Occupation is Terror, Annexation is Apartheid!

 joint statement of communist and workers' parties

On June 5^th 2020 it is the 53^rd anniversary of the 1967 aggressive war, where Israel had occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza strip, the Syrian Golan and Sinai peninsula.

This anniversary comes in the shadow of the Israeli government’s declared intention to annex the Occupied Palestinian Lands supported by the US Administration, as part of the disastrous “Deal of the Century”. Meaning, perpetuating the occupation, deepening the settlements and creating an official Apartheid regime, while clearing the Palestinian people’s right of self-determination, and preventing the end of occupation, settlements and the establishment of a Palestinian independent state on the borders of June 4^th 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital and the right of return for refugees according to international resolutions.

Netanyahu’s government and Trump’s administration are pulling the region to the edge as well as they both are perpetuating the conflict in the service of hegemony projects, they then are betting on the silence of the international community on these crimes – war crimes- especially as the world is preoccupied with COVID-19 implications on health, society and economy.
We, the undersigned workers’ and communist parties of the world, call upon the progressive anti-imperialist forces around the world to continue the struggle against this criminal Israeli policy and the impudent support of imperialism in liquidating the rights of the Palestinian People and exterminating any chance to exercise international law, and reach security and stability in the region.

Down with the Occupation!

Forward the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination!

Signed Parties:

1. Communist Party of Albania
2. Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism
3. Party of Labour of Austria
4. CP of Australia
5. Progressive Tribune of Bahrain
6. Communist Party of Belgium
7. Workers' Party of Belgium
8. Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
9. Communist Party of Brazil
10. Brazilian Communist Party
11. New Communist Party of Britain
12. Communist Party of Britain
13. Communist Party of Canada
14. Communists of Catalonia
15. CP of Chile
16. Communist Party of Cuba
17. AKEL – Cyprus
18. Communist Party in Denmark
19. Communist Party of Finland
20. French Communist Party
21. German Communist Party
22. Communist Party of Greece
23. Communist Party of India (Marxist) 
24. Tudeh Party of Iran
25. Workers’ Party of Ireland
26. Communist Party of Israel
27. Communist Party of Italy
28. Italian Communist Party
29. Jordanian Communist Party
30. Communist Party of Mexico
31. Popular Socialist Party – National Political Association, Mexico
32. Communist Party of Norway
33. Palestinian People’s Party
34. Paraguayan Communist Party
35. Peruvian Communist Party
36. PKP-1930, the Philippine Communist Party
37. Communist Party of Poland
38. Portuguese Communist Party
39. Union of Communist Parties-CPSU
40. Communists of Serbia
41. Communist Party of Spain
42. Communist Party of the Workers of Spain - PCTE
43. Communist Party of Sri Lanka
44. Sudanese Communist Party
45. South African CP
46. Communist Party of Swaziland
47. Communist Party of Turkey
48. Communist Party of Ukraine
49. Communist Party of USA
50. New Communist Party of Yugoslavia

We will not forget the barbaric fascist crime in Odessa!

Never forgive, never forget!

By Theo Russell

On 2^nd May, 2014 a barbarous crime took place in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, committed by a fascist mob who were emboldened by the violent coup 10 weeks earlier – a coup which was enthusiastically supported by US and European Union (EU) leaders, and welcomed by the UK government.

At least 46 anti-fascist protesters died, and over 200 were injured, when the Odessa Trade Unions House was surrounded and fire-bombed by a mob composed of members and supporters of the many explicitly fascist Ukrainian organisations.

Many believe the actual number murdered was far higher but after six years no investigation whatsoever has been carried out. According to the Stalkerzone blog as many as 300 people died on that day.

The February 2014 coup was spearheaded by the openly fascist Right Sector armed militia and the far-right, openly anti-Semitic Svoboda Party. Victoria Nuland, US Undersecretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, famously admitted in a talk to eager American business representatives that her government had spent five billion dollars to subvert the elected Victor Yanukovich-led government.

In response to this coup protests and uprisings took place across the predominantly Russian-speaking cities of southern and eastern Ukraine, shocked by the rise to power of fascist parties, armed fascist militias, and the sight of Nazi thugs and football hooligans looting and burning trade union and communist party offices.

They rightly feared that the fascist bands were preparing to descend on their cities and towns to crush any resistance, and to impose their reactionary, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, anti-Roma and anti-Russian views on them.

This movement was known as the ‘anti-Maidan’, and in Odessa an anti-fascist protest camp was set up in Kulikovo Field, one of the city’s largest squares outside the main railway station.

Unfortunately the fascist and ‘ultra’ football hooligan mob was swelled by allies coming from Kiev and other western Ukrainian cities, who attacked and firebombed the protest camp, forcing the protestors to retreat to the Odessa Trade Unions House, where they were surrounded.

