SPEECH BY THE SUDANESE COMMUNIST PARTY AT THE 20tl] IMCWP Athens, Greece, November 23-25, 2018

Dear Comrades,

On behalf of the leadership of our Party, and of the entire membership, we convey our best wishes for the success of the 20th IMCWP. At the same time we warmly greet and congratulate our Greek comrades on the centenary of the Greek Communist Party. It is a fact that the Greek Communist Party has played an important role and has made great contribution to the establishment and further development of our meetings. We express our thanks and gratitude for what they did, and at the same time for recognized efforts of other parties who either helped at the first difficult periods or offered their countries to host our meetings. The international communist movement would not have managed to cover successfully such a distance and would not have become an important element in international politics and the struggle of the people against imperialism for democracy, socialism and peace without the dedication and the sacrifice of the millions of our people, communists, workers, young communists and democrats. In each corner of the world the red flags are again raised. We have surpassed the initial period of the set back resulting from the defeat of the socialist experience in Europe. With determination and the continued struggle, each party in its country, and collectively on the international level, continues struggling against imperialist wars, exploitation, reactionary conspiracies and military interventions, arms race and destruction of the environment. The international communist movement is gradually responding the basic demands of our people. We do not underestimate the enormous difficulties created by our enemies, and the existing differences between our parties in tackling some of the issues, however, we believe that through our multilateral and bilateral meetings, there will be always a room to advance towards common action and better understanding.

Dear Comrades,

Developments in the international situation point towards the continuation of the deepening of the structural crisis of capitalism, the intensification of imperialist offensive, especially military means using war and interventions to subdue the growing struggles of the people. This situation has led to the development of a complex process of global realignment of forces.

Within this context, US imperialism is pursuing economic and geo-strategic offensive. Such as is the case of the results of the policy of "America first” which being implemented in the economic wars against Europe, Russia, China and the rest of the world, the imperialist aggression in the ME, its attempts to liquidate the Palestinian just cause, its conspiracies in Latin America to topple the patriotic regime of Venezuela and to continue the illegal blockade of Socialist Cuba. It is strengthening its military presence in Africa and the Far East.

US imperialism is promoting the arms race, deepening the centers of tension and provocations that may lead to the escalation of military confrontation and endanger world peace. Also important is the growing of the far-right and fascist forces in Europe and Latin America.

We avail ourselves of this opportunity to express our solidarity with all the peoples fighting against imperialism and reactionary conspiracies and aggression, namely the peoples of Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iran. We salute the achievement of the people of Iraq, Our support goes to the people of Cuba and the revolutionary and democratic forces in Latin America. We greet and support our comrades in South Africa, and salute the struggle of the African people for national and social liberation and against imperialist domination and reactionary rulers.

Dear Comrades

For nearly thirty years our country is ruled by the dictatorial regime of the Muslim Brotherhood. As a result of their grip over all aspects of the state apparatus, the country has reached the stage of complete collapse in all fronts and all aspects of life. Suffice to mention that the Sudanese pound has lost 1000% of its purchasing power since 1989.

It is not only the economic bankruptcy of the regime, but also the complete deterioration and collapse of the health, educational and transport systems, and the civil service. During the last few years significant government reshuffles took place. Each new government declared promises of solution to the chronic problems, but all of them were dismissed and the crisis continues to deepen and spread. The reason for the crisis in the Sudan is the regime itself.

Apart from ruining the country, Albashir’s regime continues to rule the country with iron fist. Its mainstay and support are the security apparatus and the militias. It is through repression, intimidation, detention, imprisonment, torture, kidnapping, and killing of their opponents that it maintains its grip over power. It launched military operations against the people in Darfur, Kordufan and the Blue Nile. The oppression of armless civilians, with shoot to kill approach, as in the cases of uprisings in Port Sudan, Manaseer area and Khartoum September 2013, resulted in death of couple of hundreds!

Being an obedient client of imperialism and regional reaction it implemented fully the orders of the IMF, sold all the public sector facilities to foreign and local capital. It confiscated land from the population and leased thousands of acres of fertile land to the Gulf States ,Turkey and China. It violated the country’s sovereignty by succumbing to USA pressure to host the largest CIA station outside Europe, be part of Africom, and acts as cat’s paw in sending Sudanese troops to fight in Yemen as part of the Saudi invasion. Despite the continuous repressive policies, our people is resolutely fighting the regime to wrench its rights. Our Party is engaged in mobilizing the masses and building a solid alliance of all the opposition forces who united in the struggle to overthrow the regime.. The recent January uprising did not only expose the weakness of the regime, but also proved the readiness of the masses to fight for their rights.

A major task undertaken by our party is to devote attention to the strengthening of its ranks, making more possible to address the mobilization and organization of the working class and building its alliance with the peasantry. At the same time the party continues to consolidate the role of the revolutionary intelligentsia, the democratic youth and students and the women’s movement with the alliance of the workers and the peasantry. This is the process to build the national democratic front, which would lead the broad alliance of the masses to participate actively in the long path of struggle being culminated by declaring and participating in the general political strike leading to the civil disobedience. In such a way the regime would be paralyzed and toppled, and the democratic people government would pave the completion of the tasks of the national democratic revolution. We avail ourselves of opportunity to once more thank all parties who extended their support and solidarity during the January Uprising, thus helping fetter the hands of the regime and helping release our detained party leaders.

Dear Comrades

The SCP has been active in attending a number of the IMCWP meetings. Our absence was always due to financial constrains, especially when the meetings were in Latin America. Whenever the SCP was present we tried to make a positive contribution towards the success of our meetings.

Despite the achievements and successes, still there is a room for further improvement. We think that the 20th IMCWP is an important occasion to make the necessary proposals, exchange new ideas on how to go further and make our meetings more productive, representative and more effective and relevant to the struggles of our peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America,. It goes without saying that Europe is still an important part where the communist and workers parties play a major role in the struggle of their peoples. However this does not negate the importance of the other areas.

During and immediately after the 15th IMCWP our party made a number of proposals in this respect. Some of them were incorporated, others still need further discussion.

1-The SCP proposes that the international meetings may allow for more concrete discussion on specific issues and topics. Some of the past meetings dealt with specific issues like communists and trade unions etc. It is important to go a step further to allow for exchange of opinions on issues as protection of the environment, arms race among others. We feel that devoting a meeting to the situation in the ME, not from the perspective of solidarity only, but from the point of view of how our movement sees the confrontation taking place and seeks possible broad solution is necessary, as well as the clarification how this situation relates to the contradictions of international character.

The tradition of having very general topics which covers everything does not help the discussion nor a profound exchange of opinions.

2- The communist and workers parties work and struggle under different and difficult conditions. There is no one yard stick to be used to prove that this or that party can attend our meetings. Instead of accept the veto of one party; it would be more appropriate to settle specific issues by parties coming from the same region.

3- With all the respect to the parties members of the Working Group, the WG is far away from being a true representative of the international movement. First it is dominated by the presence of European parties. Second in a number of cases there are two parties from one country, while other regions and continents are poorly represented. That is why the SCP calls for addressing and rectifying this unbalance. This is needed in case of the increased strength of the representation from Africa and the ME.

4-During the previous meetings, at certain point, it was approved to set up a solidarity fund to help parties who cannot afford to attend international meetings whilst with the assistance from the fund they could do so. The SCP hopes a way may be found to address this major problem.