Statement of the Communist Party of Greece [KKE] on Current Events

Info about the General Strike in Greece
•
Impressive turnout at the strike and the demonstrations

The struggles of the last days met a culmination at the general strike of yesterday, December 10, which had been declared several days before the assassination of the youngster.

The general strike was met with extraordinary success. Since the dawn thousands of workers formed picket lines shutting down factories and stores, stopping ships, and countering the strikebreaking mechanisms. Particularly impressive was the turnout to the rallies and demonstrations of PAME [All Workers Militant Front] all around Greece.

Tens of thousands of workers, students from all levels of education, whole families with their children, defied the climate of fear and participated in the rallies, providing a strong response to the government, the state and para-state mechanisms of repression and intimidation and the employers.

The offensive on the workers’ rights is escalating on the name of the crisis. This is evident both in the new state budget, in the “crisis packages” launched by the government and the EU, as well as in the EU plans to extend the working week up to 65 hours. At the same time the industrialists become all the more aggressive and provocative. Just a few days ago a prominent representative of the employer “proposed” a 4-days working week as the ways out from the crisis.

In the past week there had also been strong mobilizations of small farmers, with mass rallies and blockades of the national highway, as well as protests of self-employed, craftsmen and tradesmen.

The KKE, as noted in a statement of its press bureau, “salutes the tens of thousands of workers, university and secondary school students who participated in the general strike and the mass, self-protected, strike rallies of PAME. We especially salute the magnificent manifestations of Athens, of Thessaloniki, of Piraeus, of Patra, of Larissa, of Ioannina and of the other big cities that over the last days experienced the action of the state repression and the incited provocations of the hooked groups.

These mass, determined and self-guarded mobilizations that counted with an intense youth participation, show the way and the content of the people’s counterattack for the rights of the working class, of the popular strata and the youth, against the offensive of the capital, of the EU and its parties. Constitute the real answer to the strategy of the government and the efforts to manipulate and sidetrack towards a harmless for the anti-peoples’ policy direction the justified indignation of thousands and thousands of young children that have taken the streets.

KKE calls for a continuation and intensification of the struggle, with all forms, first and foremost with the organization and action at the workplaces, the neighborhoods, the schools and faculties. Only a mass, organized, militant movement that clashes with the general political line of the plutocracy can respond to the employers and the state terrorism and intimidation, paving the way to the perspective. “

Mobilizations Abroad

At the same time the demonstrations condemning the murder of the 15-years-old and denouncing the repression continued in several European cities. In London, the organizations of KNE [Communist Youth of Greece] and KKE held a protest in front of the Greek embassy. Students from the Greek schools demonstrated in Munich and Stuttgart. Protests also took place on initiative of KNE in Edinburgh and Turin, while in Rome members of KNE joined the protest held by Giovani Comunisti and FGCI [Young Communist Federation of Italy] at the Greek embassy.

New mobilizations of youth

Today, December 11, new protests and demonstrations of secondary school students take place, while the coordination council of the students of Athens has announced a new demonstration in the center of Athens. In all these actions the forces of KNE play a leading and active role.At the same time several young people that serve their military service have sent solidarity messages from their units condemning the assassination of the young boy and expressing their worries and concerns over the role that the new military doctrine reserves for the army, and its orientation against the “enemy – people”.

Info by the International Section