youth with the participation of the left, comrades from the Partido Obrero will participate, such as their national deputy Vanina Biasi, who faces criminal charges for denouncing the genocide in Palestine. from the Polo Obrero and other organizations of the Piquetero Struggle Front, which have suffered more than 200 police raids on their neighborhood headquarters and face a scandalous trial that seeks to criminalize the organization of the unemployed, the Plenary of Retired Workers, whose movement against starvation pensions, despite police repression, has moved the country and the world, and the Classist Trade Union Coordinating Committee, which brings together leaders from dozens of militant unions such as Sutna, AGD-UBA, and numerous grassroots teachers' unions. The independent human rights organizations APEL and SERPAJ will be present.

From Mexico, Cecomún, a center for popular communication and collective action, has confirmed its participation, demanding the release of political prisoner Kenia Hernández Montalván, a defender of women's and indigenous peoples' rights, as well as the Revolutionary Action Group. From Costa Rica, pro-Palestinian activist Tatiana Gamboa, who is being persecuted by the justice system, will participate.

Miriam Villalba, a Paraguayan exile in Venezuela, victim of the plan to exterminate Paraguayan militants and their families, which has led to disappearances and infanticide and is the subject of an international campaign called “Where is Lichita?”, will also participate. There will be representatives from Brazil's Tribuna Classista, Peru's Agrupación Vilcapaza, and Chile's Fuerza 18 de Octubre. From Cuba, the Comunistas organization will participate, which has been denouncing the measures of the Diaz-Canel government that represses and imprisons opponents in order to push through an anti-popular adjustment process. Monica Baltodano, former Sandinista commander and opponent of the repressive turn of Daniel Ortega's government in Nicaragua, will participate.

Along with the presentation of these hundreds of cases of repression and political persecution, and the preparation of an international dissemination of the reports on the subject, concrete initiatives, campaigns, and the continuation of joint work in practical workers' solidarity and common struggle against repressive states will be discussed. In the coming days, many organizations are still discussing the possibility of joining in. The doors are open to all who understand the need of advancing with the common work of united front action in the defense of the right to organize and struggle of the working class and exploited masses of the world.



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Call to organize an International Forum against Political Persecution and Repression
http://socialistmiddleeast.com/call-to-organize-an-international-forum-against-political-persecution-and-repression



Socialist.jpegSocialist Mar 16, 2025 05:11159
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From one end of the planet to the other, the working masses are organizing the struggle in defense of their gains and their rights, against the barbaric consequences of the capitalist crisis that are being dumped on their backs. Uprisings, strikes, and mass mobilizations in recent years have confronted these attacks from capitalist governments, from mass strikes in Europe to rebellions in the Middle East and Latin America. From the mass street struggles in Argentina in 2017 and in the USA in 2020 to the struggle of the Palestinian resistance against imperialism and Zionism and the massive international solidarity movement created around it.

But also from one end of the planet to the other, these struggles and the organizations that the masses set up to wage them immediately become the object of the most ruthless persecution by capitalist governments that attack the right to strike, to organize and to protest and unleash the most implacable political persecution and McCarthyism.

With the deepening crisis of the capitalist social system as a whole - in particular since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of open war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine - a growing race to inter-imperialist war on a global scale has taken shape, which requires the intensification of repression also as a preventive measure. In the history of capitalism, the preparation of wars has always corresponded to the brutal restriction of democratic freedoms (where there were any), and this is happening now.

Organizations fighting against the genocide of the Palestinian people are persecuted and accused of being “anti-Semitic” by the accomplices of the criminal Netanyahu government, which include countless neo-nazi groups. To wage their war in the service of the Russian and NATO oligarch capitalists, Putin and Zelensky have practically eliminated any vestige of democratic law in Russia and Ukraine, starting with the right to strike. In Western countries, a systematic war of propaganda and ruthless repressive measures against emigrants and immigrants is underway, with the adoption of deportation plans against those who are presented as internal enemies.

All over the world, capitalist governments persecute the environmental protests of the people against capitalist plundering of our habitat and, to justify the unresolved persistence of the crisis, they scapegoat the “privileges” of minorities, promoting the attack on their rights and their organizations. Thus, they seek to criminalize movements for the defense of women's rights, black people, Latinos, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ people, to make them appear as responsible for the economic disaster and the growing impoverishment of the living conditions of each capitalist nation and to justify the growing fascist tendencies. Many of these governments (Milei, Trump, etc.) even toy with the formation of paramilitary groups to repress popular protests.

Democrats and pro-fascists, progressives and conservatives, “leftists” and far-rightists, all capitalist governments practice this persecutory and repressive policy. Under Starmer and the Labour Party in Britain, a campaign to deport immigrants has just been launched, aligning with the agenda of Trump's pro-fascist government. In Germany, the “democratic right” of the CDU has just subscribed to the immigration policy of the far-right AFD. In France, Macron has savagely repressed all strikes and protests by the labor movement against his plans to adjust and reform the pension system. The genocidal war of Zionism against the organizations of the Palestinian Resistance that are fighting to win the elementary right to national existence would not have been possible without the unconditional supply of bombs from the Democratic government of the progressives Biden and Blinken.

Bourgeois nationalist and pro-fascist governments are, of course, deeply repressive. In Meloni's Italy, the road to an ultra-repressive, police state took a decisive step forward with the approval of "security" law last October in one of the two chambers of Parliament. In Argentina, Milei has targeted the Polo Obrero and the piquetero movement that fights against the main consequence of the capitalist crisis, unemployment, and illegally putting its main leaders on trial. In Turkey, while hypocritically proclaiming his support for the Palestinian cause, the nationalist Erdogan represses and imprisons militants of the Kurdish liberation movement and socialists who oppose his anti-worker and national oppressive program. In China, the CCP regime rests on unlimited authoritarianism that ensures the stability of the conditions of super-exploitation endured by the world's most numerous working class. In Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela, repression of the worker’s struggles and left opposition is the norm and there are a growing number of political prisoners.

The repressive policies of capitalist governments, the tendency of bourgeois states to sweep away the most basic democratic rights and even to acquire increasingly authoritarian, police and fascist traits, can only deepen at the same rate as the crisis continues, as the super-exploitation of the working masses intensify, and with them the class struggle, and - mainly - to the extent that the race to rearmament and towards a new inter-imperialist war accelerates.

While resorting to institutional and formal channels of complaint and exposure is valid, the repressive offensives of capitalist governments will only be defeated by the mobilization of the masses, using the methods of struggle and organization that the working class has developed throughout its history.

For this reason, we, the undersigned organizations, consider it essential that political, social, and human rights organizations willing to speak out and actively mobilize against this global repressive offensive coordinate their actions so that the denunciation of the persecutions against organizations, their militants,and leaders is heard in all corners of the planet. As a step on this path, we are organizing an “International Forum Against Political Persecution and Repression”, to be held online on April 26th. We call on all organizations willing to take up this task jointly to participate in preparing this Forum and making it a success.

Our intention is to create an effective network to fight against the persecution of working-class organizations, in solidarity with Palestine, against militarism and militarization of all aspects of social life, the environmental catastrophe, and against any attack on political freedoms and living conditions. Therefore, we invite political, union, and human rights organizations interested in co-organizing the forum to participate in a virtual planning meeting on March 21, and all those who wish to participate to sign up and present a short summary of the cases of repression or political persecution they want to use the forum to denounce. We are convinced that the urgent need for working class solidarity against state repression needs building a united front across existing political differences that exist within our class to strike back together as one.

To contact: againstrepressionforum [at] gmail.com