Dear Comrades, I am warmly greeting you all on behalf of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ) and thank you for your participation to this important meeting at a particularly demanding time where big capital seeks to increase exploitation, attack rights and curtail freedoms.
Dear comrades, welcome to Belgrade, one of Europe’s oldest cities and place where always battered by the winds of imperialism. Belgrade also faced problems and challenges in the 20th century. During the First World War and the Second World War, the city was destroyed. On the end of the 20th century our capital city was victim of NATO aggression between March 24th to June 10th, 1999, which caused the death of more than 2,000 people, along with massive destruction of property and infrastructure with estimated costs of over 100 billion USD. Our peoples know imperialism in live, no from books or TV.
I would like to talk today about 2 more specific topics related to imperialism and consequences of its destructive character:
1) regarding its presence in our country, particularly at region of Kosovo and Metohija
2) regarding the current developments of the situation in Ukraine
1)
The region of the Balkans is a region of great strategic importance.
The Balkan is attracting the imperialist powers like a magnet and makes our region an important arena for the manifestation of the inter-imperialist contradictions and their strategic goals. The bourgeoisie and the bourgeois political forces in the states of the region play an active part in these contradictions; they are part of the problem and support they are essential part of the constellation of imperialist oppression and exploitation imperialist unions in order to serve their own interests.
Necessary urgent duty for the peoples to reject and oppose the policy of “divide and rule” which aims at the emergence of new and weak states, in fact protectorates, as it is the case in face of the situation emerging in the Kosovo. Today the imperialist plans and rivalry may cause again bloodshed in the region. The policy promoted by the imperialist powers aims not only to the intensification of the foreign interventions but also to the establishment of governments servile to the imperialist dictates, of regimes that will further deepen the capitalist exploitation and bind their countries to the imperialist organizations of NATO and EU.
In the international public, for a long time and with clear political intentions an untruthful, distorted picture was being created in terms of what happened in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Everything has been presented in a lopsided manner so – in order to protect from responsibility those who are truly responsible and to draw the wrong conclusions about what happened and also in terms of the background of the war against Yugoslavia.
There is a fundamental historical fact that one should proceed from when seeking to understand what happened and which led to everything that happened in the territory of Yugoslavia from 1991 until the present day, and that is the violent destruction of a European state, Yugoslavia, which was derived from the statehood of Serbia, the only ally of the democratic world in that part of the world over the past two centuries. There is no doubt that this fundamental historic fact is going to leave an imprint on European history in the times to come. A multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-confessional state was destroyed, a state that had its historic and international legal legitimacy.
Whose merit was this that this sovereign state was destroyed? According to the Nuremberg principles, this constitutes the gravest international crime, a crime against peace. Whose merit was it that a war happened in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands of people wounded and maimed? Thousands of people lost their homes and fled from their homes, mostly Serbs, and also there are millions of damage in terms of property. The – this is – not speak of the ecological disaster involved. We say that first of it is to blame Western imperialism for these catastrophic outcomes.
The international community will have to face up to all of this. It is not only that a state was destroyed. The United Nations system was destroyed. Also the corpus of principles upon which the world civilization was based has been destroyed. In addition to that, never in history has a state disappeared by sheer coincidence. There was a great deal of rhetoric involved in the destruction of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia did not simply disappear into thin air, this country was destroyed through a plan, violently, and through a war which continues to be waged, and a series of war crimes were committed in this war.
If war springs from imperialism, it must be tackled at its roots. It is not the peoples who are hostile to each other, but the capitalists of the individual bourgeois states and military alliances. It is our historical task to expose the capitalist warmongers and criminals – and to deprive them of their power. This will only be possible through the overthrow of the capitalist and imperialist system and the revolutionary re-establishment of socialism.
Practice showed that NATO is the biggest security risk in the world, and people of Serbia felt that on their skin during the bombing in 1999.