The mob then petrol bombed the building and held firefighters back, whilst the police stood idly by. Any protesters trying to escape were beaten, and many murdered, by the mob. This was deliberate mass murder in one of Ukraine largest and most beautiful cities.

There is abundant evidence of the massacre and of the perpetrators involved, and detailed documentaries have been made in France and Germany, but the puppet government in Ukraine, aided by a silent western mass media, has swept the event under the carpet, hoping the world will forget it ever happened.

There have been several international investigations, including one by the European Council which severely criticised the Ukraine government’s failure to prosecute anyone for these crimes.

Even the US State Department made a statement in 2015 that supported calls for an investigation and prosecutions, and condemned the intimidation of relatives campaigning for justice.

But in practice, the EU politicians failed to follow up their token judicial report with any real pressure and the State Department statement was merely a token gesture, a handy reply for journalists asking questions about the massacre.

But the citizens of Odessa have not forgotten. For six years the Council of Mothers of 2^nd May has campaigned for justice, and citizens still rally and lay flowers in front of the Trade Unions House every year on 2^nd May.

It is virtually impossible to get news on the treatment of anti-fascists in Ukraine but an American campaigner who visited Odessa two years ago was told that several members of the Council of Mothers have been harassed, and some framed and jailed by the Ukraine’s Security Service, the infamous SBU, which has eagerly carried out the orders of the fascist-infested Kiev regime.

The president of the Council of Mothers, Victoria Machulko, has been raided by the SBU several times and was detained whilst memorials to mark the massacre have taken place.

Alexander Kushnaryov, the 65-year-old father one of the victims, Gennady Kushnaryov, and retired military officer Anatoly Slobodyanik, 68, were fitted up in an SBU sting operation and are now in prison, whereas those who carried out the massacre have not even had charges laid against them.

Under the present regime in Ukraine, which enjoys the support of the USA, EU and Britain, there is no democracy and all opposition to the regime has been silenced.

Trade union offices have been ransacked and burned, Holocaust memorials have been repeatedly vandalised, the largest opposition party, the Communist Party of Ukraine, has been banned, communists, socialists, Jewish and gay people have been attacked by fascist gangs, and members of the judiciary have been threatened and intimidated.

Even moderate newspapers and TV stations have been raided or closed down, and journalists have been assassinated, even recently in the centre of Kiev. Thousands have been prosecuted, jailed or driven into exile for allegedly supporting ‘separatism’, meaning opposition to the war in the East.

A quick internet search will produce copious, detailed evidence of all these crimes – just google ‘attacks on Roma camps in Ukraine’, for example, yet the editors of western media outlets don’t regard such events as important enough for daily prime-time news.

The British government actively supported the ‘Euromaidan’ movement, and the then foreign secretary William Hague told parliament that the 2014 coup, which saw openly fascist, Nazi-admiring parties become part of the government and the entire state structure, was in fact a legal change of government.

The UK has sent 75 Army trainers to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and sponsored ‘educational’ activities aimed at sanitising Second World War Ukrainian fascist leaders who collaborated with Nazi Germany in the genocide of 5–7 million people, a quarter of Ukraine's population, including 1.5 million Jews, and the deportation of two million people to Germany.

The New Communist Party calls for justice for the victims and families of the Odessa Trade Unions House massacre, and for all those who took part in the murders to face trial.

We also call for the release of Alexander Kushnaryov and Anatoly Slobodyanik, and an end to the harassment of relatives of the victims of the massacre.

We believe the day will come when justice will be done, when the whole world will be aware of the barbaric crime six years ago, and new new, free and democratic Ukraine will be realised.

We will not forget this fascist crime and we look forward to the day when 2^nd May is commemorated around the world!

75th Anniversary of the Victory over Nazi-fascism

In the name of freedom, peace and truth

Against fascism and war

The victory over Nazi-fascism in the Second World War is a major event in History, the memory of which must be preserved and defended in the face of repeated attempts at historical falsification aimed at making us forget the decisive role played by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, by the communists and by anti-fascists from around the world.

Generated by capitalism, Nazi-fascism was the most violent and terroristic manifestation of monopoly capital. It was responsible for the outbreak of this war of aggression and plunder that caused close to 75 million deaths, of which approximately 27 million were Soviet citizens, and for the immeasurable suffering and horror of the Nazi concentration camps. The peoples can also not forget dark pages, such as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the USA, without any military justification, which represented a display of power and of their world-wide hegemonistic ambitions.

The Second World War (1939-1945) was the result of increasingly acute inter-imperialist contradictions and, at the same time, of the intention to destroy the first Socialist State, the USSR, which was namely expressed in the support and connivance of the United Kingdom, France and the United States with the rearmament and expansionist ambition of Nazi Germany.

