This is a collection of speeches and messages delivered at the “International Evening in Solidarity with the Political Prisoners” which was held in London on Sunday 5th of October, 2008.
The Iranian People’s Fadaee Guerrillas
September 2008
Massacre of 1988, an atrocity that should never be forgotten!
Twenty years has passed since 1988 massacre of political prisoners perpetuated by the criminal rulers in Iran. During this past twenty years, reminder of this horrendous crime brings anger and hatred in the heart of those remaining survivals and relatives of perished loved ones who still cry their heart out, and makes bringing of those who ordered and those who carried out those atrocious crimes, to justice, an obligation for struggling and revolutionary forces, as well as all people.
Without a doubt, massacre of political prisoners in 1988 is one of the most shameful pages in the history of criminal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This regime has shown throughout many years of its ruling that in order to preserve its reign of terror, it would not stop from committing any sort of crimes.
In 1988, in prisons all over the country, the leaders of Islamic Republic created bloodbaths by executing and hanging so many political prisoners that the systematic suppression which had started in 1981, reached to its all time high level. They were hoping by those massacres, just like their evil predecessor – Shah of Iran thought, they can create an atmosphere of a “cemetery like silent” over the country and claim that Iran is “the Island of stability and security”. But, we witnessed how soon the torn and bloodied shrouds of those dear executed comrades became the flag of struggle, and with the rise of civil unrest and people’s revolts, how hard they punched those reactionary leaders’ mouth. Through its small and large lackeys, the Islamic Republic regime still tries to portray that all those barbaric cruelty and crimes have been as the result of its mighty power. While executing political prisoners in masses that were hanged by their wrists in their dictatorial dungeons, not only it was not resulted from its might and power, but it represented the weakness and limitation of Islamic Republic regime in putting out the fire of resistance shown by the political prisoners. Those crimes are reasons for this fact that all those prisoners who had resisted the enemy during all those years by passing through the corridors of those dungeons, experiencing torture and death, who have rightfully gained the nick name “Alloyed Steels”, were like an arrow in the heart of Islamic Republic regime. Even thinking freedom for those “Alloyed Steels” and their appearance among people’s gathering would have shaken their bodies and put fear in the heart of those criminal rulers. In fact, this fact reveals the mystery of 1988 massacre.
The massacre of 1988, with all its huge grieves and sorrows that brings to our hearts, still tells us that criminal rulers of Iran, in spite of all their crimes in 1980 decade, and in spite of help of those so called “Repentants” who actively made the lives of political prisoners a living hell in the four walls of prison, never were able to break the resistance of strong minded political prisoners – our people’s heroic children. In 1980 decade, when staying true to ones revolutionary belief meant certain torture and death, those political prisoners said “No” to the demands of evil rulers and echoed people’s struggle and resistance against the regime that supports dependent capitalism, an outcry that still can be heard, that still rings in the ears which tells story of broad and vast dimensions of resistance of our people against tyranny and oppression.
In the anniversary of this bitter event, we must try to amplify the echoes of this never dying outcry to reach people of the world and respect the revolutionary and popular aspirations of those dears. We must not allow those who ordered and those who carried out those atrocious crimes, relying on passage of time, spread the murmurs of “forgiveness” and “forgetting”, and argue sheepishly that the necessity of struggling for punishing the reactionary leaders of Islamic Republic of Iran in tomorrow’s toppling of this regime is not useful and un-necessary matter.
Long live the memory of all fallen martyrs who heroically fought enemy until death!
Down with imperialist dependent regime of Islamic Republic of Iran!
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CEBRASPO
Brazilian Centre for the Solidarity to the Peoples
Brazil – September 24th, 2008.
To All participants of the “International Solidarity evening with political prisoners”
We remember and repudiate at this date, with indignation, the shameful campaign for the killing of political prisoners that occurred in 1988, all over Iran, under the orders of the Islamic regime. In only three months around 18 thousands militants, communists and other revolutionaries, arrested in the Iranian terrible dungeons, were cowardly murdered.
