With a successful and enthusiastic public meeting in the open air Strefi Hill Theater, in the center of Athens , Greece , on September 19, 2005 the 5th International Conference of the Balkan Socialist Centre ‘Christian Rakovsky’ has concluded its fruitful work.
The Rakovsky Centre was founded in January 2000, in the aftermath of the NATO war against Yugoslavia . The initiative was taken by the forces fighting for the Refoundation of the Fourth International appealing to a broader spectrum of fighters in the Left. Its aim was and remains to unite on an internationalist socialist basis revolutionary forces in the area, coming from different political traditions, in a common struggle against imperialist interventions as well as against the local ruling classes and chauvinist cliques.
The last five years the Rakovsky Centre has organized five Conferences and many public meetings. It participated in international mobilizations of the movement against capitalist globalization, such as in Prague in 2000 and Genoa in 2001, in the mobilization against the EU Summit in Thessalonica, Northern Greece in June 2003, in the demonstrations against the NATO Summit and the Bush visit in Istanbul , Turkey , in July 2004.
The 5th International Conference of the Centre took place on September 16-18, 2005 , in Athens , Greece . The host organization was again, as in the past, EEK, the Greek Section of the CRFI. The proceedings were in the Town Hall of Kaisariani, the historic proletarian neighborhood, where the most heroic battles were fought against the Nazi troops occupying Athens during the 2nd World War and where hundreds of communists, including Trotskyists were executed by the fascist squads.
Revolutionary organizations and fighters from seven countries from the Balkans, the Middle East , Russia and Western Europe participated. As Presidium of Honor were unanimously voted three fighters, prisoners in the Zionist jails: comrades Muhammad Kannaane, General secretary of the Abnaa el Balad Palestinian Movement (who attended the previous Conference of the Centre in 2003), Marwan Barghouti, prisoner as a leading figure of the Intifada and of the Al Aqsa Brigades, and the young Jewish Tali Fahima, prisoner and now on trial as “collaborator of the Al Aqsa Brigades”.
In the Conference an international report on the New Challenges in the Balkans, the Middle East and Russia was presented and discussed. In the report and in the discussion were stressed the three sources, interconnected by the world capitalist crisis, of new tensions and dangers in the Balkans: the quagmire of U.S. imperialism in Iraq, the crisis in Russia and in the former Soviet space, the crisis in the European Union after the referendum on the EU Constitutional Charter in France and Netherlands-confirmed and deepened in the recent German Elections.
This report, after a full discussion and amendments by the delegates, was adopted by a unanimous vote as the main Resolution of the 5th Conference.
National reports were given and/or documents were presented from Greece , Turkey , Romania , Bosnia/Herzegovina, Albania , Russia , and Palestine .
The reports and the discussion made clear the enormous scale of social disaster in the Balkan countries, following the collapse of Stalinism, the turn of the local bureaucratic cliques to capitalist restoration and nationalistic frenzy, the imperialist intervention and war. Despite demoralization and atomization in the everyday fight for survival, the first signs of a revival of the workers’ movement are manifested, as in the wave of factory occupations in Serbia or in the unrest among the miners in Romania following the recall of the amnesty to their leaders, imprisoned after the occupations some years ago.
The 5th Conference of the Balkan Centre stressed three main axes of struggle in the coming period, as it summarized them in the final resolution:
· A collective, organized struggle for survival. Fight even for the most elementary needs well as for more general issues determining the life or death of thousands and millions: for bread, jobs, wages, pensions, housing, education, health etc. Fight against all the foreign and local brigands who have stolen the social wealth and over-exploit the labouring population at the lowest cost. The struggle for workers control has a central importance. An all Balkan trade union Workers’ Conference has to be carefully organized to discuss means and methods to fight against the barbaric conditions imposed by the invasion of multinational capital, while all the previous protection of social existence have been destroyed. An urgent plan to secure the living conditions of the population has to be drafted by workers and popular collectives. For the expropriation of the expropriators under workers control!
· Against xenophobia, chauvinism, racism, anti-Semitism and all forms of discrimination, particularly the oppression of women, including sexual exploitation and trafficking! Equal rights for immigrants and local workers.
· Against imperialist intervention and war, for socialist unity in a Balkan Socialist Federation, in the framework of the United Socialist States of Europe, and for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East
In relation to the political situation in Turkey and its interconnection to the imperialist war and occupation of Iraq, the Conference pointed out the dangers facing the Kurdish people, particularly the millions living inside Turkey: As the Resolution underlines “the Turkish state has resolutely set on a course to definitively crush the Kurdish movement inside Turkey and is provoking chauvinism within the masses against the Kurds, which has resulted in repeated instances of mobs, usually led by the fascists, attempting to lynch Kurds in many towns and cities of Turkey. The international workers’ movement faces the task of defending the Kurds of Turkey from the twin threats of state repression and lynch attempts, which in the future could lead to large-scale massacres of Kurds and/or civil war.”
The challenges facing the Palestinian people and its liberation movement following the so-called ‘ Gaza disengagement” were exhaustively discussed. The Conference decided to launch a campaign of solidarity to Muhammad Kannaane, Marwan Barghouti, Tali Fahima and all the political prisoners in Palestine .
The main resolution of the Conference concludes with a program of action:
· To constantly mobilize against any act of State repression against the democratic rights and civil liberties by the regimes in the region;
· To expand the campaign, both in the academic milieu and in the workers’ and popular movements against the expulsion of Goran Marcovic from his job in the Slobomir P. University in Bosnia because of his political views and affiliation to the Communist Workers Party of Bosnia/Herzegovina, for his immediate reinstatement;
· To prepare a series of alternative activities and public meetings, during the next European Social Forum in April in Athens , independently from the ideological/political framework of the Forum dominant reformist forces;
· To prepare until the end of 2005 the conditions to launch a Bulletin of the Balkan Socialist Centre with news, political articles and theoretical essays;
· To expand our work in the Middle East and prepare the conditions for a Middle Eastern Conference;
· The Balkan Centre has to prepare the conditions for an International Conference of revolutionary forces and social movements in a broader scale than the present.
A Secretariat of the ‘Christian Rakovsky’ Centre was unanimously elected. A new international meeting of the Centre will take place in April 2006.
In the public meeting in Strefi the conclusions and results of the Conference were presented in an audience of hundreds of workers, youth and representatives of political organizations of the Left. The speakers were from the participants in the Conference, from Turkey , Romania , Palestine , Russia , Denmark , Austria , and Greece as well as from Italy (from the AMR Progetto Comunista).
The 5th International Conference of the Balkan Centre ‘Christian Rakovsky’ was a great school of internationalism and a step forward for the revolutionary International of the world working class.
