Poland/Belarus Border Crisis and Key Role of Immigrant Workers here ♦ Immigrant Workers’ Strike Sparks Mass Labor Mobilization here ♦
Migrants Lobbing Rocks at Polish border guards
Let’s Recruit Immigrant Workers in Europe and Worldwide to Become Organizers in the Fight for a Communist World Without Borders
November 17—Thousands of migrants, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, are in grave danger in the wintry Belarus woods near the Polish border. Decades of imperialist war in the Middle East, famine, poverty and exploitation have created an ongoing refugee emergency. Capitalists backed by imperialists on both sides treat workers as expendable in their struggle for dominance. Both Belarus (a Russian ally) and Poland (a NATO member) have increased their military presence at border. The confrontation could potentially spark a wider war.
We are an international working class, all struggling under the yoke of capitalism. Our differences are irrelevant. Capitalists built borders for their own purposes. They build xenophobia to keep us separated: attacking workers from Zimbabwe in South Africa, African workers in France, Haitian workers at the US/Mexico border, and Afghan, Syrian, and Iraqi workers at the Poland-Belarus border.
No worker is a stranger. We are committed to free the whole working class. We will overthrow capitalism and build a communist world without borders or nations, exploitation or war. Communist immigrants will be key to this victory.
Border Crisis and Intensifying Inter-Imperialist Conflict
The Belarus rulers manufactured this crisis. It’s their response to European Union sanctions, including over Belarus forcing a civilian airliner to land to arrest an opposition leader. Twenty percent of Europe’s natural gas comes through Belarus from Russia. President Lukashenko threatened, “If they impose additional sanctions on us, we must respond. We are heating Europe, and they are threatening us, what if we halt natural gas supplies.”
The Russian capitalists have supported Lukashenko with two bombing training exercises over western Belarus in the last week and a parachute landing exercise near the border of Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania. The completion of Nord Stream-2 (see last issue) at the onset of winter may have led Russia to encourage Lukashenko to increase pressure on the European Union (EU).
Meanwhile, Polish President Duda (a Trump-wannabe xenophobe) has sent thousands of troops to the border while keeping activists, NGOs, and the media away. He claims to be protecting the EU from a “great migration crisis,” while positioning Poland within NATO as an ally of the US and the UK. The British government has supported him by sending ten military engineers to help build a border wall.
Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, under EU pressure, have now stopped Syrians, Afghanis and Iraqis from boarding flights to Belarus.
Migrants at the border are still freezing – and boiling mad. Angry groups have started throwing rocks at Polish troops, facing down their water cannons.
Worldwide Migrant Crisis Grows
Three more migrants drowned in the English Channel on November 11. They were among hundreds daily who risk their lives in small boats. British Home Secretary Priti Patel has vowed to “make this route unviable.” That is, to make it so dangerous that desperate people will die. In the Mediterranean, this strategy has resulted in over 1,300 refugee deaths this year.
Germany’s Merkel and France’s Macron have intervened for the EU, trying to defuse tensions. But the EU has long hypocritically bribed countries like Turkey and Libya to stop migrants from reaching Europe. Media focus on Belarus diverts attention from the murderous border policies of the capitalist rulers of the EU, the UK and the USA.
Comrades in Europe Build Communist Ties with Immigrant Workers
The bosses’ media call migrants on the Poland/Belarus border “pawns” and “political footballs.” None of us, immigrant or citizen, is a chess piece or a football! We are workers. Some of us live in the country of our parents and grandparents, and others of us are immigrants or children of immigrants.
The work of ICWP comrades in Europe reflects the historical and present-day importance of immigrant workers and their families in the working-class struggle. In the words of Red Flag readers and friends:
“When the working class is united there is no one who can stop it.” — French worker in Barcelona during the 2010 Arab Spring
“The system we live in treats us like garbage and we have to fight to change it.” — Cuban hospitality worker in Barcelona:
“The working class has to actively fight so that the system does not continue to destroy nature. We must organize and resist.” — Irish eco-architect and activist in Spain
“In the end the transnationals and the powerful are never interested in the working class.” — Transport worker from Equatorial Guinea in Spain
“It’s hard for poor people to live because the rich steal everything from us.” — Senegalese worker in Spain
“The capitalist system is interested in super-profits, not in the welfare of the working class.” — Catalan worker in Slovakia
“We are all citizens of the world. We should not be afraid to think that we can be free.” — Peruvian dentist in Portugal
And from a Chilean mechanic who lost vision in one eye during the protests in Chile early in the pandemic: “Comrades, today more than ever I know that the capitalist system has to be defeated because it only serves to massacre the working class.”
Immigrant workers, wounded by the need to leave home and family to survive in this murderous capitalist system, have an especially strong motivation to fight for a better world. Communism is the world we need. We need to redouble our efforts to recruit readers like these and their working-class global family to join and build collectives of the International Communist Workers’ Party.
Britain, 1977: Immigrant Workers’ Strike Sparks mass labor mobilization
Forty-five years ago, south Asian women sparked one of the largest mobilizations of the workers’ movement in Britain. Working in a small photo-processing plant, Grunwick, they had put up with low wages, petty humiliations and compulsory overtime. They were wage slaves.
Then a racist boss called them “chattering monkeys” for speaking Gujarati (their home language) on the job. One woman snapped back, “We’re lions who could bite your head off!” Then a small group walked out, demanding a Union. Women, immigrants and few in numbers, they were sacked.
The Union movement correctly saw this as an attack on “union rights” and organized mass picketing. Steel workers, coalminers, dockworkers and others – some 20,000 strong – picketed in support. Local postal workers, crucial to Grunwick’s mail-order business, refused to handle their mail.
The strike still failed. The postal workers’ union caved into legal challenges BThe strikers’ union caved into the Labour government’s pressure. One of the biggest mobilizations of the labour movement, one which had swept aside anti-women, anti-immigrant prejudices in a massive wave of class unity, became one of the biggest betrayals of the working class in Britain.
Even if they had won union recognition, the workers would have still been stuck in the trap of negotiating the terms of their wage slavery. The wage system – fundamental to capitalism – divides workers.
Today, women and migrants are still concentrated in the lowest-paid jobs. And they will become lions who, united with other workers, will bite the head off capitalism and its wage system. They will bring about the victory of the communist revolution.
Read our pamphlet:
“Fight For the Day When No Worker Will be Called Foreigner”
available here
Front page of this issue
