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Join the mailing list: info/subscribe/unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] . =================================================================== CP of Greece, The Balkans and the struggles of working people --------------------------------------------------------- From: Communist Party of Greece mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.kke.gr =================================================================== Announcement issued by the CC of the CPG The CC of the CPG, at its meeting on 31 March 2001, discussed developments in the Balkans, the militant activity of the working people in confronting the government's new social security measures, and the more general developments in Greece. It concluded with the following announcement. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE BALKANS, THE STRUGGLES OF THE WORKING PEOPLE, AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN GREECE 1. The CC of the CPG addresses a call to the Greek people for united and decisive action to combat the new round of imperialist interventions and the military crisis in the Balkans, with focus on: activity by the KLA forces in the northern and western regions of FYROM, the carefully orchestrated efforts to bring about a complete dissolution of the Federation of Yugoslavia by means of the referendum in Montenegro and the incited separatism of Vojvodina, and the crude coercion exerted on the Yugoslav-Serb government to hand over the previous leadership to the special international court in The Hague in order to legalise the pretexts used to wage the barbarous war in 1999. No confidence can be placed in the hypocritical declarations by NATO, the USA and the EU that frontiers are guaranteed in the region or deploring the attacks by KLA gangs. What is happening in the Balkans today was caused by the imperialist forces. They created well-armed nationalist groups in order to maintain tension spots and to secure internal supports for the policy of "divide and rule". The struggle of minorities for their rights, wherever they are being violated, has some hope of success only when it is being waged together with the working class and the working strata of the country they are living in, when they cannot be used by the imperialist forces. The peoples of the Balkans, including the Greek people, can hope for just one thing: That the Balkanwide internationalist popular struggle against NATO and the Stability Pact, and in favour of the withdrawal of all foreign military forces from the region may become stronger and spread. This struggle must be broadened and enriched with the fight against the Balkan governments whose decisions legalise imperialist intervention, who make their territory available for the transit of foreign troops, and who promote capitalist restructuring, so that every country's plutocracy is bound ever more tightly to cooperation with the EU and NATO. The imperialist forces would not be able to make war and plunder the region unless they had received the "green light" from the governments of the Balkan countries. The working people and the youth of Greece must be constantly vigilant. The Greek people will be able to deal with the new dangers appearing in the Balkans only when they act in an organised and united way on the great social, economic and political problems of concern to them, when they demand their rights unwaveringly. These developments constitute a new link in the chain of open imperialist interventions and war in the Balkans starting in the early 1990s, through the dissolution of the united Yugoslavia carefully planned by Germany and the EU, then through the direct intervention of the US and NATO, through the creation of an artificial NATO state in Bosnia, and through the arming and open support of the Albanian autonomists in Kosovo in the southern part of Serbia. The war of 1999 and the Stability Pact for southeastern Europe are key events along the way, with the obvious purpose of testing and enforcing the "new NATO doctrine", and to consolidate the deployment of the imperialist multinational force for intervention and war. The Balkans constitute the field on which intra-imperialist contradictions are developing in this volatile region. There is an obvious aim of making the Balkans a flanking power to threaten and intervene against Russia and the other states that were formed after the dissolution of the USSR. Today, now that the imperialists have achieved one part of their goal, they are trying to complete and deepen the NATOisation of the Balkans with or without a redrawing of borders, or with the logic of the "porous frontiers", using either the military or the "velvet" process of redrawing them, as stated by Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs George Papandreou, expressing the overall policy of the government and the particular plans of the US. The recent decisions by the imperialists, their movements as a whole and their deceptive manoeuvres show that they are seeking to impose a path of controlled destabilisation. The danger of the disintegration of FYROM has not been averted. Should this occur, there will be a domino effect, with the Greek borders being disputed, especially if there has been a prior Greek military involvement. The CC calls upon the Greek people not to be deceived by the hypocritical declarations of the Greek government regarding a political solution to the problem, or that it will support some joint military involvement. It said the same things on the eve of the 1999 war and at the crucial moment, gave full legalisation to that barbarous war by offering all resources and facilities. Greek military participation in aggressive imperialist armies is criminal and dangerous both to the Greek people and to the neighbouring peoples. It contributes to fostering a generalised Balkan war in which the Balkan countries will be fighting