The 22nd International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties began on October 27 in Havana, Cuba.
According to the Communist Party of Cuba's official website 142 delegates of 73 delegations of communist and workers' parties from 57 countries are attending the event.
They are meeting under the slogan:
Solidarity with Cuba and all the struggling peoples. United we are stronger in the anti-imperialist struggle, together with social and popular movements, in the face of capitalism and its policies, the threat of fascism and war; in defence of peace, the environment, workers' rights, solidarity and socialism.
The IMCWP is an annual meeting of Communist and Workers' parties that began in 1998 at the imitative of the Communist Party of Greece. In 2020 it was cancelled due to the pandemic. in 2021 it was held online.
We reported on last year's here: International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties 2021: Actions and roundup
The meeting began its sessions on Friday morning at the Havana Convention Center, chaired by the member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), Roberto Morales Ojeda.
What unites us all: communists, socialists, revolutionaries and workers? We are united by anti-imperialism, which summarizes the common commitment to conquer a world of peace and greater social justice; in promoting the development and prosperity of all nations; in achieving the well-being and happiness of our peoples, and in achieving respect for the conservation of the environment
Ojeda's speech also touched on the blockade, US imperialism, the Cuban commitment to Marxism-Leninism and other matters of importance.
He noted further:
Reaffirmed that, blockaded and attacked since the very beginning of the Revolution, US hostility during the last six years has been unprecedented, as the government of Donald Trump implemented 243 additional measures to the economic, financial and commercial blockade, many of which were executed opportunistically and criminally during the Covid-19 pandemic, and maintained by the current president of the United States. "Cuba was denied even oxygen when its people needed it most."
He listed, as an expression of the strength of the Revolution, to have been able to control the spread of the coronavirus thanks to five national vaccines and protocols developed by our scientists and doctors. He reported that in the last nine weeks our country does not report deaths from Covid-19, daily cases barely exceed ten and very few patients evolve to severe or critical forms, in a world that still fails to control the disease.
He explained that in the midst of that iron blockade and when the pandemic began to hit, Cuba sent 58 brigades of doctors and health personnel to 42 countries and territories, some of them European, to help face it, while the United States forged destabilization plans and still tries, desperately, to generate the so-called "social explosion" that has not worked for them because of the confidence that the vast majority of the people maintain in the Revolution and the Socialism.
Full speech:
The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez also greeted arriving delegates.
We wish them total success in such an important event. We consider it necessary to emphasize the importance of the Communist and Workers' Parties, in the struggle to defeat savage world capitalism, the resurgence of neo-fascism allied with imperialist neoliberalism, the big multinationals and the local oligarchies, contributing, in this way, in the unwavering struggle for social justice and national liberation, which will lead us towards Socialism.
The meeting continues until October 29.