The World Anti-imperialist Platform held historical Athens International Conference “A New Era Of Anti-imperialist Struggle” and the Athens Declaration and the Palestine Declaration were declared.
On November 18th, the World Anti-imperialist Platform held the Athens International Conference in Drapetsona near Athens of Greece.
The World Anti-imperialist Platform held international conferences following its formation at the Paris International Conference last October at Belgrade on December, at Caracas on March, and at Seoul on May.
Drapetsona neighboring Athens where conference was held is where the KKE was founded. The conference was held in the old city hall of Drapetsona.
51 communist and anti-imperialist delegations of 34 parties and political organizations from 30 countries in Asia, Central and Southern America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, attended the conference.
The participants discussed the strategy of the imperialist forces and the independent position of the anti-imperialist forces, under the condition of following the war in Ukraine on 2022, outbreak of the war in Palestine and the probability of contagion in Eastern Europe and the increasing probability of the outbreak of war in Eastern Asia.
They also discussed the wrong line of revisionism, opportunism, sectarianism, the revolutionary principle, and the task of the world anti-imperialist forces focusing on the life and struggle of Nikos Zachariadis in the history of the Greek revolution and announced the Athens Declaration, to which the majority of the participants agreed with standing ovation.
Christina Kostoula from CPGB-ML presided over the conference. It was comprised of three sections.
In the first section, the speeches were made by Vice Mayor of Drapetsona, Dimitrios Patelis (Representative of the Collective of Struggle for the Revolutionary Unification of Humanity, Greece), Baltic Platform, Tsotne Margia (Socialist Platform, Georgia), Klara Azhybekova (General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan), Vasiliy Zelikov (International Secretary of All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks), Eastern Initiative, Aleksandar Đenić (Executive Secretary of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Serbia), Stefan Petrov (International Committee of 23 September Movement, Bulgaria), Edoardo Artes (General Secretary of Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)) and the speech from Dmitrii Kuzmin (Member of the Political Council of the Central Committee the Russian Communist Workers’ Party – Communist Party of Soviet Union (RCWP-CPSU), Russia) was read.
In the second section, Communist Labour Party of Turkey/Leninist(Turkey), Ricardo Risso (Vice General Secretary of Peruvian Communist Party), Carlos Arturo (Colombian Communist Party), Jorge Kreyness (Communist Party of Argentina), Guiffrey Tejerina Gomez (Representative of Politburo of Communist Party of Bolivia), Edmundo Albornoz (Communist Party of Ecuador), Sandro Scardigli (Member of the Central Committee and Foreign Department of the Italian Communist Party), Iniciativa Comunista (Spain), Alberto Barcala (Unión Proletaria, Spain), Christopher Joseph Helali (Party of Communists USA) gave their speeches.
In the third section, starting of video of Harpal Bar (Chair of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)), Anti-imperialist coordination for defeat of NATO (Greece), Yusuf Allcim (Cyprus), Joe Rombardo (Coordinator of United National Anti-war Coalition, USA), Elizabeth Young (President of Center for Political Innovation), Guy Roy (General Secretary of Communist Party of Quebec), Amzat Boukari Yabara (Dynamique Unitaire Panafricaine), Imani Na Umoja (Member of Politburo of African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), Booker Omole (Vice Chair of Communist Party of Kenya), Humanist, Mazdoor Kissan Party (Workers and Peasants Party, Pakistan), Wilhelm Lanthaler (Anti-imperialist Camp), Nasrin Anna Maria (Communist Organization (KO), Germany), Aymeric Monville (Pole of Communist Revival in France (PRCF)), Jozef Bossyut (Member of Politburo of Communist Party of Belgium), George Korkovelos (Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)), and Stephen Cho (Coordinator of the Korean International Forum) spoke.
At the end of the conference, member of Party of Communists USA, Christopher Joseph Helali read Palestine declaration of the World Anti-imperialist Platform “From the river, to the sea, Palestine will be free!” and the Vice Chair of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), Joti Brar read “Athens Declaration: The world is entering a new era of anti-imperialist struggle”.
In the closing remarks, People’s Democracy Party assessed that “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic Uprising and the 50th anniversary of Nikos Zachariadis’ death, the 5th International Conference of the World Anti-Imperialism Platform, 2023 in Athens, was held in the immediate vicinity where the Communist Party of Greece was founded and began its revolutionary activities. It was held very successfully with great enthusiasm and great presentations of participants”.
