Dear Comrade Dimitris Koutsoumpas,

The Communist Party of Canada expresses our deep solidarity with the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), in the face of police attacks and repression by the Greek government during the commemoration of the 47^th anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic uprising. 

Capitalist governments around the world are using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext for implementing anti-worker and anti-people policies which benefit corporations and monopolies. These include deep austerity measures, sweeping privatization of public services and assets, rollbacks in labour and democratic rights, and massive transfers of wealth from the working class to capitalists. 

Capital’s response also includes efforts to criminalize dissent and opposition, under the cover of “protecting public health” and “maintaining the economic recovery.” In Canada, for example, we see increased repression against Indigenous land defenders and their allies, as the state protects and expands the profits and power of oil corporations and land developers. In Greece, we see the attempted ban and then the violent police attack on communists, students and trade unionists who were peacefully marching to commemorate the historic and just uprising against the military junta. 

The global pandemic has exposed the sharpening contradictions within capitalism and triggered a deep economic crisis that is rocking the centres of imperialism. It is sparking increased resistance from the working class and its allies, which has drawn repressive and even violent interventions from the bourgeois state. 

But despite this repression, the struggle of the working class will continue. 

We salute the Greek communists, students and workers who mobilized for the 47^th anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising and the struggle against the military junta. 

We demand an end to the anti-communist, anti-worker and anti-people repression in Greece and around the world. 

We call for workers and oppressed peoples of all lands to unite! 

Comradely, 

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada