The KKE wants to inform the communist parties, the working class and the popular forces as a whole that in the recent period in Greece the state, governmental and employer offensive has escalated against the class-oriented trade union movement, the forces of the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME), against the struggling farmers and the All-farmers’ Militant Rally (PASY), and even against struggling school students.

Along with the labeling of strikes as illegal and abusive, the intensification of the intervention of the police against mobilization and the rapid rise of repression and the intensification of anti-communism, a plan of judicial persecutions against cadres of PAME and the KKE, leading farmers and school students is underway.

This is a total offensive against the workers who are struggling for the satisfaction of the people’s demands in conflict with the forces of capital, the imperialist European Union and the anti-people political line of the coalition of government which is based on the liberal party of ND and the social-democratic PASOK.

The prosecutions and guilty verdicts of the bourgeois courts do not have their main target only the cadres of PAME and other militant rallies, who of course are not bowed by these verdicts, as thousands of militants of the movement were not bowed in more difficult conditions and to whom all the gains of the workers are owed, the gains that are now being torn down.

Their main goal is to intimidate every worker, so they do not participate in their trade union, so that they do not organize, so that they do not protest, so that they do not go on strike, so that they do not struggle. All this when a new wave of anti-people measures is on the way which can cause more mass popular mobilizations with the orientation of questioning the power of capital, the exploitative capitalist system. This is precisely what they are seeking to prevent through the escalation of authoritarianism and the judicial persecutions.

Specifically:

On 18/12/2013 a guilty verdict was issued against the communist trade unionist Sotiris Zarianopoulos, member of the Executive Secretariat of the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME) and of Anna Anianadou, cadre of PAME in the sector of the mass media and journalist of the newspaper of the CC of the KKE, “Rizospastis”, to 6 months in prison for the symbolic intervention of PAME in the news programme of ET3 on the 17^th of December 2009, a day of a general strike.

The trial of the 35 trade unionists of PAME has been scheduled to take place in the next few days merely because they tried to protest at the office of the Minister of Labour and Social Security on 30/1/2013. The trial of cadres of the class-oriented seamen’s union is also pending, who four years ago were picketing to protect their strike in the port of Piraeus.

Now there is hardly any significant mobilization of sectors of workers or other popular strata, for the just demands they are defending and even their own survival, against which the mechanisms of the attorneys and the judiciary do not attack.

The criminalization of the heroic months-long struggle of the workers of Hellenic Steel, because they defended their jobs is a characteristic example.  24 strikers are in the dock as defendants.

There have been repeated guilty verdicts at the expense of the trade-unionists and members of the unions of the ship-building zone of Perama. Hundreds of identical law suits have been made against these unions, with baseless and fabricated accusations made by the labour contractors. This is the group of contractors who called on the Nazi “Golden Dawn” to remove PAME from the zone.

On 17/10/2013, the unprecedented guilty verdict against the President of the tourist-restaurant workers’ union of Larisa and another worker by the three member magistrates court of Larisa to 1 year in prison and the deprival of political rights.

On 23/10/2013 the guilty verdict of 10 farmers of Elassona by the 3 member magistrates court of Larisa to 7 months in prison, because they participated in farmers’ demonstrations in 2009.

On 4/11 86 of the 92 accused farmers were condemned to 5 months in prison for the demonstrations of 2009. On 2/12 5 farmers were condemned to 4 months in prison by the permanent magistrates court of Kozani for mobilizations in January 2010. 

In Thessaly, as well as in other areas of Greece, a new cycle of prosecutions has begun, with dozens of preliminary procedures and trial briefs underway, at the expense of leading farmers who participated in the mobilizations last winter.

On 8/10/2013 6 school students from the 1^st Technical High School of Lamia were condemned with very rapid procedures, on 16/10 10 school-students from the Technical High School of Igoumenitsa were arrested and sent to trial. In addition, the attorneys and police are invading schools all over the country, where school-students are struggling. Threats and summons are being made by the attorneys and police against parents’ associations.

These facts are only a sample of the escalation of the anti-worker anti-people offensive and reveal in a characteristic way the class character of bourgeois parliamentary “democracy”, as the dictatorship of the monopolies and underline the class character of bourgeois “justice”. They reveal the combined goals of anti-communism and the persecutions against the people’s struggle and demonstrate once again the role of the EU and the “democracy” promises. It demonstrates how dangerous the positions are of the bourgeois and opportunist apologists who talk about the humanization of capitalism and the management-improvement of bourgeois democracy.

In these conditions the position of the KKE and PAME that stresses that the workers, the poor popular strata, must reject and fight against the authoritarianism and the anti-people political line and raise their militancy in order to satisfy their own needs acquires special importance. They must not bow their heads. They have nothing to lose if they struggle. They will only lose if they are afraid and tolerant. If the workers are determined, no government, no judiciary, no police, no employer and no state can resist these struggles.