She also spoke up that “This event takes place in Greece which is geographically between Ukraine and Palestine more than a year since the Ukraine war began (in 2022) and before 2024, when the Taiwan and South Korean war are likely to begin. It, especially coincides with the breaking out of the Palestine war in October 7 and the crisis in the Middle East. Its political and historical significance is crucial.” and “We are confident that the members of the World Anti-imperialist Platform and the participants of the Athens event will continue to play an important and strategic role in scientific analysis of the situation, establishment of revolutionary strategies, strengthening of the anti-imperialist front, and practice of anti-imperialist struggle”.
The host Christina Kostoula declared that “You may all know the word ‘Democracy’ in Greek. But you may not know well about Nikos Zachariadis and Aris Velouchiotis fought for people’s democracy”, “The history of those who sacrificed holding red flags becomes our message and heritage. This will be the power to fight against the enemy, that we all know, NATO imperialist and opportunism”.
All participants of the Athens International Conference took the photo together.
Below are the full texts of the Athens Declaration and Palestine Declaration which participant issued with consensus:
Athens declaration: The world is entering a new era of anti-imperialist struggle
Understanding:
That we are emerging from the period of deep reaction that followed the capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and east European socialist bloc, when the strength of the capitalist-imperialist system seemed overwhelming and the forces of national liberation and socialism were in retreat.
That as a result of this shift in the balance of forces, the remaining socialist and anti-imperialist countries and movements became isolated and exposed and were forced to make difficult compromises in order to survive (developing the tourism industry in Cuba, signing the nuclear agreement in the DPRK, agreeing to nuclear disarmament in Libya and Iraq, accepting the US-brokered peace processes in Palestine, Ireland etc).
That the era of the stabilisation of global capitalism, during which the imperialist powers escaped their economic crisis and grew rich through the unbridled looting of the wealth and resources of the Soviet and east European peoples, has come to an end. The latest downward lurch of the global economic crisis of capitalism is being felt in the economic and social life of every country that is connected to the global market economy.
That global economic crisis cannot be avoided while the capitalist-imperialist system remains; while a few monopolists dominate the entire world economy and create chaos and instability in their desperate quest for maximum profits.
That the main threat to world peace is imperialism, in particular the criminal, aggressive US-led Nato imperialist bloc, and that we have entered a new historical phase: one in which the final defeat of imperialism has become both a real possibility and a vital necessity.
That communists, socialists and anti-imperialists everywhere have a duty to join hands and do everything possible to maximise the power of the anti-imperialist camp in the titanic struggle that now confronts humanity.
That recent uprisings in west Africa and the middle east remind us once again of the unfinished struggle for national liberation, launched in earnest by the Great October Socialist Revolution of1917 and carried on in every corner of the oppressed world, which can never be quenched so long as imperialism remains in the world.
That the rewriting of history to whitewash Nazi crimes, combined with the continuing provocations by the USA/Nato and its proxies in so many countries bordering Russia and China, as well as in Serbia, Korea, Taiwan and the middle east, make it absolutely clear that the imperialists will use any means to achieve their ends, and would rather drown the world in blood than leave the world’s people to advance peacefully towards liberation and socialism.
That the lighting up of landmarks and hoisting of Israeli flags in Washington, London, Berlin, Paris and Brussels serve as the latest reminder of the unconditional support of finance capital for its proxies in the Israeli terrorist state, and its routine export of fascism to maintain its domination around the world.
We, the participants at the World Anti-imperialist Platform international conference in Athens, declare the following:
That the history of the last century proves conclusively that the imperialists can never be appeased. All attempts at ‘peaceful coexistence’, ignoring the realities of the class struggle, have led only to the emboldening of and further aggression by the imperialist powers, and of the dominant US imperialist cabal in particular.
That to break the power of finance capital – to do everything possible towards cutting off its access to the huge superprofits that are extracted at the expense of the oppressed masses in the colonised world, who are thus held back from development and denied a chance to live in dignity and prosperity – is the first duty of communists, socialists and anti-imperialists everywhere.
