Selcuk, Turkey, August 2010
We held an international meeting of youths from August 3 to 12 in Selcuk, Izmir, bringing together 3,000 young people from 20 different countries. During this 22nd international meeting we discussed the problems of youth, the peoples and all of humanity, such as the environment and the world. We shared our dreams and ideals and we debated our problems and their solutions. In the name of the participants of the camp, we thank and we greet our brothers and sisters in Turkey who organised this camp, the representatives of the working class, trade unions, doctors, nurses, engineers and our friends of all occupations who put their abilities at our service.
We are surrounded by unemployment, reactionary forces and imperialist wars.
Capitalism, as a system whose only aim is to obtain maximum profits, is again in a deep crisis on a global scale. The capitalists impose unemployment and poverty on the working youths to get out of the crisis that they themselves have created. The future of the youth is dim due to laws against labour. Pensions, social security, free education and health care have become inaccessible for the new generations. While this system is creating this kind of a world for youth, it is placing special emphasis on expanding racist, fascist and nationalist ideas, increasing the individualistic and competitive values, the degeneration of culture and drug use among the youth.
It organises education for its own interests and needs while it keeps it under the commercial tomb of privatisation. It tells the youth of working class families that they do not have the right to education if they do not have the money to pay for it. Together with general education, our possibilities to gain access to science, literature and the arts are under threat. Unscientific ideas of a medieval type are implanted to put the youth to sleep.
Parallel to the deepening of the crisis, the governments of countries with large immigrant populations continually use racist and fascist policies aimed at the worker and immigrant youths to block the common struggle of the workers and youths. While the imperialist states reinforce the racist and fascist parties, they cut back on the rights and the liberties already gained under the name of the ‘fight against terrorism’.
The 22nd International Encampment of the Anti-Fascist and Anti-Imperialist Youth is a meeting of the rebellion of youth against the restrictions on the right to education and the attempts to place the cost of the crisis on us.
Our camp, which was held under the slogan ‘For Work, Education, Peace and Fraternity of the Youths of the World’, is an international call to fight against the policies of imperialist war, racism, the reactionaries and fascism.
The youth of the world has similar problems; therefore our fight must be united.
What brought us together, young people of 20 different countries of Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Caucasus and the Middle East, are our problems and our demands. Our ten-day stay proved that we have similar problems even though we come from different countries and continents.
In order to carry out such a large meeting, we had the support of each one of the organisations of the working class and intellectuals. The fighting workers, great intellectuals who are on the side of the workers, the youths, the peasants in their fight against monopoly looters for the security of their lands and the provision of water, and the representatives of the oppressed peoples in their fight for their freedom have strengthened us. The artistic and cultural activities that we held with artists and intellectuals during these 10 days helped us to understand the importance of the need for progress and the flourishing of realist and socialist arts and culture. Women are under a double oppression and exploitation in terms of class and gender. The workshops and debates that we held during the camp are testimony to our firmness in the struggle to put an end to discrimination against women by gender and to the strength of the struggle for young women in particular. Another subject on which we focused was the fight against the destruction and contamination of the environment, nature and historic structures caused by the rapacity of capitalism to obtain maximum profits. As youth, we state that we will not ignore the destruction of our environment by capital.
The youth of the world is fraternal
The practices in the camp have shown how peace and fraternity can be achieved among young people of different nationalities. We understand that wars, with exception of those for national and social liberation, are conducted by a handful of imperialists and their collaborators.
In this meeting we debated and decided to develop a global position against the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by the imperialist powers headed by the United States; against nationalism and racism that has been incited against the struggle for national liberation of the Kurdish people within Turkey; against the oppression of the Palestinians and the attacks on Lebanon by the Israeli Zionist government; against the imperialist blockade of Iran. We discussed the imperialist provocations in the Caucasus, the tension between Colombia and Venezuela and the preparations for war by imperialist forces such as those of the United States and the European Union in other parts of the world, together with representatives of the youths of those countries or neighbouring countries. During our camp, near the coast of the Aegean Sea, we developed our fraternity and friendship in spite of the opposite policies of Greece and Turkey. We declare that we will not stand aside but we will reinforce our fight against those policies.
On the other hand, we condemn the reactionary and fascist pressure and attacks against the leaders of the workers and youths in several countries, particularly Ecuador and Tunisia, and we express our solidarity with them. Once again, we call upon the youth of the world to unite and fight against the imperialist wars and reactionary and fascist oppression.
The crisis belongs to capitalism, but the future is ours!
The discussions in the camp show that the general policies of the crisis and their effects on the workers, unemployed youths and students are similar on an international level: the increase in unemployment, growth of poverty among the masses of youths, the difficulty in access to education, cutbacks to public investment in the social and cultural fields, etc. It seems that all these international problems are experienced in different regions within a single country!
Moreover, we saw in our meeting the possibility and necessity of fighting against these attempts to place the burden of the crisis on us. We have various examples of the fight against these policies of crisis, such as the mobilisation of more than 2 million people in France last June to protest the pension reform and the fight of the undocumented workers, the student mobilisations in Germany against the costs of the university with some successful results, the 6 general strikes in the last 6 months in Greece, the workers of state monopoly TEKEL in Turkey who carried out a determined struggle for 78 days, the fights of the peoples of Latin America against the attacks and repression by the United States, the fight of the people of the Dominican Republic in defence of their lands and all the other struggles in the rest of the world. All these struggles and the victories achieved show us the path to follow. What this system presents to us is not impossible to change. We can solve our problems by means of an organised struggle.
Our discussions have also shown us the aspiration of the youth worldwide for a world without exploitation and wars, and that their interests demand the formation of such a world. Unless the means of production are snatched from the hands of that handful of parasites and are socialised, unless the working class and the peoples of the world establish their own political power, we, the young people, cannot get rid of unemployment, poverty, wars and massacres.
Our call is the call of all the youth around the world
Our slogan ‘for the fraternity of the young people of the world’ appeals to our natural human aspirations. The problems against which we are fighting have a common cause: we all live in capitalist countries where profits and competition are considered sacred. And we all share the same destiny. Therefore, our common struggle, friendship and solidarity cannot be hindered by our differences in race, language, religion, culture and country. We do not have to kill or die for the realisation of imperialist interests in the employ of imperialism. We do not want to pay the cost for the conflicts of interest within imperialism.
It is time to take part in the struggle for our demands and aspirations, for our right to work and education, against those who make our lives unbearable and miserable; a world without unemployment, poverty, hunger, wars and without national repressions is not possible under the hegemony of capitalism; such a world is only possible with Socialism.
The youth of the world shouts once again:
Long live the fight for work, education and peace!
Long live the fight for the liberation of the oppressed peoples!
Long live International Solidarity of the young people of the world!
Down with fascism and imperialism!
En Marcha #1502