Today, under the pressure of NATO and EU, Serbia is being forced to recognize Kosovo and Metohija as an independent country. Western imperialism wants to present that as a historical solution between Serbs and Albanians. If Serbia ever agrees on that scenario, that would be a violation of the international law, and created new clashes on multiethnic Balkans, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, southwestern Serbia, Montenegro… So, we are appealing on a danger of breaking the international law, because if the principle is not being respected on one occasion, then that disrespect will become a rule. It is clear to everyone that western imperialism does not want a peaceful solution, but new clashes, so they can control the Balkan Peninsula. That is precisely what is going on Kosovo right now. Dangerous developments of current administration in Prishitna continue to take unilateral moves regardless the security risks. Conflict on Kosovo is not over, it just waiting the moment to erupt and explode once again because peace is not achieved and it won’t be achieved as long as imperialism decides about the destiny of the peoples living there.
2)
Another sad example where imperialism is deciding about peoples destinies is nowadays Ukraine. The terrible war is going on there, and we want to express on this occasion our solidarity with everyone that suffers if its consequences.
At the same time, the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia believes that the Russian military intervention represents a legitimate military action at the invitation of the authorities of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, whose people have been suffering the insolent attacks of the Kiev fascist junta for more than eight years now.
The NKPJ fully supports the right of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to declare independence from the regime of the fascist junta in Kyiv. This attitude is guided by the elementary right of the people of these parts of Ukraine to live in peace and freedom, and not under the dictates of the fascists who, serving the Western imperialists, seized power in a coup in Kiev after the pro- imperialist demonstrations on Maidan Square in 2014.
Despite the abundant suffering in these areas, where the war of varying intensity has been waged almost continuously since 2014, the will of the people to by no means fall into the clutches of the Western imperialists and their fascist henchmen from the Kiev junta has resisted all attacks. For example, today the territories of the Donetsk and Lagan People’s Republics are the only parts of Ukraine, where the fascist and vandal law on the so-called “decommunization”. The streets and squares of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics still bear names from the USSR period, and monuments to Lenin and other revolutionaries responsible for the general prosperity of the Donbass and Ukraine adorn many squares and other public spaces.
Serbia would have to, if it stands for the principles of true love of freedom, independence from the imposed interests of imperialism, for a progressive society on the scale of man, to recognize the independence of these areas. It would thereby strengthen the principled defense of Kosovo and Metohija as an integral part of Serbia, insisting that Kosovo and Metohija, to the same extent as DNR and LNR, were also targets of Western imperialism and their local agents, in our case from the ranks of the terrorist so-called “Kosovo Liberation Army” ” and in the case of Ukraine from the ranks of the people of Bandera. Serbia’s “neutrality” in this matter would represent not only an anti-civilization act, but also a contradictory one when it comes to the principled positions of debunking inter-ethnic and other disputes and conflicts that are carried out for the selfish and barbaric interests of Western imperialism, primarily American. Also, Belgrade should by no means impose sanctions on Russia, as the imperialist dungeon of the peoples, the European Union, is demanding, because that would be unfair and would harm relations with the fraternal Russian people.
The NKPJ demands that the Kiev coup junta keep its hands off Ukrainian communists, anti-fascists, true patriots and the Russian population whose rights have been systematically and blatantly violated for the past eight years. Our Party asks progressive forces in the world to support the righteous struggle of Ukrainian anti-fascists and true patriots for the overthrow of the anti-people Kiev coup junta by all means! With this, peace will be guaranteed, and all calls for it will be fulfilled.
The most responsible for the war in Ukraine, which is being waged “to the last Ukrainian”, is Western imperialism, which incited and pushed the people of Ukraine into dangerous provocations and a terrible war that began in 2014. This proxy war that the Western imperialists, primarily the USA, is waging against Russia shows all the bloodthirsty side of imperialism, which will sooner provoke the Third World War than lose the possibility of merciless exploitation and oppression of the people. Therefore, new threats to peace have opened up in the Far East as well, and we are anxiously watching the development of events, but at the same time we are calling on all progressive humanity to raise their voices and stand up for peace – for a world in which imperialism will be only a dreary and dark past.
Against capitalism and war!
For peace and socialism!
Death to imperialism, freedom to the peoples!
