Solidarity with the Youth of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
On behalf of the International Peoples’ Assembly, we send our warmest revolutionary greetings and our full solidarity to the young people of India who have taken to the streets. We also stand with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the Cockroach Janta Party, and every left, democratic and progressive force that has stood beside them.
The young people (the cockroaches) of India and the left and progressive parties are demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and a halt to the Election Commission’s nationwide “Special Intensive Revision” of the electoral rolls, which has struck tens of millions of names from the voter lists. The protesting organisations and youth of India claim that this exercise is disenfranchising eligible citizens, above all the poor and the marginalised, to benefit the ruling BJP. If a citizen can be quietly erased from the voter list, democracy becomes a façade. India’s youth have risen to defend the right to vote itself.
We condemn the brutal repression and illegal detention of peaceful protestors on 10 October including the detention and arrest of almost the entire Central Committee and top leadership of the CPI(M), among which are Comrade Brinda Karat, Subhashini Ali, Dipankar Bhattacharya and others. We also condemn the detention of two former Chief Ministers: Comrade Pinarayi Vijayan of Kerala and Comrade Manik Sarkar of Tripura. These leaders have spent their lives in public service and in the democratic movement of the working people. Detaining a political party’s whole elected leadership is not a law-and-order measure. It is an attack on the right to organise, to dissent and to stand with the people, and it is an attack on Indian democracy itself.
We demand:
- An end to the repression of peaceful protest.
- Full respect for the constitutional rights of assembly, expression and political association.
For a free and fair Election Commission. We support the parties and movements fighting to restore a free, fair and independent Election Commission. Democracy depends on elections the people can trust, run by an institution that answers to the Constitution and not to the party in power. Without that independence, the right to vote loses its meaning. The struggle for a free and fair Election Commission belongs to everyone who believes that the people of India must choose their own government.
One struggle, many countries. The young people of India are not alone. In Brazil, France and Spain, as in India, a generation is rising against a future of insecurity, inequality and exclusion that has been imposed on it. They demand dignity, work, education and a voice in shaping their own societies. Their struggles are connected. They respond to a shared crisis and carry a shared hope. We send our solidarity to the youth of all these countries and to everyone who stands with them.
To the comrades of the CPI(M), the CPI and the CPI(ML), to the Cockroach Janta Party, to the left and progressive movement of India, and to the young people in the streets, we say:
We stand in solidarity with your struggle.
Repression will not silence a people who have found their voice. History belongs to those who struggle for a just world.
Long live international solidarity!
In solidarity,
International Peoples’ Assembly