Such a barbarous massacre, unmercifully done mostly against women, was not able to conceal the fear of the sectarian and reactionary Islamic regime, disguised as a republic, towards the growing of the people’s rebellion in Iran. And those tragic episodes, which we firmly condemn, display the fascist and genocide character of the Iranian State.
Twenty years have passed after the brutal massacre and Cebraspo repudiates the atrocities perpetrated and solidarizes with the families, friends and fellowmates of the 1988 martyrs.
From Brasil, we honour, with deep respect, the memory of those, in Iran, who fell and we believe that the courage and dignity showed in the confrontation with their executioners have fecundated the ground where the struggle against oppression and exploitation is becoming stronger everyday through other combatants.
Thus we also express our solidarity to those who are still in prison facing all kinds of torture and isolation. The resistance of the political prisoners in Iran are important examples for the people in struggle against imperialism and for national and social liberation in different parts of the world.
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Ms Chanda Asani to ILPS, Political Prisoners
30 September 2008
This solidarity with political prisoners all over the world is another way to question what is freedom for me. Also it is essential for me to support as I am outside the prisons because I can think and still do it.
chanda asani,
Researcher and Activist from Mumbai, India
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Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP)
India
Message of Solidarity to the International Evening in Solidarity with Political Prisoners in London from the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners
It is a matter of joy to learn that people from different countries are going to take part in a gathering in solidarity with political prisoners of different countries of the world in London on 5 October 2008. I, on behalf of the CRPP, consider it to be a matter of pride to extend our solidarity to this international gathering.
The painful process started after the massacre of 18,000 political prisoners in Iran—best sons and daughters of the country–from June to December 1988 by the Islamic republic of Iran. The massacre of political prisoners in Turkey in December 2000 or the series of abductions and disappearances in the Philippines during the past several years have shown that reactionaries and fascists everywhere are the same. Voices of dissent are being gagged, maimed, imprisoned or wiped out. That is the reason why in many countries so many people—hundreds and thousands of them—are being tortured and imprisoned for as many years as possible. As state repression has become global, so the struggle against repression has also to be global. This international association of Communist, revolutionary, progressive and democratic people and victims of state terror is a welcome step in the right direction.
Needless to say, such a state policy is the culmination of the global imperialist policy of plunder and loot of the natural resources and wealth of all countries of the world. As imperialist powers, primarily the USA, are beset with crises at home and abroad, they have become more ferocious than ever before. And the more furious they are, the more resistance they face from the people. Many people have been fighting for getting rid of this man-eating system and the creation of a better society, for the establishment of democratic values, for the right of self-determination and for an equitable society where human values would triumph over the lust for profits. In India, the situation is not fundamentally different from that in other parts of the world.
Since the early 1990s, the future in India has become more acutely insecure and uncertain for the people than ever before. The country has been witness to the renewed invasion of the market by foreign MNCs in a very big way. Privatization, liberalization, the sell-out of even profit-making concerns at throw-away prices to Indian big comprador capital and foreign capital, the virtually free entry of foreign capital without any hindrance and the extraction of the country’s mineral and other natural resources—all these anti-people policies brought disaster to the lives of the people. Millions of people die in malnutrition, ill-health and poverty every year in India. Displacement from ancestral homeland and the plunder of natural resources by foreign and domestic agencies lead to their loss of land, habitat and culture, indebtedness and result in suicides in large numbers in many parts of the country. It also engenders a mental trauma and imparts a kind of melancholy which one cannot gauge in material terms.
However, the people of the Indian sub-continent did not accept these things lying down. They have been fighting for land, against eviction from their lands, forests, against the plunder of their natural resources by foreign MNCs and domestic big capital. People have been raising their voices against the rise in the prices of essential commodities or fee hikes in educational institutions; workers have been struggling against loss of jobs, closure of industries or for higher wages. Such political parties as that formed by the Maoists have been fighting for fundamental social transformation; the dalit and tribal people have been fighting for improvement in their living conditions as also for their rights; small nationalities such as the Kashmiris, Nagas, Manipuris, Assamese, Bodos, Kamtapuris, Gorkhas and others have been fighting either for establishing the right of self-determination or for improvement in their lives or for separate states.
