International day of homage to Leon Trotsky,
83 years after his assassination at the hands of Stalinism

From Idlib, Syria…

Steif Abu Yazan, correspondent of the newspaper
"The Truth of the Oppressed"

"After thirteen years (...) the masses rose again against the starving regime calling for the fall of Bashar."

We are addressed by Steif Abu Yazan, a comrade who was part of the brigade led by a well-known figure of the Syrian revolution, the late Abd el Basset Sarout, who in his youth had been the goalkeeper of the Syrian national team. These comrades were in the resistance of a city that was a bastion of the revolution, the city of Homs, resisting for more than 5 years the siege by the regime of Bashar and they are the comrades who today we have the honor to have in this meeting and know that we are fighting with them side by side, so let us feel privileged for having witnessed this.

Steif Abu Yazan: Greetings to all who are present here and first of all we demand freedom to all our imprisoned comrades and honor to our martyrs.

We are proud to see what happened yesterday, when hundreds of thousands returned to the streets after thirteen years in cities that we thought they would never rise up, regardless of their creed, ethnicity or religion, Christians, Druze, Kurds, in Qamishli, in Aleppo, in Swayda and in many more places, the masses rose up again against the starving regime asking for the fall of Bashar.

You have to know that since the revolt, since the insurrection that we experienced yesterday, we we're able to made the regime  to back down and completely leave the city of Swayda, which is a city in Syria, south of Damascus, which have been these days the scene of huge insurrections by the masses.

(It should be clarified that the inhabitants of Swayda are of one ethnic group, the Druze, which is not a minor fact because there had been a division among the masses of Syria imposed by the traitorous leaderships. This division, the masses overcame it and today we can affirm that Syria is totally united and the comrade is giving us this great news that the regime has retreated and is no longer crushing the city of Swayda with its boot. It has retreated to Damascus).

This shows us that the regime is still weak. After thirteen years we took to the streets again, which shows us that we are still in power. Those who took to the streets yesterday were all workers. You have to know that in Syria you don't get paid more than 2 dollars a month, that's why we say that this regime is a starving, murderous, butcher that has bombed us, has thrown chemical bombs at us. It has caused us more than one million five hundred thousand killed and the same number of detainees and disappeared, but even today we are still standing, saying that the regime must fall.

After these widespread uprisings that have occurred in Syria, we see an increase in bombing by the regime to the liberated areas especially the stronghold of the revolution which is Idlib. Tirelessly for more than a week they have been bombing us, leaving a balance of more than 30 martyrs; in turn there have been skirmishes between the troops of those of us who defend Idlib and the regime and we are proud to say that we have caused 50 casualties to the regime of Bashar.

At the same time, they have spread the word that fighting is being prepared in the oil zone comprising the cities of Hasaka, Raqa and Deir ez Zor. They have spread the word that fighting is being prepared in that area to drive the regime out of there, but we fear that those who are behind this fight are none other than the US imperialist forces who want to keep that area and some of the FSA generals who are making available some soldiers to undertake this fight.

In addition to everything that has been happening, we see that in Turkey there have been increasing cases of racism against the number of Syrians who have emigrated to that country to escape the war, and we see something that we have not seen in years, which is the attempt of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who are in Turkey to return to Syria. It is a movement that could favor this Syrian uprising that we are witnessing.

At the same time, we are concerned that imperialism is appropriating all this that is happening. They had already been spreading the word that it was necessary to prepare battles, to prepare for the fight against Iran, so what we fear is that they will take advantage of this social movement to finish getting rid of Iran, to try to put someone in Bashar's place, appointed by them, and obviously to keep the oil wells that today generate billions of dollars.

But, fortunately, after so many years, 13 years, we have achieved the unity we were longing for. Although we see that the regime is trying to armor itself, it had imposed a curfew in cities like Homs, Hamaa and others, but little by little we were breaking that curfew and being that we went out in groups of 10, 20, we were more and more in the streets until we were able to achieve what was achieved yesterday, to be hundreds of thousands in the streets of Syria.

As a conclusion we can say that, hitting as one fist, we made the regime retreat and we have the hope that we will win little by little. We will achieve it not only by uniting among ourselves but with international unity, with those who are far away, with those who have always been with us because if it were not for them today we would be under the rubble, and we have full confidence that we will continue until the end until Bashar's regime falls.

I want to say goodbye by greeting everyone in this audience. It has been a tremendous honor for me to have you open up to this story and once again, may all the tyrants on earth fall, may Bashar al-Assad fall. Thank you very much for listening to me.

Before I leave, in closing, I would like to leave this message. We are a people who have resisted for many years. We have finally achieved unity. We are a people like you, with very similar values and we always appeal to the solidarity of all those present here, to know that neither 13 years nor 100 generations are going to stop us, until we see Bashar's regime fall.

Greetings to all who are present.