The immigrant hunger strikers will win! (February 2010)

ALL THE IMMIGRANTS WILL BE LEGALIZED!

Hands off the university asylum – the asylum belongs to all the people

Last night, the contemptible deans’ council at the University of Athens suspended the asylum and gave the collaborationist government of PASOK (which is strongly supported by New Democracy and LAOS) the opportunity to raid in the Law School with its Special Police Forces and drive the immigrant hunger strikers off, to another building with the only aim of halting their struggle.    

Our 300 immigrant fellow workers had started a hunger strike on Tuesday 25th January (250 of them are in the Law school of Athens and the other 50 remain in the Workers’ Centre of Thessaloniki). Their demands are the legalization of all the immigrants who live and work in our country without papers or rights.

Our immigrant fellow workers, stimulated by the great, militant strike movement of 2010, which shook up our country, as well as by the beginning of the socialist revolution in Tunisia and the heroic uprisings in Egypt and Algeria, are ready to sacrifice their lives in order to gain their legalization and prevent, precarious and uninsured work, their overexploitation, the misery and unemployment, their exclusion from health care on the one hand, and on the other the constant police chase, the daily beating in the police stations, the pogroms, the concentration camps, etc.     

The collaborationist government of PASOK, the New Democracy, LAOS, the Democratic Alliance of Dora Bacogiannis, the hired journalists of all the channels, the deans and all the “respectable” company who have surrendered our country and us prey to IMF, the EU and the native and foreigner businessmen, all those who submit to the foreign bankers, all those who condemn us to unemployment, misery and brutalization, all those who impose to us one reduction of payments after the other, the abolition of labour relations and our enslavement, all those who impose to us increases in the public transport tickets, the tolls, the hospitals, etc, they have all enraged by the heroism of our immigrant fellow workers, they fear that the possibility of their victory will level them, it will raise the suppressed immigrants, increase the militancy of us all, rise our self confidence and show us that we are capable of crashing them and their memorandums. More than that, a victory of the hunger strikers will lead to the uprising of immigrants all over Europe.       

This huge fear that they feel makes them shout on TV channels, all day long, pour tons of poison and swear the heroic immigrants who are on hunger strike, calling them “miserable”, “barefoot”, “poor”, “consumptive”, rabid”, just as they have been swearing the civil servants, up to now, calling them “lazy” and “cur” or all of us claiming that “we have spent the money all together”, “the party we had been having is over” etc.

At the same time, with an unprecedented Nazi campaign, they have been trying to put the blame for all our sufferings on immigrants. They have a complete and conscious plan to develop racism all over the European Union, so that we will forget the deep crisis of their system and they will be able to divide us in native and immigrant workers and pass their brutal policy. That’s why they accuse our immigrant fellow workers of being responsible for unemployment, as if they, the immigrants, were the owners of the factories, as if it was them who dismiss massively or close down enterprises. They accuse immigrants of the thefts and the rise of criminality, for the excessive expenses in education and health, when it is them who rip off the state with their billion euro bribes, it is them who earn hundreds billions of euros through tax exemption, state aids, state commissions and task works, it is them who legitimately get into every pensioner’s house and steal their medicines and their pensions (this year only, they have stolen three monthly pensions through price increases), it is them who, through the memorandum, are going to rob us for the next twenty years, it is them who throw young people out of schools and have almost abolished free health.     

They have also been anxiously trying to turn our attention from the self-sacrifice of our immigrant fellow workers to the university asylum. They have all suddenly remembered the university asylum and its “violation”. But who are those who claim to be the defenders of the university asylum: all those who incorporate schools packing students like sardines in classes of 40 or more, who close down one school after the other, who suspend the heating at one school after the other, who close down one Technical Institution after the other and are about to close down universities as well and, mostly, to impose tuition fees everywhere in education, only to save some money and be able to pay the debts that they have burdened us with. They are those who, every now and then, order the Special Police Forces to raid into the asylum. The university asylum was conquered by the workers’ and students’ movement not for the neoliberal professors of universities but for the protection of the progressive and revolutionary ideas of the labour movement, for the protection of every struggle from the police, for all the chased and persecuted of the capitalist society to find shelter. The university asylum exists primarily for the immigrants.

• Hands off the immigrants!
• Suspension of the project of building the Evros wall and the concentration camps.
• Stop deportations and imprisonments immediately.
• Immediate legalization of all the immigrants.
• Get the police and the Special Forces out of the asylum – the asylum belongs to all the people.

Organization of Communists Internationalists (Greece)