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INTERNATIONAL LIAISON COMMITTEE
P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140
Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217email:
[email protected]
website: www.owcinfo.org
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International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples
Urgent CommuniquJanuary 13, 2011
The International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples (ILC)
condemns the repression against the youth, workers andpeople of
Tunisia, who have risen up against oppression, the high cost of
living, and corruption.
The ILC sends its support to the workers, youth and people of
Tunisia and their organizations, particularly the General
Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), which has spearheaded the
mobilization.
The ILC calls on the labor movement and workers' organizations
worldwide to express their solidarity with the workers,
youth and people of Tunisia, and to demand an end to the brutal
repression.
The bloody and corrupt regime of dictator Ben Ali, supported by
the European Union and the IMF, has faithfully applied
their plans and dictates in the context of the Association with
the European Union, to be completed in 2011, which aims to
make Tunisia a "free trade" zone.
Immersed in misery, without any perspective, the youth and
working class of Tunisia, reclaiming their unions for struggle,
are rising up across the country to defend their very right to
exist.
During several days, union activists of the UGTT have been
killed under the bullets of police repression. Men and women
united, workers, youth, lawyers, artists, academics ... hundreds
have been injured, beaten, jailed.
Spontaneously in dozens of cities, the population went to the
local headquarters of the UGTT to express their opposition to
Ben Ali. For the first time in 25 years, one can hear the chants
in the Tunisian demonstrations of "Down with Ben Ali!"
The police repression has been systematic. At Kasserin and Thala
dozens of people have been killed. Police snipers have
sown panic in the demonstrations.
In Tunis, trade unionists were reading to leave their union's
headquarters to take to the streets, but they were soon driven
back by police tear gas.
On Sunday, January 9, the UGTT local affiliate in Sfax issued a
call for a regional general strike. With only a few
exceptions (hospitals and many bakeries), the strike was
followed 100%. In Sfax, 30,000 workers and youths demonstrated
in the streets. A Jenduba on January 12, there were 12,000
people demonstrating in a city of 30,000 inhabitants.
The mobilizations are sweeping every corner of the country,
including the suburbs of Tunis itself. In several cities the
police
were forced to retreat or withdraw in the face of the relentless
population. The curfew in the greater Tunis metropolitan area
has been largely ignored as the protests continue to swell.
In the south, particularly in Kasserin, hundreds demonstrated,
appropriating the city buses to travel to Thala, where theyviolated
the 22-out-of-24 hour curfew and forced the police to withdraw back
to their stations.
The government-run television channel, a mouthpiece for the
propaganda of General Ben Ali, filmed scenes of looting,
staged by the police in civilian clothing who infiltrated the
demonstrations, to justify the repression.
But in Thala, Kasserin and Sidi Bouzid, the youth set up
Neighborhood Committees to organize their marches and expel the
provocateurs from their mass protests.
Last week, on several occasions members of the military
brandished their weapons against the Public Order Brigades
after
the people took refuge behind these brigades. The movement is so
deep it has caused the dismissal of the General Staff of
the Army.
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At the time of this writing, very violent clashes are taking
place between the police and the army, on one side, against
tens
of thousands of demonstrators in Nabeul, Tunis, and Sfax and
other cities and towns.
The International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples calls
on workers' organizations the world over to express their
solidarity with the workers and people of Tunisia, and in
particular with the UGTT trade union federation.
- For an immediate halt to the repression against the workers,
people and youth of Tunisia;
- Respect democratic freedoms in Tunisia;
- Meet the just social and political demands of the Tunisian
workers and people;
- For an immediate lifting of the siege of the UGTT headquarters
in Tunis!
Algiers - Paris,
January 13, 2011, 4:10 p.m.
signed/
- Louisa Hanoune, General Secretary of the Workers Party of
Algeria
- Daniel Gluckstein, National secretary of the Independent
Workers' Party (POI)
Coordinators of the International Liaison Committee of Workers
and Peoples
