SYRIZA and Imperialism: On Syria

The following statement was published by the Press Office of Synaspismos on August 1, 2011. The statement was written by Rena Dourou (pictured with Alexis Tsipras), then European Policy Coordinator for Synaspimos, and currently Attica Prefect with SYRIZA. Synaspismos [Coalition] of the Left, Social Movements and Ecology was founded as a party in 1991, after the split between KKE and the Coalition of the Left and of Progress, itself accompanied by a split within KKE, as several of the members of its cadres switched to the new party (including many currently in SYRIZA's so-called "Left Platform"). In 2004, Synaspismos became the largest constituent part of SYRIZA.

The statement is translated in the interests of allowing non-Greeks to better understand SYRIZA's actual political and ideological character and, inevitably, the causes of the split in 1991, after the counter-revolution in the USSR, and the causes of political conflict --and real enmity-- between SYRIZA and KKE today. I also hope it will shed some light on the broader character of the Euroleft coalition of the European Left Party, which SYRIZA helped found in 2004.

----

Statement by Rena Dourou, European Policy Coordinator of Synaspismos, on the recent bloody repression of the Opposition by the Syrian regime, in the city of Hama

"Syria is bleeding. From their webpages on the internet, Syrian oppositionists are once again protesting the bloody repression the Assad government conducts in order to save itself, and at the same time, are criticizing the international community for its passive stance toward a regime that has for some time crossed "the red line", as it is unabashedly turning against its own citizens.

On the eve of the Ramazan, the Assad regime chose --not accidentally-- the city of Hama in order to spread mass death -- hundreds of dead and an unknown number of injured, according to an NGO, while intermittent images on the internet testify to the violence and brutality of the military intervention. The city of Hama, which is in the front line, since mid March, of the rebellion of the Syrian people against the regime of Bassar Al Assad, was the theater of the most murderous repression campaign of the current president's father, Hafez Al Assad. The dead (Sunnis, almost exclusively) were tens of thousands...

Today, five months after the launching of "Syrian Spring", the fighters of the insurrection persist, despite the bloodbath, in standing tall and in resisting, demanding what the Egyptians, the Tunisians, the Libyans demanded: Freedom, democracy, respect for their dignity.

Today, at a time when the people of Syria are delivering a remarkable lesson in courage and resistance to a barbaric regime, the international community is effectively silent, absorbed by the negative economic conditions in the US and Europe. But this stance effectively works as a "green light" to the Assad regime, to continue drowning in blood even the most peaceful demonstrations. The time for the international community, headed by the United Nations and the EU, to isolate the bloodthirsty regime is NOW [sic]; they must simultaneously support, politically and economically, the forces of the opposition. NOW is really the time of concrete solidarity with the people of Syria".

The Press Office.

Translated by Lenin Reloaded