From our Diary of Struggle in Greece

The crisis deepens and the class struggle sharpens in Greece. On March 16, a new mass demonstration took place in Athens against the draconian austerity measures that the PASOK government and the EU try to impose.

(Pictures from this mobilization can be seen above). The demonstration was organized by ADEDY (the National Federation of Public Employees), class struggle trade unions and left organizations.  A new demonstration in Athens is planned for March 23.

The Communist Party (KKE) does not participate holding its own separate rallies and demonstrations.

In meantime the National Congress of GSEE (General Confederation of Labor) takes place in a luxurious hotel in Chalkidiki, Northern Greece. The pro-PASOK majority is accused for fraud in the election of the delegates to the Congress; for this reason the pro-KKE trade unionists withdrew from the Congress. The same step probably will be taken by the pro-Synapismos (former Euro-communists) trade unionists. The GSEE bureaucracy and its PASOK leadership make desperate attempts to stop the working class mobilizations that continue and will escalate early April, immediately after the Easter holidays.

On March 19, a successful public meeting of proletarian solidarity between workers of Greece and Turkey in struggle was held in the Polytechnic University of Athens organized by the Antiwar Internationalist Movement and EEK. The meeting was opened by the report of a worker from Tekel - the big Turkish State tobacco company that moved, on a national level, to close down some of its factories and privatize others, provoking an unprecedented workers upsurge in the country and a 77 days occupation of the public space in Ankara by Tekel workers fighting unemployment, privatization and flexibility of labor. The worker from Tekel accompanied by a comrade of DIP (Revolutionary Workers Party), the Turkish Section of the Coordinating Committee for the re-foundation of the Fourth International (CRFI) will speak today in Patras.

Internationalism in action is now more vital than ever.

La luta continua

Matsas Savas