Gabi Gärtner speaks plainly: We need a new peace movement!
The situation in Aleppo (Syria) is a humanitarian catastrophe. In alliance with Russia and Iran the reactionary Assad regime has the city largely under control again. Fascist organizations like Al Nusra and others are also maintaining their positions at the cost of a population that is being treated like hostages. Their orders come from Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Turkey, which are operating at the cost of immeasurable suffering of the population. The evacuation of the civilian population was sabotaged from both sides. Aleppo is a stomping ground of various old imperialist and new-imperialist powers or of the mercenary armies they equip. The Kurdish liberation fighters are right in taking a stand that is independent of all imperialists. In Syria they are pursuing a concept of democracy and freedom. Tens of thousands have already fled to areas of Aleppo under their control to seek protection. The UN is paralyzed and the official government peace hypocrites like German Foreign Secretary Frank-Walter Steinmeier do not even offer the most elementary forms of humanitarian support.
Where is the outcry of the peace movement? The old peace movement is in agony. Many of its leaders, especially the DKP and the Left Party, more or less openly take sides with the Russian president Putin and the dictator Assad. The Greens and their supporters, on the other hand, are demanding more “engagement” from the USA and the EU. But it was actually the western imperialists who started the war in Syria. All of these petty-bourgeois and bourgeois forces of the old peace movement objectively make themselves appendages to imperialist powers. They cannot or ratherdo not want to understand that imperialism today is multipolar.
Whoever wants to engage in peace policy today must take on a determined anti-imperialist position. We need a new peace movement which attacks imperialism as a system, which realizes international solidarity with justified liberation struggles and patient education work – and which organizes active resistance. First steps are developing in the joint protests of militant refugees, Monday demonstrators, progressive migrant organizations from Turkey or Kurdistan, people working in refugee solidarity, of MLPD, Rebell, the women's league Courage and others. Theforces of the Internationalist Alliance play a decisive role in their organization. This alliance is capable of being the core of the new peace movement. The worldwide protests on the occasion of the inauguration of the new US-President Donald Trump are important for building up the alliance. The MLPD supports local protests of broad united actions which are taking place in the entire country on Monday, January 23rd in connection with the Monday demonstrations – against Trump and the shift to the right of many of the governments in the world and in Europe
Gabi Gärtner
Deputy Chairwomen of the MLPD
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