The Indian state, far from addressing the root of the problem, has all along been treating it as a law and order problem, and has come down heavily on the struggling people. Both the central and the state governments have selected two sections as the special targets of attack—the Maoists and the people belonging to the Muslim community. The Maoists or the Naxalites—whom the prime minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh described in April 2006 as ‘the single greatest threat to internal security’ and whom he recently described as a ‘virus’ to be ‘crippled’—have been, like the witch-hunting in medieval Europe, specifically hunted, killed brutally or sent to prison. The other section is the people belonging to the Muslim community. In the wake of the US president Bush’s ‘war against terror’, virtually every Muslim is specifically targeted as a ‘terrorist’, ‘ISI agent’ or ‘SIMI activist’. Whenever there is any blast anywhere in the country, the state and the central governments, before even showing any pretence to conduct an investigation, pick up some people who would inevitably be Muslim and tagged in cooked-up cases. Many black laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, TADA, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act etc have been imposed in one region or another to crush people’s movements. In Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and other areas, in the name of the so-called ‘war against terror’, hundreds of Muslim youth have been picked up, detained and tortured in specially made torture cells of the notorious ‘grey hounds’ headquarter in the Gandipet area of Hyderabad area and other places. The minimum civil and political rights that a citizen enjoys are virtually non-existent in many parts of the Indian sub-continent. A large number of political, democratic and cultural organizations have been banned by the central and state governments, and in left-front-led states like West Bengal, some are, without any formal ban, are as good as banned. There are many cases when human rights activists, journalists, writers are being attacked, intimidated, tortured in the police lock-ups, jailed and even killed on framed charges for daring to raise their voices against state repression. Secret killers as also private armies and vigilante groups–sponsored by the state–have been formed to liquidate political activists and all other dissident voices. ‘SalwaJudum’ has been specifically undertaken to butcher the Maoists in Chhattisgarh.
Every tribal or poor peasant has become, in the eyes of the state, a potential threat to the politics of so-called ‘development’ or ‘good governance’. Members of many political parties—parliamentary or not—or people belonging to different democratic, workers’, cultural, teachers’, scientists’, artists’ or other organizations, who have raised their dissident voices, have also been targeted. All these people have been subjected to severe state repression by governments in various regions. Tens of thousands of people have been imprisoned, killed in the name of ‘encounters’ or in police firings in regions comprising Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Maharastra, West Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Kerala as also in regions of the north-east like Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. Thousands of people have been picked up by security forces, tortured in the most sadistic manner that would put to shame most of the civilized people and permanent damage had been done both to their body and mind. Many political prisoners—Muslims, Maoists, Tamils are on the death row. Many others have been languishing in jails for years and even decades together without trial; many(Maoists, SUCI activists and others) have been serving life imprisonment; many others have been sentenced and serving different periods of sentence; there are about 34 Burmese freedom fighters languishing in a Kolkata jail
We cannot say the exact number of political prisoners in different regions. In fact, one of the tasks undertaken by the CRPP is to prepare a list of such prisoners in different states. And the list, we know it well enough, will always remain incomplete as more and more people are being taken into custody everyday either from this area or that, not to speak of those who are being killed in fake encounters. Very recently, two Maoist peasant-activists have been sentenced to death in a lower court in Bihar. Despite such limitations, we will try to give a rough idea. The greatest number of political prisoners(nearly 75,000 at one time) were lodged in the jails of Kashmir—the majority of whom had been released not unconditionally, but on bail. At present, there are 1,500 political prisoners in Kashmir. The jails of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharastra, Karnataka, Orissa are filled with Maoist, Tamil, ‘Greater Coochbehar’, SUCI, CPI, TMC and other prisoners. In West Bengal, since 2002, as many as 4000 