December 5, 2019
This December 12, the International Day of Struggle for the Persecuted Worker
Free all prisoners and justice for all martyrs,
tortured and massacred!
From Las Heras, in the Argentinean Patagonia, we make an emergency call to all the workers and workers’ organizations of the world to fight alongside our brothers and sisters, the workers and poor peasants in Bolivia, who are suffering a brutal attack. A coup d'état has been imposed in the neighboring country, with which they seek to scare all the oppressed in Latin America that have risen in defense of bread, land and freedom.
Last week, an important delegation of social and human rights organizations from Argentina traveled to Bolivia. There, these organizations collected the testimonies of the families of the victims and the detainees, where it was demonstrated that what was experienced in Senkata was a brutal massacre, riddling from helicopters, snipers; dozens of prisoners are tortured and female comrades are raped, while there are hundreds of gunshot wounded who can't even go to hospitals for fear of being arrested.
We cannot allow this massacre against our brothers and sisters in Senkata and all Bolivia to be silenced and forgotten!
We are oil workers, who rose in 2006 against oil companies such as Repsol and the government shouting “Stop job outsourcing! Down with the tax on wages! Equal pay for equal work! ” Many of us were fired from the industry and today we are working in casual and part-time jobs.
The imperialist oil companies, in order to eliminate our fight in 2006, sent the Gendarmerie and the Intelligence Services to occupy our town. They tortured us, imprisoned us for more than three years and humiliated our families, entering our homes in the middle of the night, and breaking and beating everyone in their path.
The attack we suffered for rising for our rights, was answered by the government and their justice with the terror exerted on our people, as we had experienced in the worst times of Videla and his military dictatorship.
Those oil companies are the same that today, under the command of US imperialism and the OAS, have staged a coup d’état in Bolivia. They massacred more than 50 workers in Senkata, in the city of El Alto and also dozens of comrades were wounded and arrested by them, while others remain missing.
We know what it means to be treated as "terrorists," "vandals," and "criminals." Not only did we suffer all kinds of vexations and humiliation when we were imprisoned since 2006, but in 2013, the oil companies sought revenge for the enormous struggle we had waged and sent their “justice”, under the command of the goverment, to stage a kangaroo court, with fabricated evidence, in which four of us were sentenced to life imprisonment and another six to five years in prison.
That year, when the court dictated the brutal sentence, we called on all the workers of Argentina and the world to fight alongside us. On December 12, the court finally issued the conviction, but we were no longer alone, thousands of workers and dozens of workers and human rights organizations marched with us to the court and, at the same time, actions were taken in solidarity in different countries of the world. So the International Network for the Freedom of Political Prisoners and Justice for Our Martyrs was born on that December 12, 2013, which we call ir the “International Day of Struggle for the Persecuted Worker”. We call all the workers to fight around the world, because we understand that the only way to confront the attack of those above is by us joining over borders.
This unified struggle of the workers of the world cannot stop even for a moment and today more than ever it must be concentrated in the deepest solidarity with the comrades of Senkata and the entire Bolivia.
That is why we call to organize a week of intensive struggle to fight for the freedom of all comrade prisoners and to judge and punish all the murderers of our comrades killed by the bullets of the army commanded by Añez under the command of the OAS and the US imperialists.
We call not to stop the fight for our Bolivian comrades. This December 12 and every day, from the organizations of workers, peasants, human rights organizations, let’s take to the streets around the world, let’s march to the consulates and embassies of Bolivia in solidarity with the workers and the poor of Senkata, to send endorsements and find all the channels that are within our reach so that the comrades are not alone facing the coup government of Añez, the military and murderous police and their complicit justice, all of them servants of US imperialism.
We are facing the same enemy, not only in Bolivia, but also in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti and here in Argentina. But we also do it in the Middle East, where our comrades in Iraq have risen, leaving hundreds of dead and detained, as is also the case in Iran and Lebanon, in Syria bloodied by al-Assad and Putin and in Palestine occupied by Zionism.
It is the same struggle that takes place in the Pacific, on the streets of Hong Kong and in China that faces the murderous dictatorship of the millionaires of the Chinese Communist Party. It is a single fight together with our colleagues in Catalonia, the "yellow vests" and the "black vests" in France, of the young rebels who are imprisoned in the prisons of Greece for fighting against the servant government of the Troika.
From Alaska to Patagonia and on the five continents.
One class, one enemy, one single fight worldwide!
December 12: “International Day of Struggle for the Persecuted Worker”…
Stand with our class brothers and sisters in Senkata! Stand for the freedom of all the female and male comrade prisoners! Judge and punish all those responsible for the murder of our martyrs!
There will be no forgetting or forgiveness!