That whether by the nationalisation of essential raw materials such as oil, uranium and lithium, by building alliances to counter imperialist economic sanctions or by evicting imperialist troops and their fascist proxies from their territories, every movement that strives for political, military and economic independence and territorial sovereignty in the oppressed countries is blocking the imperialists’ drive for domination and holding back the ability of monopoly capital to loot freely.
That there is thus an absolute necessity to bring together the struggle for socialism with the anti-imperialist and antifascist struggles, and to unite all those who are struggling separately into one unstoppable force. In particular, we must demonstrate to the workers in our own countries the essential unity of those fighting for their liberation in Donbass, in Palestine, in Burkina Faso and in Niger. We must demonstrate that the wars being planned by the imperialists against the DPRK and China are a part of this same quest for domination, and we must maximise support for the forces of liberation.
That this means doing everything possible to increase the economic, military and logistical difficulties for the imperialists and to strengthen the solidarity and support for those who are fighting on the front lines.
That during this titanic struggle, those who play the decisive role will not be those who claim to have exclusively ‘inherited’ the right to be viewed as the ‘vanguard’ of the struggle, but those who actually play the part of a vanguard. Those who wish to play this role must be unafraid to oppose allvacillation and conciliation with the enemy; must be ready to expose all those who confuse the masses and prevent them from understanding that there are two sides in this war, and that to refuse to take a side means, in practice, to strengthen the side of reaction – to help the imperialists and to neutralise the working and oppressed masses.
That, just as before in the case of Russia and the Donbass, when the special military operation was launched to denazify and demilitarise the fascistic proxy regime that had been imposed on the Ukrainian people by the USA and Nato, so today we refuse to be intimidated by the barrage ofhysterical bourgeois propaganda that is demanding our condemnation of the actions of the Palestinian resistance, although these same imperialist media and politicians have been silent during the 75 years of slow genocide, with all its attendant atrocities, that gave rise to this latest outbreak ofwar in the middle east.
That we will do everything in our power to bring the missing context regarding the national-liberation struggle in Palestine to the attention of workers in our countries, just as we have been doing regarding the liberation struggle of the people of Donbass and the ongoing aggression against the Russian Federation, and as we will surely do in the case of any future war between the imperialists and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or the People’s Republic of China.
That, while preferring peace for the sake of human life, we recognise that the only way out of the ongoing holocaust being perpetrated by the imperialist system is through liberation wars. While the US congress declares that the USA can fight successfully on many battlefields and should prepare to launch a war against China, the truth is that the imperialists are losing their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and will surely be defeated if they dare to launch wars in several major theatres at once.
That, refusing to take a pessimistic view of the global situation, we instead look with optimism at the prospects for our movement and for humanity, recalling the words of Che Guevara in his message to the Tricontinental conference of 1967: “How close we could look into a bright future should two, three or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world, with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism, impelled to disperse its forces under the sudden attack and the increasing hatred of all peoples of the world!”
That, meeting today in Athens, we uphold the spirit and legacy of resistance leaders such as Aris Velouchiotis, and most especially of Nikos Zachariadis, great son and leader of the Greek revolution. It was Comrade Zachariadis above all who guided his people on the basis of socialist science and who never lost faith in the strength and ability of the working class, affirming that whatever the difficulties and defeats along the way, history is made by the masses. There is no doubt in our minds that the imperialists will ultimately be defeated, opening up once more the possibility for human progress and civilisation to advance.
That we commit ourselves to advancing towards the final victory of socialism by following in the footsteps of those heroic communists who stood steadfastly at the forefront of Greece’s national-liberation struggle in the 1940s. These comrades showed how it is both possible and necessary tocombine the anti-imperialist and antifascist with the socialist struggle in order to harness the widestpossible forces for the immediate stage of the revolution, even while growing the communist forces and creating the best possible foundation for their further advance.
That the building of the broadest possible anti-imperialist movement, willing and able to sharply confront, oppose, obstruct and defeat the hegemonic drive of the US-led Nato bloc, is the main task of progressive humanity today.
No cooperation with the imperialist war machine and its fascist proxies!
Defeat for the criminal US-led Nato imperialist bloc!
Victory to the united forces of anti-imperialist resistance!