people were arrested. They were alleged to have connections with the Maoists, Kamtapuris, Greater Coochbihar activists, SUCI, BUPC men who fought against land grab in Singur and Nandigram, TMC, CPI, FB, RSP, Gorkhaland movement, 34 Burmese freedom-fighters and some other political, democratic or cultural organizations. A large number of them were released on bail and at present there are about 450 inside the jails. In Tamil Nadu, there are at present about 200 prisoners comprising Maoists, Tamil Nadu liberation Army, Tamil Nadu Suppressive Liberation Movement, Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, Peasants’ Liberation Front, New Democratic People’s Front, Muslim prisoners and Sri Lankan refugees. In Bihar and Jharkhand, the number would cross several hundreds. In Andhra Pradesh, there are about 70 political prisoners; the number is small in comparison to the importance that AP because in AP, the Maoists are generally shot dead in fake encounters as the accounts of human rights organizations would testify, and seldom taken as prisoners. For the last few years, a large number of SIMI activists have been put behind bars. There are thousands of prisoners in the other regional jails such as Maharastra, Assam, Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tripura, Kerala, Punjab and others. According to a modest and incomplete estimate, there are around 15,000 political prisoners in the jails in the Indian sub-continent. There are many prisoners on the death row also. Although a large number of them have been charged with committing political offences such as ‘waging wars against the state’, none of them has been accorded the status of political prisoners.
Methods of repression
The methods of torture adopted by the Indian central and state governments are so brutal and sadistic that they beggar description. We reproduce below some instances of how all democratic values were trampled underfoot by the governments.
1. All statutory obligations and Supreme Court directives are violated at the time of arrest. In almost all cases, persons were taken into custody without the production of arrest warrants, without providing the memos of arrest, without informing the person about the reason of his/her arrest or the charges levelled him, without disclosing the place/police stations where that person had been taken to. In most cases, persons picked up from one place were shown to have been arrested from far-away places.
2. Illegal searches and implanting weapons. Premises were searched without the presence of independent witnesses, no seizure lists were produced during searches and in some cases without conducting any search, the police forces simply submitted fake seizure lists to implicate persons in criminal cases. In many a time, weapons have been falsely included in the seizure lists. Even George Thomson’s ‘From Marx to Mao Tse-tung’, works of Romain Rollain, leaflets entitled ‘Clinton, go back were not spared. Looting of cash, jewellery, destruction of houses, even pouring kerosene oil into wells so that villagers could not have drinking water(cases in Belpaharivillages, district West Medinipur) are integral parts of almost all search operations.
3.Illegal detention and torture. Persons taken into custody are not produced in courts within the stipulated 24-hour period and detained illegally at police stations and special torture centres sometimes for days together, resorting to physical and mental torture and humiliation of all types. Prisoners have been subjected to interrogation for about 18 hours a day for weeks together without allowing them any chance to sleep.
4.Badli(substitute) arrests. There are many cases of ‘badli’ arrests i.e, father in place of son, sister in place of brother, wife—even pregnant wife—in the absence of the husband. Sulekha Soren was picked up from Belpahari in West Medinipur district in the absence of her husband Jaleswar Soren when she was nearly 9 months pregnant and she gave birth to her son in the prison.
5. Sexual abuse. Women have invariably been subjected to sexual abuse and molestation during raids and after that while in custody. There are cases in West Medinipur district(WB) where women were forced to strip on open roads by the raiding police party. In Singur and Nandigram, allegations of large scale molestation and rape were established in investigations conducted by various fact-finding teams and medical teams. In the recent period, Drisha Majumdar and Lata Murmu, arrested along with others from Bihar and Nadia, WB respectively and Kalpana Biswas picked up from Kotwali in Nadia were subjected to physical torture and sexual abuse in various forms. In Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and other regions, tribal women are systematically picked up, raped, humiliated and killed. The IRB 9(Naga Battalion) soldiers have been accused of even piercing the bellies of pregnant women, brining out the foetus and then throwing the dead bodies into the bush.
