March 20, 2022

On the 11th anniversary of the Syrian revolution…
Revolutionary day of action about the Ukrainian question

From the Syrian resistance in the north of Idlib, intervention of Comrade Khero

“Barbarism means that the worker loses absolutely all his rights (…) Because of the betrayal and the HTS, not only were we unable to achieve anything we demanded in the revolution, but a government equal to or worse than Bashar al-Assad’s was established.”

We will quickly give the floor to Comrade Khero, who will make a very brief intervention. Khero is the son of "Hajj" Mustafa, one of the leaders of the Leon Sedov Brigade; he is also a brother of one of the Brigade's greatest exponents, Abu Al Baraa, a comrade who fell in combat for the liberation of Aleppo. Khero has been  one of the most combative comrades in the Syrian revolution and a victim of the HTS prisons. His family has suffered a lot from the oppression of HTS and FSA. From the start, they were marked. We know how the FSA persecuted Mustafa and Abu Al Baraa and put them on a blacklist. One of the brothers of this family of combatants and martyrs has been put in prison for more than a month for driving a motorcycle without papers. Khero was also jailed for being a month late on rent. This is what the fighters of the Syrian revolution suffer today, both those who risked their lives and the  relatives of those that today have turned into martyrs!

Khero: Greetings to everyone here. It is an honor for me to be able to participate. I start by thanking Comrade Steif for what he said. Honestly, the testimony he gave us at this meeting is accurate. We have been resisting for 11 years against all the counterrevolutionary troops that have invaded our country. People today wonder why Putin is invading Ukraine today. To understand that, you have to see the number of children and people massacred in the Syrian revolution under his hand, on behalf of the United States.

I want to convey to you a testimony of what has happened to me. Two years ago we suffered the worst of the terrors by HTS, a faction of the Sunni bourgeoisie that took over northern Syria. They first started by charging taxes for everything one could do. Then, little by little, they reconstituted the police and the courts. So much so that today, at gunpoint, they run one of the most terrifying governments in northern Syria. I was imprisoned. We are 12 people in a very small house. There are 6 children that are mine, 3 children that are my brother's, and yet they showed no mercy and put me in jail for being behind on rent. Barbarism means that the worker loses absolutely all his rights. Here we are workers without any rights. Because of the betrayal and HTS, not only were we unable to achieve anything we claimed in the revolution, but a government equal to or worse than that of Bashar al-Assad has been established.

After the huge mobilization that took place on the 11th anniversary of the Syrian revolution, they began to say that they were going to open the fronts against Putin, and they are even recruiting fellow Syrians to go fight in Ukraine.

Finally, a small conclusion that I draw, which was our experience in 2015-2016, with the wave of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe. It is very good that they receive the refugees, although perhaps it hurts us that they receive more those from Ukraine than those from Syria. But we understand that it is not the solution. Receiving refugees does not end the problem. The working class must not only receive refugees, but rise up to help the Ukrainian people to fight and repel this invasion. This is how it should have been in 2015. The European working class should have joined our fight, not been neutral, just receiving refugees, and should have helped us defeat Bashar al-Assad on our own soil. That way there would have been no more refugees. As revolutionaries we understand that we have to support any revolution that may take place in the world, even if it is a small grain of sand, even if it is through computer communication. Anywhere there is a revolution, anywhere there is an oppressed, we will be there. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for listening to me. Greetings to all of you. It has been an honour.