The regime suspended the activities of the Socialist Workers Party and closed its headquarters. These are authoritarian measures that must be repudiated.
The attacks were denounced on January 22, in a statement from the national leadership that states: “In a context of tougher repression and against all odds, the Council of State ordered yesterday, Thursday, January 20, 2022, the temporary suspension of our party’s activities and the closure of our office. This is a grave precedent against multi-party politics and a further intolerable attack on democratic freedoms in our country.”
The anti-democratic attack was born out of a complaint filed on April 26, 2021 by the Minister of the Interior. The excuse is based on accusing the PST of being late in holding its party congress. It is such an arbitrary measure that it was taken before the end of the deadline set by official notification and one day after the Congress was held. In reality, it is an anti-democratic attack on a left wing opposition party, which is a cut against the most basic rights of expression and participation.
Repression and persecution are not new developments, we have been denouncing them. This authoritarian decision deepens them. There are more than 300 political prisoners and defendants. As in other authoritarian regimes, trade union, political and social activists, journalists, bloggers and people who express themselves on social networks are persecuted. These are attitudes that try to intimidate the workers and the people, so that they do not mobilize.
The speeches with some anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist tones cannot hide the internal repression, which has the objective of intimidating the workers and the people so that they do not press demands mobilized in the streets. And because of the fear that the mass mobilizations of the Arab Spring will reemerge now that the crises of the capitalist economy aggravated by the pandemic has placed social rebellions on the agenda. The truth is that the regime applies anti-democratic measures at the same time that plunder, delivery to private companies and exploitation progresses.
From the International Socialist League we stand in solidarity with the leadership and militants of the Socialist Workers Party, we repudiate the suspension of its activities, the closure of its office and the persecution against it. We demand the freedom of all political and opinion prisoners and the annulment of criminal cases against activists. For the broadest freedom of expression, participation, organization and mobilization.