From A World To Win News Service

8 March Women’s Organisation:
No border, No nation, No gender—This situation is not tolerable any more, we must start a dynamic fight!

October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

28 September 2015. A World to Win News Service. The following is by the 8 March Women’s Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan) (www.8mars.com).

The picture of “Aylan”, the three-year-old Syrian child who fell asleep forever, tired of the “death game” on the Mediterranean shores, shook the world and reminded us that these conditions are no longer tolerable. Aylan came to notice for a short moment through the camera lenses when he was no longer alive, while according to the statistics at this very moment there are more than 20 million refugees who need a safe shelter to live. Their story is witness to the unbearable and shameful catastrophe that humanity is facing. These are people who had to bear the atrocities of migration, banishment and homelessness and step out onto a death route to escape occupation, reactionary war, national, racial, religious, sexual and other sorts of oppression... as well as the destruction of their environment, all in order to be able to make a better life for themselves and their children!

Although migration is hardly a new phenomenon, this wave of thousands of desperate people has compelled the media and the politicians, who at first deliberately held their silence, to speak about this “humanitarian catastrophe”, especially in the countries that are the destination of the majority of the asylum seekers. Some of them sympathize demagogically with these asylum seekers and pretend to support them, while others clearly insist on anti-migration and war-mongering policies. It has reached the point that Angela Merkel, the leader of economic austerity in Europe, who is responsible for shattering pressures on lower class people—especially “foreigners”—is posing flagrantly as a “saviour angel” for the refugees. Her goal is not to sympathize and commiserate with the refugees, but either to absorb the Syrians, who were once at the top in the Middle East, as part of an educated professional labour force, so that they can rebuild the capitalist crisis-stricken Germany, or else to make them, like other “foreigners”, part of a “reserve army of labour” so as to help lower wages through “legal” and “illegal” work, and thereby enhance profitability, and also to fuel the fire of racist and anti-foreigner tendencies among the fascist parties and groups. The solution England and France offer to end the wave of immigration is to bomb Syria some more, which merely means greater destruction in the living hell where these wanderers once lived and where many who do not have the opportunity to escape are still trapped. The United States of America, the world leader in war, crime and killings, especially in the Middle East, has proposed to accept ten thousand Syrian refugees in order not to fall behind the “humanitarian” squad! They are maintaining a meaningful silence about how the Syrian crisis is the result of the U.S.’s aim to build a “Greater Middle East” in the first place with their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now that the area has become a swamp for the U.S., which no imperialist solution can ever end, every leader in these war crimes is pursuing their own interests and covering their criminal, blood-stained hands amidst the global commotion.

They all avoid the reality of WHY thousands of women, men, children, elderly, young, handicapped, sick, etc., are crossing borders on foot or in sub-standard rubber boats, or crowding into meat trucks or trains to escape, dead or alive? What is the reason for these people’s homelessness and misery? Who is the perpetrator?

Isn’t it the patriarchal capitalist system in the first place, which is honourably supported by their Excellencies (these politicians) who are in fact trying to save it at any cost? Isn’t the reason for this flood of refugees fleeing the Middle East and northern Africa to be found in the interference and wars fostered by these imperialists, who signed the firing orders for the conflagration that has spread day-by-day, with the entire region now in flames?

In facing the bitter reality that these refugees feel in their very bones, one should never forget that the civil war in Iraq and Syria is the continuation of the U.S. and their allies’ militarism, which was intended to ensure their own advantages. They destroyed Afghanistan in the name of “freedom for Afghani women” and bringing “democracy” and “fighting the Taliban”. Now that the Taliban has become their partner in power, women are more oppressed than ever, and “democracy” is a demagogical charade that is trotted out every couple of years in elections. The same bitter story of destruction, fragmentation and homelessness took place in Iraq, where Islamic fundamentalist groups emerged, ensuring that the people of Iraq and Syria wouldn’t see a day of peace.

Out of 18 million Syrians, 230,000 have been killed, 11 million people displaced, 3 million children cannot attend schools, and more than 4 million people have fled across the country’s borders. Almost four out of five Syrian refugees are either women or children. 145,000 refugee families live in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and even Iraq, one-fourth of whom emigrated under a woman’s leadership or guardianship. Women have had to defend their families against extreme poverty, fear of imprisonment, threat and constant violence, disdain and rape.

This gives only a glimpse of the conditions of Syria’s homeless women, who, like always, are the first victims of war and occupation, and besides facing the enemy’s dangers and threats, also face other kinds of threats, cruelty and rape from their menfolk who are otherwise sharing the same fate. They grapple with dangers and threats at every moment, with fewer resources at their disposal. Many women have been kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery or the flourishing prostitution markets of these countries, sometimes thousands of kilometres from their homes and families, under the control of mafia prostitution networks in Europe and the U.S., or they become domestic slaves. Women generally have responsibility for the children too, and, due to sexual discrimination, when overloaded boats capsize they lack the techniques and skills to swim, so together with their children become the major victims of the sea. This is not only the fate of Syrian women but also the fate of many women from Honduras, Nigeria, Myanmar, etc., who travel to other imperialist countries like the U.S. and Australia, or even to the poorer countries like Turkey and Lebanon. Today the fate of millions of refugees and women, who have been displaced around the world without hope or a future, is intertwined.

One thing is certain: the perpetrators of all these displacements, killings, homelessness, rape, sexual violence, kidnapping, etc., are the European and U.S. patriarchal imperialists who have helped or fostered the formation of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies in the Middle East and North Africa in order to preserve and stabilize their own privileges, and are supporting and strengthening them today. Despite the ideological-political opposition that they have with these regressive religious groups, not only have the imperialists not stopped supporting them, but they have also maintained the main source of their military equipment. Their privileges are preserved by the survival of this system, which is based on oppression and exploitation, even at the cost of killing and displacing millions of people in this region and throughout the world.

Everyone shouting “Open the doors, we want fresh air!” across Europe’s streets needs to be able to understand the message of this migration: “This life is not worthy of humanity”. The people who have opened their doors and hearts to these tired and hopeless refugees today must be able to lead a movement that guarantees a world in which there are no borders, no nationalities, no gender, no barbed wire, no camps, no prisons, no wars, no bullets, no batons, no discrimination, no oppression, no exploitation, no hunger, no destruction, no homelessness, no banishment, no threats, no rape. Such a movement must go beyond commiseration, mercy and humanitarian assistance, and must engage in a revolutionary and fundamental fight! It must be a movement that has the potential to bring about such a world and we, the women and activists of the 8th of March Women’s Organization, see ourselves as a part of this struggle to establish it.

 

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

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