Speech of Andros Kyprianou, General Secretary of the C.C. of AKEL, to a mass anti-racist and anti-fascist mobilization

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 19th March 2016, Nicosia

 

So far 79,106 civilians, 13,500 children and 8,760 women have died because of the war in Syria. To date 4.7 million people have already left the country. 3,770 people have died trying to reach European shores. Only the past year, more than 89,000 unaccompanied children arrived in Europe. 10,000 disappeared within a few hours, from the moment the authorities registered their details. These are large numbers. The horror is even greater. It is intolerable. Unfortunately however those who do not live this horror suffer what the verse of the well-known song pointedly says “on the news you see it and eat.”

Today we are here to point out the culprits responsible for this unspeakable tragedy: imperialism and its supporters who for the sake of their interests prevailing are inflicting death and uprooting entire peoples. In the name of dividing the world and profits, imperialism is turning peoples into refugees and destroying entire countries. The irony is that afterwards they shed crocodile tears supposedly expressing shock about the plight of refugees.

The US leaders and the European Union who pretend to sympathize with the refugees are the ones who forced them to swim into the unknown.

They are the ones treating refugees as unwelcome guests, either by closing the door in their faces, or by shirking their responsibilities indifferently, leaving them to travel in inflatable boats into the unknown. They are the ones indifferent when their partners, supposedly modern, supposedly Europeans of supposedly civilized people demand that refugees must first hand over all their valuables and then they will accommodate them.

Today we are here to shout again that racism and fascism will not pass. Recently our state channel broadcast the disgusting statements made by a man of the performing arts against refugees. His words condensed all the barbaric arguments of racism and neo-fascism against refugees, immigrants, against people who according to their own understanding don’t belong to “Aryan race”. “They aren’t refugees, they are all rich kids, they should have stayed in their own country,” the racist fumed.

We reply that he should go and tell all this to somebody else, because we know precisely why the people from Varosha, Kyrenia and the people from the Karpasia peninsula left their homes in 1974.

We know what war, uprooting and being a refugee means. “We have no problem with immigrants, but with illegal immigration,” fumes the racist. These are slogans trying to mislead the people. The truth is that they have a problem with anything that does not resemble them. Even worse, they may not have a problem with the “foreigner” or “non-believer” that will come to invest, perhaps violating everything. But they have a problem with the immigrant who came to seek a better destiny, or with the refugee who had no other means to save his/her life, and loaded on his/her shoulders their children or parents to leave.

We are opposing and combating racism and neo-fascism because we have experienced all the hypocrisy that sought to plunge our country into division during the past five years and led to hate marches against “foreigners”.

We have experienced the racism and neo-fascism when it was directed against us and when it turned against others.

We took the lead by projecting and promoting the class unity of Cypriot and foreign workers. Then governing DISY party MP’s, who today pretend they are shocked by the plight of refugees and want to help, were accusing us with sick and vulgar arguments, playing petty-political games on the backs of tormented people and spreading racism in society.

Back then the extreme-Right organized soup kitchens “only for Greeks” and no one else – except AKEL – didn’t dare or did not want to denounce them for it. Unfortunately they all closed their eyes and showed tolerance to racism and fascism since this served their own considerations during the Christofias administration. They did so given that back then they were attacking us with the same intensity as the extreme-Right did with regards the efforts to solve the Cyprus problem. They were attacking us with very similar arguments about the proposals tabled at the negotiations. Back then, neo-fascism was another voice in the crusade of hate they had launched against D. Christofias and AKEL. In doing so, the monster of neo-fascism reemerged in Cyprus and certain circles and forces shouldn’t pretend today that they do not know how it revived.

We are by nature against the inhuman and cruel content of racism. We are fighting against and isolate politically neo-fascism. We cultivate respect for each person and culture. We demonstrate that the sole responsible for the waves of refugees is imperialism. Capital is responsible for the illegal immigration which through the modern slave trade is attempting to abolish working people’s gains and rights, both domestic and foreign. We project the correct position that the combating of this threat lies not in xenophobic entrenchment, but in strengthening the organization of working people and the struggle so that capital is forced to employ foreign workers on the basis of the same working conditions that apply for domestic workers. Only then will capital not have an interest in nurturing the modern slave trade.

For us, no immigrant is our enemy.

For us, no refugee is a threat. It’s the tragic reminder of our own suffering. It’s the tragic reminder of our refugee camps, our own food lines and soup kitchens and our own uprooting as refugees.

For us, no refugee, no immigrant is our enemy. He/she is our fellow human being and above all our allies in the struggle for a better world!