6. Re-arrests and ‘shown arrested’. The governments in different states, including the CPM-led government of WB have discovered a novel way showing ‘shown arrested’ to keep all dissident voices behind bars. When a prisoner got release on bail in one case or more, the judge was not told that there are other cases pending against that person. The person also knew that he/she would be released soon. But then he was picked up from the jail gate after being released on bail and then tagged in other cooked-up cases. In this way, many prisoners have been implicated in as many cases as possible. There is another typical way of keeping dissidents behind bars. In the charge-sheets of almost all cases, some names are mentioned; after that one can see the word ‘others’ or ‘unknowns’ written at the end. These unnamed persons are actually unknown persons whom the police, at the time of framing the charges, did not know, but whom they would name and implicate in future. By so doing, they in fact keep the room open to tag other people to those cases when they take more men into custody.
7. Eliminating political activists in fake encounters—legal procedures on claims of ‘firing in self-defence’ not followed. Fake encounters or what the states gleefully describe as ‘firing in self-defence’ have become routine matters in areas such as Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Assam, to name only a few. Countless numbers of people have thus been butchered in cold-blood. Human rights organizations, in course of the fact-finding missions, have found that Maoists had their limbs being cut off by security forces and their cash was distributed by the killers even when they were alive and still bleeding. Many activists or sympathizers have disappeared altogether in this way. Kashmir tops the list of the victims of extra-judicial killings.
8. Forced extraction of confessional statements. There are innumerable cases of security forces extracting confessional statements from the prisoners.
9. Women prisoners are being refused minimum necessities while in police custody and in prison. Women prisoners have been subjected to indignation of different types, they have also been in many a time denied to receive bare necessities. During menstrual periods, they were neither supplied with sanitary napkins; nor were their visitors and relatives allowed even to give those essential things to them.
The Indian administration boasts of prisons as correctional homes. However, the hard reality is that more than sixty years of history strongly contradicts the above claim. Prisons have become centres of torture, of disciplining those who have dared to disobey the powers-that-be. Prisons have become sites where human beings are converted into animals. There is hardly any concern for the rights of the ordinary prisoner, not to speak of political prisoner. The government of India, till date, does not have a national prison policy or legislation on the category of political prisoner. Although the WB government had enacted a law in 1992-2000 according the status of political prisoners to those arrested on the charge of committing ‘political offences’, it is at the same time very much reluctant to implement the law that it itself had enacted. The government of India still continues with the colonial Prisoners’ Act of 1894, not to speak about the prison manual meant to deal with the prisoners, thereby leaving the room for the jail authority to deal with the prisoners in the way they deem fit.
In June this year I had the honour to attend the Third International Assembly of the ILPS at Hong Kong. There I had the feeling that the whole world was but a prison house—the prisoners in Turkey, the disappearance cases in the Philippines, the Black Panthers and other prisoners in the USA, those in Iran, Canada, Bangladesh and other countries, not to speak of India. I had the feeling that it was the man-eating system that lay at the root of it. All of us have a deep longing for a world free from exploitation of any kind—a world where all the people would work hand in hand in harmony and where the fruits of people’s development would be equally shared by all. It would be a world where torture, prison-houses, repression in whatever form would be things of the past and where people would be able to realize their full potential.
I would like to share this feeling of mine with all those friends from afar who have gathered there in London in this international gathering. Let me, on this occasion, extend my feeling of solidarity on behalf of the CRPP to all of you. We do hope that this body would be able to gather under its umbrella more and more other people from many other organizations of many other countries. Our greetings and best wishes to all of you.
Amit Bhattacharyya
Secretary General
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Class March [of workers]
Militant Movement [of students]
People’s Militant Movement
Dear comrades
The struggle across the world against exploitation and oppression, for liberation and social justice is growing despite the brutal repression, arrests, murders, torture and imprisonment. Giving their lives, all these martyrs of the just cause show the direction for the development of the peoples’ movement.
Imperialists and reactionaries cannot conceal anymore the criminal nature of capitalism. In order to deepen exploitation, subordination and deprivation, to impose poverty and humiliation, they do not hesitate to commit the most barbarous and ruthless crimes against the toiling masses.