From the river, to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Understanding:
– That the partition of Palestine by the United Nations in 1948, which was pushed through the United Nations according to a plan set out by British imperialism and without any consultation with the local population, is a historic injustice that must be recognised and whose consequences must be addressed if a meaningful peace is to be achieved in the middle east.
– That zionism, the official ‘justification’ for the creation of the state of Israel, is a pernicious ideology, whose growth and development was fostered by British and later US imperialism, which works to confuse Jewish people into thinking of themselves not as part of a religious group but (incorrectly) as a ‘nation’ – and one whose members, alone amongst the people of the earth, will never be able to live in peace in any place outside of a separate ‘Jewish homeland’.
– That the zionist leaders of Israel have consistently made clear by their words and actions that they have never had any intention of settling for less than total control of the entire territory of historic Palestine and more (the Golan in Syria, southern Lebanon, etc).
– That zionism, by holding that the Jews are God’s ‘chosen people’ is a racist, supremacist ideology that justifies every kind of barbarity against the Palestinian people on the basis that they are not full human beings ‘like us’. And we note that in this context that many religiousJews are opposed to zionism and to the occupation of Palestine.
– That the horrific tragedy of the rise of zionism amongst Jewish people in Europe was the transformation of those who had been the victims of fascist persecution in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s into the perpetrators of an equally fascistic and genocidal enterprise in the postwar middle east.
– That with its pass laws, ghettos, segregated infrastructure, checkpoints and prison complexes, its conversion of the small areas of land that remain ‘free’ for Palestinians to occupy into concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire and policed by tanks and fighter planes, andwith its daily routine of violence and humiliation practiced against the native inhabitants, zionism is the inheritor and continuer of such barbaric and inhuman regimes as Nazi Germany, settler-colonial British Kenya and apartheid South Africa.
– That zionist Israel has been enabled to commit its terrible crimes unhindered because of the special function it performs for Anglo-American imperialism – that is, it acts as an armed outpost of imperialism whose fundamental role is not to ‘protect the Jewish people’ but to keep control of middle-eastern oil for British and US oil monopolies.
– That Israel’s vital importance to modern imperialism stems from the central importance of oil to the modern economy – since oil remains the most important source of energy not only for industry but also for the imperialist war machine.
– That this importance is reflected in the insistence of the imperialist ruling classes that every career politician in Britain, the European Union and the USA must demonstrate their total loyalty towards zionism, which is simply another way of expressing total loyalty to British and US imperialist interests.
– That this importance is also the real reason why Israel is consistently granted immunity for its repeated crimes by the imperialist-dominated ‘international community’, and why imperialist media work so hard to drop and deny all the above context, instead presenting an apparently ‘unsolvable’ narrative of ‘two sides at war’, all the while emphasising unforgiveable nature of any violence by the resistance while bending over backwards to justify the far more extreme violence of the oppressors.
– That scores of UN resolutions over seven decades at the UN general assembly have asserted the international community’s desire to find a just solution to the Palestinian question, have objected to the numerous crimes (including apartheid and ethnic cleansing) of the zionists and have even explicitly underlined the right of the Palestinians to resist by whatever means necessary, including by force of arms.
– That the USA’s control of the UN security council has essentially neutered all options for seeking a meaningful resolution via that body.
– That the genocidal nature of the zionist state has been made clearer than ever by its recent response to the Al-Aqsa Flood battle launched by resistance forces. This response has included:
1. The indiscriminate massacre of more than ten thousand civilians, half of them children, including refugee columns and those taking refuge in hospitals, schools and UN facilities;
2. Open calls by Israeli leaders to “wipe Gaza off the map” and attempts to implement a plan to transfer all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people into the Egyptian desert;
3. Fake atrocity propaganda claiming that the resistance has “beheaded babies” and “massacred civilians”, all of which have been debunked, but which continue to be referenced by Israeli and imperialist politicians and media;
4. Israeli army killings of Israeli civilians in order to promote the narrative of resistance ‘barbarism’ and to avoid the chance of them being taken prisoner to Gaza.
We the undersigned parties and organisations declare:
– That the struggle of the Palestinian people against the imperialist-backed settler-colonial state of Israel, with its illegal occupations, its apartheid system, its supremacist zionist ideology and its stated policy of genocide, remains at the forefront of the world struggle against imperialism.