In commemorating the 75th anniversary of the historic Victory on  May 9, 1945, the undersigned communist and workers' parties, certain in the knowledge that they portray the feelings and aspirations of workers and peoples from all over the world:

- Pay tribute to all those who gave their lives on the battlefields against the Nazi-fascist hordes and in particular to the heroism of the resistance movements and anti-fascist fighters and to the heroic Soviet people and Red Army, led by the Communist Party, whose contribution, written in heroic pages such as the battles of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, was decisive for the Victory over barbarism;

- Consider that the Victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in the Anti-Comintern Pact was achieved thanks to the decisive contribution of the USSR, to the class nature of the Soviet power with the participation of the masses of the people, to the leading role of the Communist Party, to the superiority which was displayed by the Socialist system. That victory is an enormous historical legacy of the revolutionary movement;

- Value the outstanding advances in the social and national emancipation of the workers and peoples that the Victory and the resulting advancement of the forces of social progress and peace made possible, extending the sphere of socialism within the countries of Europe, Asia and Latin America, creating the conditions for the advance of the labour movement in capitalist countries, the sweeping development of the national liberation movement and the resulting liquidation of colonial empires;

- Denounce and condemn the campaigns that aim to belittle, distort and even deny, the role of the USSR and of the communists in the defeat of Nazi-fascism and also to unjustly and falsely blame the Soviet Union for starting the Second World War, to expunge the responsibilities of big capital and the governments at its service in the promotion and rise of fascism and in unleashing the war, and whitewash and rehabilitate fascism, while destroying the monuments and memory of the liberating Soviet army, promoting anti-communism and criminalizing communists and other anti-fascists;

- Denounce and condemn the EU’s anti-communist resolutions and the slanderous historical falsification which attempts to equate socialism with the fascist monster;

- Warn that the most reactionary and aggressive sectors of imperialism are increasingly viewing  fascism and war as a “way out” of the deepening crisis of the capitalist system, whose inhuman character becomes particularly obvious when, even in the face of the very serious epidemic outbreak of Covid-19, imperialism, the USA, NATO, the EU and its allies capitalist powers, continue a criminal policy of blockades and aggressions against countries and peoples;

-  Consider that the struggle for peace, social progress and socialism are inseparable; and make a commitment  to seek a stronger common action of the working class, of the workers and peoples of the world, of the political forces engaged in blocking the path to fascism and in the struggle against imperialism, imperialist aggressions and a new war of tragic proportions.

The situation with which the workers and peoples of the world are confronted underlines the importance of strengthening the struggle against imperialism, for the sovereignty of the peoples and the independence of States, for the rights of the workers and peoples, as leading forward to the revolutionary overcoming of the capitalist system, a system which breeds fascism, war, the injustices, dangers and contradictions of the present. As it was 75 years ago, it is today the struggle of the communists and all those facing capitalist exploitation and oppression that will open the way for the future for Humanity.

Communist Party of Armenia

Communist Party of Australia

Party of Labour of Austria

Communist Party of Bangladesh

Communist Party of Belarus

Communist Party of Belgium

Communist Party of Brazil

Communist Party of Britain

New Communist Party of Britain

Communist Party of Canada

Communist Party of Chile

Colombian Communist Party

Socialist Worker’s Party of Croatia

The Progressive Party of the Working People – AKEL

Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia

Communist Party in Denmark

Egyptian Communist Party

Communist Party of Finland

French Communist Party

Pole of Communist Revival in France

Unified Communist Party of Georgia

German Communist Party

Communist Party of Greece

Hungarian Worker’s Party

Communist Party of India (Marxist)

Communist Party of India

Tudeh Party of Iran

Iraqi Communist Party

Communist Party of Ireland

Workers’ Party of Ireland

Communist Party of Israel

Italian Communist Party

Party of the Communist Refoundation

Workers’ Party of Korea

Communist Party of Luxembourg

Popular Socialist Party – National Political Association (PPS-APNPS) México

Communist Party of Mexico

New Communist Party of the Netherlands

New Communist Party of Aotearoa

Communist Party of Norway

Communist Party of Pakistan

Palestinian Communist Party

Paraguayan Communist Party

Peruan Communist Party

Philippine Communist Party (PKP – 1930)

Portuguese Communist Party

Communist Party of The Russian Federation

New Communist Party of Yugoslavia

Communist of Serbia

South African Communist Party

Communist Party of Spain

Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain

Communists of Catalonia

Galizan People's Union

Communist Party of the Workers of Spain

Galician Nationalist Bloc

Sudanese Communist Party
Communist Party of Swaziland

Communist Party (Switzerland)

Syrian Communist Party

Communist Party of Turkey

Communist Party of Ukraine

Communist Party USA

Communist Party of Venezuela