Solidarity with Russian Workers Hunger Strike

Dear comrades,
Dear comrades of the Yasnogorsk machine-building factory,
Dear comrade Mamaeva,
Dear comrade Kourenkov and comrades from the Tula Centre for Defence of Rights,
Dear comrades from the Russian Communist Workers Party- Russian Party of Communists-

We, members of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People and the Editorial Board of Northstar Compass, express our solidarity with the workers of Yasnogorsk machine-building factory in your just struggle. It is one of the basic rights of every working person to be fairly and timely compensated for their labour. It is a disgrace of the Yasnogorsk factory, the city, the regional authorities and the government of Russia that the Russian workers have to resort to such drastic measures as hunger striking in order to claim the compensation, which rightfully belongs to them. It is an even greater shame that a mighty country has bent its knees before capital and the factory owners. It is disturbing and disgusting that the working mother Margarita Mamaeva has to risk her life while grasping her last resort – a hunger strike – in her attempt to feed her infant child.

While we wholeheartedly support, admire and salute the courage and determination of Yasnogorsk workers in their hunger strike, we also want to emphasize the real importance of understanding where the unpaid salaries, abuse of workers rights, despotic behaviour of employers, employers themselves, as well as the need to come to drastic measures came from. In the for-profit, run by and for the wealthy elite state system, there can be no just distribution of products of labour.

We at the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People and the magazine Northstar Compass will do everything in our power to spread the word around the world, as far as we can, about the atrocities in today’s Russia and the criminal negligence or collaboration of the Russian government in the exploitation of the working people. We will make sure that from North America to Australia, from Latin America to Africa and Asia and across the Soviet Union, people hear and know the truth about Russian workers’ lives and their self-sacrificing struggles.

We will spread the news about capitalist Russia’s shame in over 76 countries of the world and, we are certain that in each one of them there will be people who feel the pain and despair of the Yasnogorsk workers, will relate to it and for whom this news about the unjust treatment by the capitalist employers will add even more anger and determination to take down the state plunder system.

We support the courageous Yasnogorsk workers in the fight for their rights!

UNITED WE STAND!

International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People
November 26, 2006 - Canada