Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution!

After the beginning of the revolutions in the Arab region, some may have thought that this regime would escape the process, due to its mask as a resistant to global imperialism and to the State of Israel, and the strength of its repressive apparatus.

But the people’s uprising invalidated these beliefs. For one year now, the Syrian masses have been taking to the streets and have heroically and peacefully held their ground in the face of daily massacres that have resulted in more than 10 000 deaths, several tens of thousands of wounded and disappeared, and people in custody facing the risk of death by torture. The wounded cannot be taken to hospitals, which have become torture and murder centres. Throughout the country, the repressive forces have destroyed hundreds of dwellings and public buildings, and entire neighbourhoods, in their determination to crush all popular resistance, in particular in the martyred city of Homs.

The Russian, Chinese and Iranian powers have scandalously taken the side of Bachar al-Assad, and Putin is ensuring military support to the regime. But faced with the parallel manoeuvres of the US and European governments, and those of Turkey, the kingdoms of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Fourth International affirms its opposition to any type of military intervention in Syria, which would aim to strengthen the self-interests of these world or regional powers and amount to a further catastrophe for the Syrian people.

In this heroic process, the insurgent Syrian people are organizing from below, coordinating their efforts and developing the means of waging their struggle to the end for freedom and social justice. They are also refusing all the confessional division manoeuvres carried out by the regime and some Gulf countries.

Faced with the terrible massacre the Syrian people are enduring, peoples of the entire world must affirm their solidarity with their struggle to definitively dismantle this bloody regime. We can have no trust in governments’ diplomatic manoeuvres. It is up to the workers’ and democratic movement, which has done too little to answer the Syrian people’s calls for help, to absolutely make this solidarity real. Leftist Syrian activist forces are taking part in this insurrection, for the development of people’s self-organization, for a democratic, social, secular and anti-imperialist alternative to make possible a new Syria based on political and social equality. The Fourth International will do everything it can to help this.

Down with the regime of thieves and killers!

Long live the popular revolution in Syria!

Amsterdam, 29th of February 2012