1 February 2011
For decades the peoples of Tunisia, Egypt and the whole of North Africa and the Arab world have borne the brunt of violence and brutal repression and dictatorships. These dictatorships have been backed and sustained by the United States and the European Union.
Workers’ organisations, from their trade unions to their political parties, have been savagely suppressed. Workers and their families have experienced super-exploitation, poverty and hunger while western governments turned a blind eye to these massive abuses and continued to arm and train the military machines that have been used to keep the people down.
The Communist Party of Ireland expresses its solidarity with the Communist Party of Egypt, a party that has experienced decades of repression. Its members have suffered imprisonment and death at the hands of this regime. They have shown great courage and have succeeded in mobilising tens of thousands of workers over recent years in waves of strikes that have contributed to the weakening of the regime.
Tyrants can suppress the people for a time, but they cannot break the will of the people in their desire to be free. There is a clear need to show solidarity with the people of Egypt, in particular with working people, as they now face the manipulation and undermining of their democratic aspirations by elements of the regime and their international allies in the United States, the European Union, and Israel.
This manipulation is reflected in the continuing attempts to replace Mubarak and install Soliman, the former head of the secret police, as their man—the linchpin in the strategy of the torture flights through Egypt on their way to Guantánamo. But the old order is beginning to crumble before their eyes.