against each other. Today it has become even clearer how remote from reality are the declarations of the Greek government that Greece's participation in the policy of NATO and the EU in the Balkans guarantees the stability of frontiers and the prosperity of the Greek people. Recent and older history alike has shown that the people in the countries that wage an imperialist war against other peoples, that participate in military operations and in the plundering of wealth, people in countries that have become protectorates, will themselves confront wars, incidents, and border disputes. A government, and power more generally, which plays a leading role in imperialist plans is equally barbarian and cruel to its own people when they demand their rights. - The only realistic response to the new dangers appearing in the Balkans is for a strong movement to flare up from one end of the region to the other, demanding the withdrawal of NATO. - The people, united and militant, must demand that the Greek government call a definitive halt to the participation of Greek troops in the occupation army, to stop providing facilities of any kind to NATO, and to demand that KLA disarm. The national army of each country has the obligation to defend and protect the Balkan borders. The Serb army should take full responsibility for defending the borders in its own region, including those of Kosovo. - It should say a categorical NO to sending military forces outside the country, in the form of participation in a NATO force, in a Balkan brigade, or in any other form. These forces, irrespective of their official name, are under the guidance and control of NATO. It should demand the return of the troops who are currently in Kosovo and Bosnia and refuse to provide facilities on Greek soil. None of Greece's youth, or its people, or indeed any of the Balkan peoples should shed their blood in the interests of imperialism. Developments in the Balkans are not the only crucial, current problems; international imperialism systematically aggravates major unsolved problems that have been demanding just solutions for decades now. Today it is clearer than ever before that the process of admitting Cyprus to the EU is being utilised to promote a de jure partition of the island. The Palestinian question has entered a new acute phase after the elections in Israel, where the coalition government is organising murderous attacks against militant patriots. The peoples, through their cooperation and common struggle, through their internationalist solidarity, can stand in the way of the ever-intensifying imperialist barbarity. 2. The CPG salutes the struggles that have developed recently against this policy. It appreciates the efforts to rally cooperation between broader radical forces who understand the need for the organised popular movement to intervene in order to stop the reactionary measures and to demand modern rights. The struggle for public Social Security, with free services for all in the sectors of Health and Welfare, for public free education, for an improved standard of living for workers and employees, for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, and for poor farmers is a common, united struggle solidly linked with democratic and trade union freedoms, and an integral part of the struggle for peace in the region, against the new NATO doctrine and against Greece's participation in its aggressive plans. The war in the Balkans has another aspect too: the barbaric inroads against social security, the full commercialisation of health and education, of pensions, and welfare, as well as widespread privatisations. The government's inroads on the rights of youth and working people to education has entered a new phase with the reactionary reform of higher education. The downgrading of undergraduate studies and full subjugation to the aims of big capital is being sought. The rallying together, cooperation and alliance of the militant forces is even more necessary and urgent today. The working people must understand that together with the anti-popular measures, they must fight against the government's practice of "divide and rule" among the working people, and against its hypocrisy in planning the implementation of the measures gradually, so as to defuse the people's displeasure temporarily and to gain time. The tabling of the "terror law" in Parliament - in conjunction with the bill prohibiting demonstrations and curtailing trade union liberties - constitutes additional proof that other, worse measures will follow, to the detriment of the working people. The aim is to avert popular opposition and realignments by passing more prevention-suppression measures. This plan includes the various police corps, such as the border guards, which the government has decided, on various pretexts or by utilising existing problems, will constitute offensive squads against economic refugees. The curtailing of trade union and political freedoms, with a view to abolishing them in essence, shows that the offensive against the Greek people is not related solely to the new package of capitalist restructurings that will be promoted in the years to come. An effort is being made to silence the Greek people in face of the imperialist war in the Balkans, so that they will participate in any new aggressive plans, become a people submissive to the imperialist world order, give up their dreams and values that are related to peace and to the right of every people to determine their own present and future. Government statements about alleged cutbacks in armanents programmes are totally unrelated to any social sensitivity on its part. These are not cutbacks, merely delays, a chronological postponement of the programme, dictated largely by competition and the pressures brought to bear by the governments of the imperialist associations, the best known being the appeal filed by the French firm Dassault in the European courts over the Eurofighter. There was similar US pressure to prevent this contract. The government is utilising these postponements to exercise a poverty-relief-fund policy, in the sense of benefits equivalent to crumbs of charity in certain cases of extreme poverty. These are fraudulent measures, a smokescreen to ensure tolerance of the barbaric inroads against the collective rights to modern, public social security . The CPG, saluting the common action and the various forms of alliance and cooperation which have been multiplying and expanding recently, points out the need to step up efforts, to work harder in order to embrace broader masses of the people, to bring closer the formation of the Popular Front against the monopolies and imperialism. 