Twenty years ago, the Islamic regime in Iran murdered 18,000 political prisoners, assuming that people’s resistance would be perished. On the contrary, a new generation of activists in universities and work places continue decisively the struggle for social liberation.
The martyrdom of the Iranian activists inspires peoples’ struggles across the world. It is part of the history of the international revolutionary movement, together with the resistance in the prisons of Turkey, Kurdistan, India, the Philippines and Peru. Imperialists have created concentration camps in Guadanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, while in their own countries prisons are getting overpopulated. According to a demonstration slogan in our country: “One under the soil, thousands in the struggle”.
It is our duty to express our solidarity strengthening the struggle for social liberation, against imperialists and reactionaries. We have to assure you that in this struggle we’ll stand together in frontline.
Long Live the people’s struggle for national and social liberation.
Long Live the heroic resistance of the political prisoners.
Long Live International Solidarity
3/10/2008
Athens, Greece
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CENTRAL COMMITTEE
Communist Party of the Philippines
Message of International Solidarity with Political Prisoners
October 5, 2008
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) extends its most militant greetings of solidarity to the organizers and participants of the international evening of solidarity with political prisoners being held on October 5, 2008 in London. The Communist Party of the Philippinestakes this occasion to express its highest respects to the revolutionary martyrs who have paid with their lives and to the thousands of political prisoners who continue the struggle even while in prison in the service of the people’s aspirations for national independence, democracy and social liberation against imperialism and its lackeys.
While this international evening of solidarity makes particular mention of the struggle of political prisoners in Iran, India, Turkey and the Philippines, the event also aims to highlight the struggle of political prisoners all over the world.
Since it came to power in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has imprisoned and killed tens of thousands of progressives and revolutionaries to consolidate its reactionary and oppressive rule. Among its most abominable crimes is the killing at least 18,000 political prisoners in 1988 especially targeting the communists and other revolutionaries to prevent the outbreak of mass uprising and revolution. The subsequent regimes under Khatami and Ahmadinejhad have continued the repressive course of the reactionary Islamic regime.
The Ahmadinejhad regime which pretends to stand up for the national sovereignty of the Iranian people against US imperialism has brutally attacked the just struggles of workers, students, women and other oppressed sectors. Arrests and killings continue to be carried out against the Azari, Arab, Kurdish and Baluch minorities who are fighting for their national rights. The regime recently executed 29 prisoners in July 2008 in the infamous Evin prison which was built by the Shah where thousands of political prisoners were tortured and murdered.
In Turkey, the series of fascist regimes following the military coup on September 12, 1980 have killed and imprisoned thousands of communists and progressives. The Turkish state is especially notorious for its ill-treatment of political prisoners. The infamous F-type prisons have been built to isolate political prisoners in an attempt to break their revolutionary spirit. One example of the regime’s brutal treatment of political prisoners is the attack at Ulucanlar prison in September 1999 in which 11 prisoners were killed.
Another is the coordinated military operation in December 2000 in 20 prisons across the country to crush the resistance of political prisoners who were fighting against the transfer to the F-type isolation cells. Fascist troops used incendiary devices, shotguns, and tear gas to quell the resistance. At least 32 political prisoners were killed and many more were severely burned or injured. But the political prisoners have not been cowed and have continued to put up heroic resistance to these oppressive measures.
In India, repression of revolutionaries especially against the movements inspired by the Naxalbari uprising in the early 1970s have been intensified. The development of the revolutionary movement led by Maoist parties have been met with brutal repression by the reactionary Indian state. Workers and peasants who are engaged in mass struggles are being massacred. Suspected revolutionaries are summarily executed and eliminated through fake encounters. Political prisoners are tortured and detained without trial for years.
In the Philippines, political repression is concentrated against the revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party of the Philippines. From the time of the US-Marcos dictatorship to the present US-Arroyo puppet regime, revolutionaries fighting for national independence, democracy and social liberation have borne the brunt of the fascist attacks.