For the freedom of all political prisoners and justice for our martyrs in Argentina and worldwide!
- For the acquittal of Daniel Ruiz, Arakaki, Ponce and all the comrades prosecuted for fighting in Argentina on December 18, 2017 against the Pension Reform. Stop chasing Sebastian Romero! Freedom to the 4 bus drivers of Line East of La Plata! Drop all chares against Alejandro Villarruel and over 7,500 comrades persecuted for fighting!
For labor and popular courts to judge and punish the murderers of Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel, Dario Santillan and Maximiliano Kostequi and all our martyrs!
- For the unconditional release of Facundo Jones Huala, a Mapuche political prisoner detained in Temuco, Chile and for all prisoners for fighting in the Piñera prisons and the Chilean Pinochetist regime.
- For all comrades taken as prisoners for fighting against decree 883 of the IMF and Lenin Moreno in Ecuador.
- For the freedom of the more than 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners in the prisons of the Zionist occupant. For the thousands of detainees in the prisons of the fascist al-Assad and for the prisoners in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and all the fighters for bread and freedom in the Middle East to be released.
- Let the Jasic Technology workers, militant students and Hong Kong prisoners be released from the jails of the CCP in China.
- For the alive appearance of the 43 high school students of Ayotzinapa. They took them alive, we want them to be returned alive! It was the State!
- For the unconditional release of Mummia Abu Jamal and the thousands of Hispanic children and workers in Trump prisons.
- For the freedom of Georges Abdallah and the fellow Basque prisoners in France.
- Freedom to the fighters for the independence of Catalonia! Freedom to Alfon! No more frame-ups!
An injury to one is an injury to all!
The rebellion of the slaves is not a crime, it is justice!
One single fight against the oil companies that plunder our resources and slaughter our peoples
Black gold is extracted with blood!
This December 12 marks six years of the brutal sentence of to jail and with a life sentence that fell on us in 2013.
Despite this infamous ruling against us, which seeks to scare all the workers in Argentina who fight for their rights, we have not given up and are still standing.
When the infamous trial was taking place, our working class siblings in Syria faced a brutal genocide by the Al Assad government on behalf of imperialism. A huge massacre was also happening in Yemen, while the exploited Palestinians suffered imprisonment and torture in the hands of the Zionist occupant.
Thus we understood why their justice acted upon the workers with such violence and viciousness, and the reason why our town had been occupied by the Gendarmerie and the State intelligence services, acting as in the military dictatorship.
The oil and gas we have under our soil, such as in the Middle East or Ecuador and Bolivia, are extracted with blood.
Therefore, when we were judged, we called all the workers in the world to fight alongside us and on December 12, 2013 we were not alone.
At the international level, we also fight alongside Palestinian political prisoners, such as Sammer Issawi and his sister and brothers, who refused to receive their food ration in the Zionist occupant's prisons the same day we were going to court. The same did Georges Abdallah, a fighter of the Palestinian cause, along with dozens of Basque political prisoners in the prisons of France.
The comrades of the JRCL-RMF of Japan and the militant students Zengakuren took to the streets of Tokyo and other cities in solidarity with us. Mummia Abu Jamal, leader of the Black Panthers, sentenced to death in the United States prison, sent us his support.
We also receive enormous support and solidarity from the workers and youth of Syria, who fight against the fascist Al Assad and Putin, who are imposing a true genocide in that country, on behalf of Trump and the oil companies, the same that condemned us and that today have imposed a coup d’etat and are killing the exploited in Bolivia.
This allowed us, although they had condemned us, to continue in our homes, fighting for our acquittal.
We were not facing only the judges who condemned us, but we were also fighting against the oil companies that bombed in Syria, that slaughtered in Iraq and Iran, that sacked Ecuador and that in Senkata, Bolivia, imposed a brutal massacre.
That is why we want to call on the whole of the workers' organizations of the world to unite and fight against the imperialist oil companies.
In Bolivia, imperialism and oil companies have concentrated to scare all the workers and exploited people who stand up in Latin America. We cannot allow them to succeed in their offensive, because tomorrow, sooner rather than later, they will come for all of us.
From Las Heras to Senkata to Baghdad to Tehran to Quito to Cali to Damascus to Jerusalem and throughout the five continents...
A single and same struggle of the whole working class! |
Comisión de Trabajadores Condenados, Familiares y Amigos de Las Heras
(Commission of Condemned Workers, Families and Friends of Las Heras, Argentina)
José Rosales, convicted for life
Hugo González, convicted for life
Omar Mansilla, convicted to 5 years in jail
Rubén Bach, convicted to 5 years in jail
Claudia Pafundi, member of the Commission
Claudia Bazán, José Rosales’ wife
Raquel Valencia, Hugo González’s wife
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