IN DEFENCE OF POPULAR STRUGGLES
In view of the recent events in Suchitoto, where a demonstration organised by members of the communities to demand that privatisation of water should be stopped was brutally repressed by state security, the Socialist Movement and peasants states as follows:
1. We support the legitimate right of our people to demonstrate against the government plans aiming at privatisation of a vital resource such as water, especially since the so-called decentralisation is intended to take away from the community the administration of the above-mentioned resource.
2. As MSTC, we express our solidarity with the communities of Suchitoto and of the entire country for this struggle in defence of water as public wealth is also being fought in other areas of the country. We also express our solidarity with all the comrades unlawfully arrested
3. We expose the brutal repression members of communities and social organisations were submitted to by bodies of security with the participation of armed forces constituting a veritable display of repressive forces where the State manifested that it is not interested in listening to the demands of the people and, to the contrary, it is prepared to use force as in the times of military dictatorships of the seventies so mucho so that in a few minutes they militarised the areas surrounding Suchitoto.
4. We demand freedom for the prisoners who have been treated under a law that has been made in order to criminalize social protest and repress all the struggles that may arise in the nearest future because of the economic crisis that the toiling masses of our country are suffering.
We exhort the trade unions, political parties, communities, associations, NGOs and people in general:
· To get together and promote a great campaign with demonstrations to halt the ARENA government’s attempts at using the Antiterrorist Law and the Penal Code in order to silence our people claiming in defence of their interests
· We also invite all the above to continue pressing nationally and internationally to release all the people who had been arrested under the Antiterrorist Law. A guilty verdict for these comrades would spell a tremendous defeat for popular struggles.
Everybody out into the streets against the Antiterrorist Law and against the reform of the Penal Code! Let us get together to obtain definite absolution of the comrades accused of terrorism.