The Arroyo puppet regime is responsible for at least 900 extrajudicial killings and more than 200 enforced disappearances of legal activists and leaders of mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth and progressive parliamentary parties. In conjunction with the policy of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances is the so-called “legal offensive” in which mass leaders are put in jail on trumped up charges.
The Communist Party of the Philippines joins the organizers of this event in saluting the heroic struggle of the all political prisoners across the world and the cause they fight for. They have one thing in common. They fight against imperialism and reaction. They fight against exploitation and oppression. They fight for national independence, democracy and social liberation.
The imperialists and reactionaries defend a rotten and moribund system of exploitation and oppression. That system they defend is now being shaken by crisis after crisis. The people are rising up and no amount of repression can prevent their struggle from developing and gaining strength.
The Communist Party of the Philippines joins the organizers in raising the slogans:
Down with imperialism and all reaction the source of all barbarism!
Down with US imperialism and all other imperialist powers!
Down with the fundamentalist regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran!
Down with the fascist Turkish regime!
Down with the reactionary and expansionist regime in India!
Down with the US puppet regime of Gloria M Arroyo!
Long live the struggle for national and social liberation in all countries!
Long live the heroic resistance of the political prisoners!
Long live international solidarity!
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International Bureau
Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist)
Dear Comrades
The current political situation in the world shows, one more time, the relevance of the revolutionary struggle against imperialist
domination, for social liberation and a socialist perspective.
It is clear that exploitation and oppression can be stopped only
through the development of peoples’ struggle under the proletarian leadership. Therefore, imperialists and reactionaries try to suppress any such movement, especially movements lead by communist parties.
It is not fortuitous that today while the pretext of terrorism has collapsed, reactionaries openly declare as their main enemy communism. In various supposedly democratic European countries, communist parties are illegal, European Parliament sets up memorials for the “Stalinist victims”, while they criminalize solidarity to various liberation movements. In Asia and Latin America, prisons are full of communist cadres and sympathizers, however the various forms of resistance,
especially armed struggle are getting stronger and stronger.
The Iranian communist movement was in frontline for overthrowing Shah regime in 1979. It is again today in the struggle of Iranian people against the fascist regime of Islamic Republic. Thousands of communists have given their lives for that purpose.
Greek communists assure you that we stand beside you in this honest cause, until the final victory.
Freedom to all Political Prisoners
Long Live the Revolutionary Struggle for Social Liberation
Long Live Proletarian Internationalism
5/10/2008
Athens, Greece
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ATIK Confederation Workers from Turkey in Europe
To the organizing committee:
We salute the international solidarity evening with political prisoners with our revolutionary enthusiasm.
On the evening of 20th commemoration of 18.000 political prisoners massacred by reactionary Iranian government in 1988, we also condemn the massacre carried out by Turkish government in Diyarbakir, Buca and Ulucanlar prisons.
We pay respect to the heroic resistance revolutionary, communist and patriotic prisoners.
Dear friends,
The deepening financial crisis of international imperialist system is creating more poverty and unemployment all over the world.
Although this will lead to an upsurge in the mass movements, due to lack of sufficient subjective forces, this will weaken strong interventions in the future. We can overcome this period by organizing the masses, increasing the solidarity of national and social liberation movements and by intensifying the democratic struggle all over the world.
The Turkish government’s policy of isolation of political prisoners physically and mentally continues more than before. We democratic institutions and forces outside prisons must carry out strengthen the campaigns to expose isolation policies in prisons.
Particularly, we condemn the strong isolation policies implemented against Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of Kurdish national movement. We must condemn the executions by reactionary Iranian regime against democratic elements in Iran.
With this historic consciousness, we believe that your event will increase the revolutionary solidarity in other areas.
Down with reactionary regime in Iran!
Down with imperialism, fascism and World reaction!
Long live people’s solidarity!
Long live Proletariat Internationalism!
Revolutionary prisoners are our pride!
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