The 18th of March is the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners. Founded by the Comintern in 1920, Red Aid in 1923 declared the 18th of March, the date of the founding of the Paris Commune, the “International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners” and dedicated it to political prisoners. On the 18th of March, solidarity with political prisoners is expressed worldwide.
In every period of history, there has been great resistance to the systems of exploitation and oppression in which we have lived for thousands of years, and a high price has been paid. The reaction of the ruling classes to every struggle against the ruling systems of exploitation, to every resistance, has been similar: to crush every movement against their existence in order to preserve their existence and, above all, to destroy those who led this movement. Because the anger that has built up against the ruling order, the dynamism that comes from the desire and the effort to change the existing order, can only be directed in the right direction under the right leadership. That is why the ruling classes want to destroy those who channel the people’s anger and desire for change and isolate from the people those who cannot be destroyed. The other dimension of the intolerance and aggression of the ruling classes against the revolutionary, communist and democratic popular movements is to ensure that the oppressed masses of the people remain silent and do not dare to revolt. By massacring and suppressing the vanguards of the people, the ruling classes send a message to the oppressed masses of the people: “If you act against us, we will do the same to you.”
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” said Karl Marx, the great master of the proletariat. Communists and revolutionaries fight for the realization of this ideal, they are murdered for it, they are imprisoned for it. Communist and revolutionary prisoners have shown again and again in torture centers and prisons that as long as life goes on, great examples can be created for the continuation of the class struggle under all living conditions. The way requires taking these risks and it is with this consciousness that communists and revolutionaries fight against the ruling systems of exploitation. The body of every murdered communist and revolutionary, every time spent in prison also lays the foundation for building the society of the future. The bourgeoisie and its lackeys want to ensure the capitulation by putting those who cannot be slaughtered in prisons under the most oppressive conditions. The communist and revolutionary prisoners, on the other hand, do not hesitate to turn the prisons, where the enemy feels strongest, into an arena of class struggle. For this reason, we must not define the communist and revolutionary prisoners in prisons as victims, but we must define them on the basis of their justice and embrace them. Communists and revolutionaries are not only murdered, imprisoned and tortured because they have alternative ideas to the existing systems of exploitation, but also because they do something to change these ideas, to organize and unite the people. It is first and foremost an ideological war, embodied by two hostile and irreconcilable classes. Since the objective conditions of the imperialist system keep the contradiction between the oppressor and the oppressed constant and current, the assassination and imprisonment of communists and revolutionaries does not solve the problem for the bourgeoisie. The existing objective situation, the deepening contradictions are directly reflected in the class contradictions and the gap of the murdered and imprisoned revolutionaries and communists is filled with new ones.
To the extent that the contradictions of the ruling system deepen and its impasses multiply, to the extent that their fear of the “gravedigger” grows, the ruling classes do not hesitate to reveal their true character more and more concretely. At the same time, the deepening and unresolved crisis of the system is leading the bourgeoisie and the exploiting ruling classes of all kinds to centralize the mechanism of the sovereign State more strongly, both with its laws and its de facto organizations, and to bring the mechanisms of oppression more to the fore. In the imperialist capitalist countries, which call themselves “ideal” and “progressive democracies,” the successive security laws, the new laws extending the powers of the State repressive organs, show us concretely that the bourgeoisie has left behind the ability to wear the “mask of democracy.” The bourgeoisie is re-establishing its position against the working class, the oppressed laborers and the oppressed peoples with all its reactionism. In the colonial and semi-colonial countries dominated by imperialism, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forms of government with various shades of fascism and reaction are the usual regimes. In these countries, all oppositionists, starting with the communists and revolutionaries, are subjected to systematic and permanent State terror. The depth of the contradiction between the ruling classes and the oppressed people in these countries determines the intensity of the class struggle. For the ruling classes, who can only maintain the servitude of imperialism through an unbridled regime of terror against the people, State terror is a necessity rather than an option. The laws are only a cover for fascism, reaction and State terror. Prisons, on the other hand, are a mechanism of torture and oppression. The ruling classes of Turkey, India, the Philippines, Peru, Iran, Israel etc. are deepening the isolation they label with almost all the letters of the alphabet in order to capture the prisoners in the prisons. The treatment of seriously ill prisoners is prevented under various pretexts, many sick prisoners are left to die and there are repeated actual attacks on prisoners. Thousands of members of the Kurdish nation are caught in prisons as the price of the Kurdish national liberation struggle. In Turkish prisons, the release of people who have been imprisoned for more than 30 years is prevented on the grounds that they “do not give up their thoughts.”
The reactionary Indian State has locked up over ten thousand communist, revolutionary and political activists, including Varavara Rao, Sanjoy Deepak Rao, Ayinoor Vasu, Rona Wilson and Gautam Navlakha to prevent the People’s War.
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has been imprisoned by French imperialism for 40 years and has not yet been released, although he has served his sentence. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a member of the Black Panthers, has been imprisoned by US imperialism for over 40 years. Thousands of communists, revolutionaries and prisoners of oppressed peoples from different parts of the world have spent decades in prisons.
The ruling classes’ fear of the communist and revolutionary prisoners and the class enmity they feel towards them is so great that they ruthlessly prevent the communists and revolutionaries they hold captive in open violation of their own laws from leaving the prisons. The assassination of Chairman Gonzalo in 2021, the leader of the PCP, who lost his health after 29 years in solitary confinement and whose death was caused because the necessary measures were not taken, is very important to understand the extent of the fear and class hatred felt by the imperialists and the servile owners of the ruling system. Those responsible for the death of Chairman Gonzalo even burned and destroyed his body.
The communist and revolutionary prisoners in the prisons are trying to fulfill the demands of the class struggle at the risk of their lives by going to the limits of prison conditions. They refuse to capitulate and do not hesitate to resist all kinds of pressure, torture and solitary confinement. We must mobilize to support the legitimate struggle and resistance of the prisoners, to fight against any kind of aggression against the prisoners, to be the voice of the prisoners outside, we must support their struggle under the conditions of imprisonment as part of the class struggle outside.
THE COMMUNIST AND REVOLUTIONARY PRISONERS ARE OUR HONOR!
SUPPORTING THE COMMUNIST AND REVOLUTIONARY PRISONERS MEANS SUPPORTING THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE!
LET US MAKE THE RESISTANCE AND STRUGGLE OF THE COMMUNIST AND REVOLUTIONARY PRISONERS OUR OWN. LET US BE THE VOICE OF THE PRISONERS!