DEM VOLKE DIENEN

Nachdem bereits eine Übersetzung ins Spanische erfolgte, dokumentieren wir an dieser Stelle eine englischsprachige Übersetzung des Dokuments der KLASSENSTANDPUNKT-Redaktion "Das Streben des deutschen Imperialismus sich zu einer Supermacht zu entwickeln", die uns übersandt wurde.

On Monday the 19^th of December a truck drove through a Christmas fair in Berlin, 12 people were killed and almost 50 were injured. The German bourgeois press and some bourgeois politicians quickly talked about a “terrorist attack”.

If it is an attack like the one in Nice (France), a now quite often drawn parallel, it can not be an excuse to demand solidarity with the imperialist state FRG. The communists are always on the side of the international proletariat and the peoples of the world. There is no justifiability of the imperialists and those who profit from their blood sucking, to demand that we should show more solidarity with the civilian victims in the imperialist countries than with the hundred of thousands times more victims in the oppressed countries by the imperialist aggression. The communists are revolutionary defeatists who wish for the defeat of the imperialist state in which they work.

We document this translation of a report on the demonstration against the OSZE Summit in Hamburg on 8^th of December.

On 8^th and 9^th of December the meeting of the foreign ministers of the “Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe“ (OSCE) took place in Hamburg. Therefore the repression apparatus of the FRG mobilised forces never seen before in this city. Over 13,000 cops, 22 water canons, 18 tanks, 35 boats, several thousand vehicles, K-9 units, mounted police, 10 helicopters and 700 police special forces occupied the “Exihibiton Halls” as the venue and the surrounding city district Sternschanze, St. Pauli and the whole city centre militarily and bullied residents and visitors.

On November 24^th, the international day of solidarity and struggle for the unconditional release of the political prisoners in India, various actions were carried out around the world, which we document here.

We document the english translation of a report on an good event in Austria, organized during the campaign "Down with the Olympic Massacre!":

Report: Event on "The resistance of women against the olympic games"

Last Friday, the 23 of September was an event on this topic, together organised of the "No Olympia 2016" Comitee and "Infoladen Salzburg". About 30 activists, feminists and interested people participated and discussed about the resistance of women in Brasil and what we can learn from it in our struggle in Austria.

Below we document the actions conducted in FRG and Austria of which we were informed about, in support of the Brazilian comrades and the Brazilian people and their struggle against the Olympic massacre. The actions were conducted in the last two weeks, the time period in which the Olympic Games were held in Rio de Janeiro and they are an expression of the spirit of proletarian internationalism to support the struggles of the peoples of the world, especially in the oppressed nations.

Wir veröffentlichen hier eine englische Übersetzung des Flugblatts der Revolutionären Front zur Verteidigung der Rechte des Volkes - Brasilien zur Olympia in Rio de Janeiro.

Wir verweisen auch auf die pdf's in Deutsch, Spanisch und Portugiesisch.

The Olympic Games take place from 5 August and 21 August and the Paralympics from 7 until 18 September in Rio de Janeiro following the example of the 2014 World Cup, which was realised through a literal military operation, under the guise of preventing terrorist attacks. In reality this is done to limit the movement of the poor population, curtail the right to assembly and organisation of the masses, while the demoralised governments see themselves forced into a corner by the coming justified rebellion of the people against their excesses and systematic repression of popular protests.

The Olympic Games are being held while the people of Rio de Janeiro and the whole country face exploitation and oppression, colossal unemployment, shrinking wages, enormous costs of living, increased debt (state debt, the source of the brazen plunder of the public coffers by bankers reach 3bn Reias (around $1bn) over the coming months), as well as immense police brutality and all sorts of suffering. Gruesome crimes and murders by police happen every day in the favelas and outer areas of the great metropolises, as well as in the interior of the country and the rural areas. The UPP (fortified police stations in the favelas) are centres of torture and the coercion against poor people and bases of oppression and slaughter. One example of the police’s licence to kill is the case of four police officers, who fired 111 rifle rounds into a car carrying five youth in Costa Barros, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. The criminals behind this murder await  the judge’s verdict, still on the loose and on the beat. Forced evictions of peasants and indigenous people are a constant of the opration against the Guarani-Kaiowá (an indigenous people in Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina) in Mato Grosso do Sul, where military police, federal police and national security forces attacked the people and then retreated to allow armed bandits to go in all guns blazing, killing Guaraní health commissioner Clodiodi Achilles de Souza and gravely injuring six others.

In the name of the Olympics and the 2014 World Cup 22,059 families were evicted from their homes, amounting to around 77.206 people between 2009 and 2015 (according to data presented by the Administration of Rio de Janeiro in July 2015).

Epidemics like the Zika virus, dengue fever, the chikungunya  virus and the H1N1 swine flu are spreading, the suffering people stand in queues in front of Hospitals and public surgeries, whose supplies get worse every day – a lack of food for patients in hospitals, lack of doctors, medicine, stretchers, dirty wash rooms, blood stained bed clothes, broken windows. The payments of the pitiful wages at universities, schools and other public services is late, school meals at primary schools, research funding and even toilet paper are lacking. The late payment affects 393,143 public employees, including active pensioners. This situation of general collapse in Rio de Janeiro is the current reality of a part of the country and a sign of things to come for the rest of it.