– That the Palestinian people made huge sacrifices in the quest for peace when they signed up to the Oslo Accords in 1993, giving up 78 percent of their historic homeland in return the promise of a viable Palestinian state on the 22 percent that remained.
– That, just as the imperialist-backed Ukrainian junta repeatedly undermined the possibilities for a peaceful settlement of the war in Donbass (first by deliberately undermining the Minsk accords and then by tearing up the peace deal they had agreed to in Istanbul), it is imperialist-abetted Israeli intransigence and double-dealing that has essentially undermined all possibility of implementing the two-state solution plan that was agreed upon at Oslo.
– That given the total failure to hold Israel to account for its flagrant violations of the terms of Oslo and the repeated statements of its leaders that they have no intention of being bound by those terms, no one has any right to expect the Palestinians to continue to be bound by the terms of Oslo either.
– That the Palestinian people have both the moral and legal right, recognised in international law, to struggle for their freedom by any means necessary, including by the use of armed force.
– That we will accept no correlation between the force used by a brutal regime of occupation and the force used by those struggling for their liberation: the zionists are waging a fascistic, genocidal, unjust war of conquest and national oppression on behalf of US imperialism, while the Palestinians are fighting a just war for national liberation and self-defence.
– That given these facts, all progressive, anti-imperialist and socialist forces have a duty to side firmly and unconditionally with the Palestinian people and to do everything in their power to provide them with material solidarity.
– That we in the Platform note the growing desire of the masses to show material support to the brave struggle of the Palestinian people. We commit ourselves to promoting every existing example of concrete solidarity and expanding this campaign to every corner of the globe, helping workers to understand that this is the only way we can assist our Palestinian brothers and sisters on the front line to victory:
1. We call on manufacturing workers not to make munitions or other supplies that are intended for use by Israel;
2. We call on transport workers not to move munitions, troops or any other supplies that are bound for Israel;
3. We call on all dock workers to block the shipment of arms and other supplies to Israel;
4. We call on all journalists to refuse to write or broadcast information that justifies or whitewashes the zionists’ crimes or reinforces their fake narratives, remembering that journalism which justifies aggressive war crimes was classified at the Nuremburg tribunals as a war crime in itself;
5. We call on all media and communications technicians to refuse to print or broadcast such lies;
6. We call on all supermarket workers to refuse to put Israeli products or zionist-promoting newspapers and magazines on the shelves of their stores;
7. We call on all workers to force their governments to break diplomatic ties with Israel – there must be no normalisation of genocide;
8. And we call on workers everywhere to apply the same non-cooperation stance to every part of the Nato imperialist war machine, which backs and is coming to the aid of its proxies in the middle east.
– That, along with all progressive humanity, we demand:
1. An end to western imperialist military, financial, diplomatic and media support for Israel;
2. An immediate end to Israel’s genocidal bombing of and armed incursions into Gaza, including the zionists’ use of internationally banned white phosphorous and other undeclared chemical and uranium-tipped weapons;
3. The immediate opening of the borders for free passage of Palestinians into and out of their homeland;
4. The release of all political prisoners and internees from Israeli jails;
5. The end of the occupation of 1967 Palestine, including the withdrawal of Israeli military forces, the tearing down of separation walls and military checkpoints, the dismantlement of illegal settlements and the abolition of segregated infrastructure across Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
6. Freedom for the Palestinian people across all of 1948 Palestine to choose their own representatives to represent them in talks towards a meaningful peace settlement;
7. All US troops and bases out of the middle east.
– That a just peace in Palestine will only be achieved when the Palestinian people are free to decide their own future, a future in which we are sure the following conditions will need to have been met:
1. An end to the existence of any racist, supremacist ethnostate on Palestinian territory, which means the dismantlement of every legal and physical structure of apartheid discrimination;
2. The establishment of secular, democratic rule across all of Palestine, allowing all tolive on terms of equality and fraternity, no matter what their ethnic or religious background;
3. The guarantee and implementation of the universally-recognised right to return of all the Palestinian refugees who have been forcibly evicted from their land and their homes since 1948;
4. An end to imperialist interference in the affairs of all countries of the middle east.
No cooperation with the criminal zionist war machine!
Death to imperialism and its fascist zionist stooge regime in the middle east!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Savra savra hatta nasr! (Revolution until victory!)