A joint statement signed by 18 Communist and Workers' parties and initiated by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was issued January 18 a day after Greek trade unionists and leftists, supported by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), demonstrated outside of the embassy of Kazakhstan in Athens.
KKE HQ in Athens
A joint statement signed by 18 Communist and Workers' parties and initiated by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was issued January 18 "On the valuable experience of the great strikes and demonstrations of the working class and the people of Kazakhstan".
This comes a day after Greek trade unionists and leftists, supported by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), demonstrated outside of the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Athens:
On 17 January, responding to the call of the Trade unions of Builders, Employees in Local Administration, Hospitality–Tourism, Metal Industry, Telecommunications–Informatics, Employees in Commerce, Energy, and Accountants, as well as the Students’ Militant Front (MAS), a demonstration was held at the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Athens. The demonstrators expressed their solidarity with the people of Kazakhstan in their struggle against authoritarianism and repression, for the improvement of their living standards, against the looting of energy wealth by monopolies, for democratic freedoms and trade union rights.
The WFTU has released some photos of the demonstration at: Unions of Athens and WFTU Protest in Solidarity with the People of Kazakhstan.
The WFTU has previously issued a statement regarding the situation in Kazakhstan that read:
The World Federation of Trade Unions expresses its internationalist solidarity with the working class and the people of Kazakhstan and condemns the violence of the state and employers against the protests that has cost the lives of hundreds of protesters.
It is obvious that the rich wealth-producing resources of Kazakhstan, its crucial geo-strategically position, and the existence of the Baikonur Cosmodrome arouse the interest of imperialists and multinational cartels.
The wealth of the country is looted by monopolies and oligarchs that keep the people in poverty and misery. The workers took to the streets against poverty, the soaring cost of living, and unemployment. The real problem of survival forced the popular masses to protest. These problems are caused by the anti-people policies of the governments of Kazakhstan and the anti-labor practices of the multinationals which combined with the general wave of privatizations looted the great wealth of the country. We are standing on the side of those who struggle for the emancipation of the working class against capitalist exploitation.
The joint statement issued January 18 reads:
On the valuable experience of the great strikes and demonstrations of the working class and the people of Kazakhstan.
1. At the beginning of 2022, Kazakhstan, the former Soviet Republic of Central Asia, has been shaken by mass workers’ and people’s mobilizations, whose cause lies in the sharpened economic, social, and political problems faced by workers due to the restoration of capitalism in the country, 30 years after the counter-revolution and the dissolution of the USSR, when the power and the means of production passed into the hands of capital and the multinational monopolies now control a large part of the mining sector of the economy.
2. The Communist and Workers Parties signing this Joint Statement express our solidarity with the just economic and political demands of the demonstrators, who demanded raises in salaries and pensions, reduction in fuel prices, lower retirement age, the cancellation of the effects of privatizations, measures to support the unemployed, trade union and political freedoms and rights. We particularly salute the industrial workers of Western Kazakhstan, who were the heart of this mass people’s mobilization.
3. The bourgeois forces attempted to take advantage of the mobilizations in Alma-Ata and South Kazakhstan, in the framework of their power struggle for the distribution of the pie of their economic and political power.
4. The unacceptable Russian military intervention through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), led by Russia, was utilized to avert the shock of bourgeois power in conditions of sharpening of the imperialist competition in the crucial region of Central Asia, which is a field of a fierce power struggle among powerful monopolies and capitalist states, such as the USA.
5. The presence of the CSTO forces facilitated the repression of people’s mobilizations by the bourgeois state. The developments demonstrate the class character of transnational unions, which, like the EU and NATO, are formed on the basis of capitalism and undertake the primary task of safeguarding bourgeois power in each country and the union overall to continue the class exploitation of the workers. The existence and activity of these unions, as indicated by the recent case of Kazakhstan, is anti-popular and to be condemned.
6. Regarding the efforts of imperialist forces who aim to exploit such workers' mobilizations for their own interests and to yield color revolutions, our parties emphasize that these interventions can be invalidated, not by stigmatizing all kinds of popular mobilization, but by defending the independent struggle of the working class and rejecting any political-ideological-organizational involvement with any regional or international power. The international communist movement cannot seek for a friend from within the imperialist world nor can postpone the class struggle using the international balance of forces as a pretext. On the other hand, it is the duty of the communist movement to safeguard the social mobilizations from the plans of the bourgeois governments and the inter-bourgeois antagonisms and to be vigilant in this matter.
7. The developments in Kazakhstan stress the need for a strong CP in every country, with a revolutionary programme and strong ties with the working class, capable of rallying and mobilizing workers’–people’s forces against capitalism and monopolies so that the people’s struggle will be effective and will highlight the path of socialism, which is the only alternative solution to capitalist barbarism.
8. The events in Kazakhstan and other countries, where the bourgeois power forcibly suppressed the people’s mobilizations, once again demonstrate the great importance of the international solidarity of the workers and the timeliness of the slogan “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”.
So far the statement has been endorsed by:
Party of Labour of Austria, Communist Party of Greece, Workers Party of Ireland, Jordanian Communist Party, Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, Communist Party of Mexico, Communist Party of Pakistan, Paraguayan Communist Party, Philippines Communist Party [PKP 1930], Russian Communist Workers' Party, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Communist Party of the Workers' of Spain, Communist Party of Sweden, Communist Party of Turkey, Union of Communists of Ukraine, Communist Party of Venezuela, Pole of Communist Revival in France (PRCF) and Communist Front (Italy)
The statement remains open for further endorsements from other parties.