3. The plans and schemes to reform the political system in Greece have become more visible lately; the main goal on the one hand is to confine as many forces as possible within the logic of the centre-left and centre-right, within the logic of government cooperation - with PASOK or ND as the main body. These processes serve directly the ambitions of Greece's plutocracy to strengthen the bourgeois political system so that it can deal with mounting popular opposition and primarily so that it can hinder any progress in the efforts to forge a strong sociopolitical alliance capable of reacting and of demanding profound changes. Any processes that may be manifested also reflect the confrontations among the various segments of the financial oligarchy and big capital. The bourgeois parties go into politics above all with a view to serving the course of capitalist restructuring. Among their ideological weapons is that of so-called renewal and modernisation. On this path, which is dangerous for the people, they find supporters from the so-called forces of "left renewal" and of "left modernisation", which, despite the differences between them, ultimately argue that the future of the people is identical to the future of social democracy and to collaboration with it. The way out cannot be found in either form of management, either in replacing PASOK with the ND, or in the bipolar centre-left - centre-right. The reply on the part of the radical forces of the people, the forces who want to fight against pro-monopoly, pro-imperialist policies, is to step up the processes of cooperation and rallying together around the great fronts of struggle, to provide thrust to the basic political goal which is to build the Anti-imperialist Anti-monopoly Democratic Front. The organised popular movement, the rise of the class struggle, the alliance of the people must along the way become the decisive and discernable factors in political developments, in contrast with the overt or covert processes that are being planned by the supporters of the political system and their partners. The CC calls upon the people, the working people and the youth who have been forged in the experience of struggles, who are inspired by progressive, left ideas and slogans, all those who know the consistency, militancy and stability of the CPG in the cause of popular unity and rallying together, to be vigilant, to scorn the known methods which the ruling bourgeois parties (PASOK and ND) use to contain the popular displeasure, to trap it in pseudo-dilemmas of anti-PASOK and anti-rightwing syndromes, without class or political content or substance. These two parties, and of course the government, have everything to gain from snaring the attention of the working people now in view of the future local and parliamentary elections, aggravating the anti-right and anti-PASOK syndromes, aiming not only to rob the popular vote, but also to prevent the radicalisation of the working people in the direction of the other road to development and progress for the Greek society, in radical opposition to the interests of the monopolies and imperialism. The CPG believes that the next local government elections can provide a strong thrust to the anti-monopoly anti-imperialist struggle, to rallying together, to the growth of the class struggle, only if they are used to sound a loud condemnation of both parties in both rounds. The elections can provide a thrust to the popular movement to the degree that more and more working people wage a daily struggle in the workplace, united in a common fighting front. The working people must become increasingly aware that mayors and prefects who implement government policy and the options of the EU and who do not resist anti-popular and reactionary directives will essentially function as the machinery that enables the state and those who hold power to load new burdens on the backs of the people. The CC calls upon the friends and voters of both these two bourgeois parties, upon those who belong to the working-class strata, to abandon these parties en masse, using their stance, their struggles and their vote. For the CPG, collaboration today is objectively necessary and urgent, therefore the time is ripe for cooperation with those forces who distinguish their position from the present-day strategy of the monopolies and imperialist associations, who distinguish their position from centre-left and centre-right scenaria, and who place emphasis on popular struggle and participation. During the recent period, experiences have been accumulated from the centre-left, and from collaboration with social democracy by left and progressive parties, even by communist parties, that have proved to be bitter experiences for the people in most of the countries in Europe. The policy of the centre-left facilitates the policy of capitalist restructuring and clawing back social rights from the working class. Thus we have the feedback of defeatism, and a more general social and political conservatism. Today the country needs a choice that will take it forward, and this is in the action to build the Anti-imperialist, Anti-monopoly Democratic Front. 31 March 2001 The CC of the CPG *End*
