Dear comrades and dear organizers,

As Italian Communist Party (reborn in 2016, after that the historic structure changed name and nature in 1991), we are proud to continue our collaboration with the anti-imperialist platform that arose from the Paris conference last October.

We find ourselves in an epochal juncture in history where the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar world expresses all its contradictions, problems and clashes which translate into wars waged against the interests of peoples and workers. Western countries that does not intend to accept the change of the rest of the world, and in particular of the Asian big countries, creates the conditions of instability, ethnic conflicts and social conflicts so that these can become civil wars and tear apart the countries bordering Europe .

How can we forget the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1998? In those years the so-called “government left” of Italy, with the Democratic Party in the head of the government in Italy for the first time after decades, a party which heir to the structure of the historic Italian Communist Party but its lowest traitor of values and principles, endorsed under the presidency of Massimo D’Alema the use of the Italian OTAN bases for the bombing of Serbian and Yugoslav territory in the context of the “Allied Force” operation.

Subsequently, the independence of Kosovo was recognized by the Western countries, starting with the Kumanovo agreement of 9 June 1999 which provided for a western protectorate, then culminating with the unilateral declaration of independence of 17 February 2008, causing an act of rupture of international law and legitimization of the warmongering drift which sanctioned the contradictory principle of humanitarian war, already partially elaborated in the first Gulf war in Iraq and definitively brought to fruition in the aggression against Afghanistan in 2001.

Italy unfortunately participated in that aggression by offering its own territory and bases, as well as participating directly with its own army in the bombings and subsequently with its own contingents in the so-called interposition and peace forces present in Kosovo.

What did that intervention lead to? What benefits for Western peoples have resulted from having destroyed a sovereign country that is a geographical part of Europe like Yugoslavia? Basically none, as the working classes in European countries have simply suffered from a continuous deregulation of work, not to mention the war expenses charged to the taxpayers. In Italy there has also been a silent massacre of Italian soldiers serving in the OTAN contingents in Kosovo and Serbia, as the Italians have been used by the Americans and allies as support corps in the field without protection from depleted uranium bombs; they were sent to slaughter as sacrificial bodies for a strategy of which Italy had neither been informed nor involved.

Once back home, these soldiers fell ill one after the other with strong tumours, leukemia and lymphoblastic diseases, often finding in the State not a guardian but a bureaucratic subject who tried in every way to avoid pronouncing on the connection of causality between the missions without protection on the places just bombed by the Americans and the diseases that arose on returning home.

Therefore the Italian Communist movement is strongly against the war and in particular condemns the military intervention carried out against the Yugoslav brothers in that damned 1998, inserting this struggle into the wider struggle against Western imperialism which for several decades has plundered, destroyed and colonized entire countries and which today cannot afford to give moral lessons to anyone.

The Italian Communist Party, despite its limited presence and strength, has always positioned itself as the uniting pivot of a movement that re-launches the true interpretation of the Constitution of the Italian Republic which in article 11 reaffirms that Italy “repudiates war as a means of international dispute resolution”.

We are grateful to the People’s Democracy Party of Korea, to the comrades of the NKPJ and to people who organize the conference for the invitation to our party, and it is with deep regret that we were unable to provide the participant representing our party for this time, a party which is nevertheless busy on a daily basis in the territories to establish its presence and apply where possible with the symbols of work, hammer sickle and star above the Italian flag, to bring back the Italian Communist Party in a clear and concise manner on the electoral ballots, in particular today on those for regional voting.

We stand in solidarity, spiritually and fraternally with you, we support the mobilization that will see you participating in the streets of Belgrade and we support the battle carried out through these conferences also with the participation of our party in spreading the democratic and anti-imperialist message in Italy.

Comrades, to work and to fight. Communist greetings.