Across the whole country workers are responding with strikes, demonstrations and all kinds of meetings. In the Olympic city pupils have occupied more than sixty schools to support the teachers’ strike and demand improvements and changes in the education system. In the countryside poor peasants, indigenous peoples and remnants of the Quilombo (name for the settlements of escaped black slaves) are fighting, occupying land and defending themselves against displacement, persecution, threats and murders through the big landlords and their armed bandits and police, which is swept under the rug by the judicial system.

The reactionary governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Francisco Dornelles, has proclaimed the “public state of catastrophe”, in the light of the apparent “severe financial crisis”. He has received more than 2.9mio Reais from interim president Michel Temer (PMDB), which he has designated to spend on “public security” during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The decree authorises the use of “extraordinary measures required for the rationalisation of all essential public services for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Rio 2016”, which means more excesses and brutal repression against the people.

The costs of the Olympics are surpass an incredible 42bn Reais ($12.7bn), while funds for hospitals and the public health service, schools, the payment of public employees, housing for the people, a basic sanitary system, transport etc are lacking. This surpasses even the 27.1bn Reais (then almost $12bn) that were burnt for the 2014 World Cup. The structural corruption of the whole political and economic system of the country remains hidden, while the damage to the people rises.

The realisation of the Olympic Games is a certain party of the bankrupt plan of Luiz Inácio Lula and the PT to achieve great international attention for Brazil and force through their election projects, the continuation of the old administration of the Brazilian State, a just failed opportunistic project. It also follows the capitalist hellspawn in its last stage, rotten and dying: imperialism, and mainly Yankee imperialism, and its designs for greater hegemony and plunder of the riches of oppressed countries.

People of Brazil: Rebel!

The Olympic Games are a tool of the brazen politics of games without bread of the bourgeoisie and its monopoly on the press. Since the economic crisis hit millions have lost their jobs, consumer credit has been cut back, rights are restricted and wages precariarised. Legions of disowned and homeless travel the country and the cities and in the heart of the Brazilian people a revolt is brewing against all the injustices that they face every day.

The great revolts against the old and rotten Brazilian state are the order of the day. Today they are represented by the PMDB government and its supporters, heirs of the government of the PT/OMDB/PcdoB/PSB/PDT etc, who every day perpetrate all kinds of crimes against and trample on our people. The overthrow of the scum of corrupt politicians, foreign domination, big landlords, bankers, business people and other big capitalists is an urgent task that will require a long struggle.

Completely overthrowing this fascist state will require a great democratic revolution that can destroy it and during the struggle build up something new in its place: the people’s state of new democracy of the revolutionary united front, based on the worker-peasant alliance, together with all the exploited and oppressed. It is a great democratic revolution that will seamlessly transition to socialism that will smash this rotten state and sweep away the exploitation, oppression, the suffering, injustices and violence against our working people and will free the nation from the yoke of imperialism, mainly that of the Yankees.

To build the new one must destroy the old. And every democratic and revolutionary struggle of the people must raise the struggle to defend the interests of the people and fight for their rights to:

• a general wage rise
• social security and pension, provided by the state without cuts
• free public transport for school children and students
• free and adequate health provision and public education
• against violence against women, for equal rights and the decriminalisation of abortions
• punishment for the criminals of the military regime, those who ordered and carried out torture, murders and disappearances
• an end to forced labour on the farms and plantations of PAC (growth acceleration programme) across the whole country
• recognition and immediate delineation of the territories of the indigenous peoples and remnants of the Quilombo communities
• Land to those who live and work on it
• a stop to the bleeding of public coffers, which are doled out to banks and transnational corprorations
• stop the mining operations that plunder natural riches and destroy the environment, nationalisation of the ore deposits, industrialisation and national production

However, we stress that our main demand is political power.

The peasants must take the whole land of big landlords across the whole country and make sure its ownership by any means necessary. The working class and other working people must make preparations for the big general strike, through partial strikes, blocking of roads, striving to unite all possible trade unions and people’s organisations upon the bases of the class line. The women and fighting youth must rise in stormy protests, occupy schools and universities and take the streets and parks. The popular masses of the whole country must rise to the democratic revolution!

The Brazilian people demands national production, wages, rights, land to those who work it and New Democracy!

On the 5^th of August, the day of the opening of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the “League against imperialist aggression”  called for a rally with the slogan “Down with the Olympic massacre!” in front of the brazilian honorary consulate in Hamburg, which is located in a cynical way in the so called “Columbus House” in the most high profiled business district of Hamburg. At the beginning of the rally a German translation of the leaflet by the “Revolutionary Front for the Defense of the Rights of the People – Brazil” was read out. Various speeches on different aspects of the Olympic Games were held. In the speeches attention was drawn also on to the situation of political prisoners in Brazil and other countries, like Chile and Palestine. A good number of revolutionary youth participated at the rally and distributed the leaflet. This rally marked the start of the activities in support of the campaign in Brazil against the Olympic Games in Rio and there will be further actions for sure.