The YCL-LJC is in Solidarity with the Youth Protesters on Lesbos: Close the Concentration Camps and Safely Release all Detainees!

YCL-LJC Central Executive Committee, September 20, 2020

Cette déclaration est également disponible en français.

The Central Committee of the YCL-LJC expresses utmost solidarity with the youth protesters at the Reception and Identification Centre (RIC) on the island of Lesbos. The recent fire at the RIC camp has devastated both the residents of Lesbos and the detained refugees and immigrants. The plan of the EU to relocate the detainees to another dangerous and inhumane RIC must be rejected.

 The reactionary plan of the European Union (EU) to turn the islands in the Aegean Sea into permanent concentration camps for refugees and immigrants must be exposed to young people and students. In the struggle for democratic immigration reform in Canada, we need to confront the Canadian states military and diplomatic role in the humanitarian crisis and their violations of the 1951 Refugee Convention, 1967 Protocol, and the fundamental tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

The YCL-LJC takes up the demands of our comrades, the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) for the immediate safe release of all refugees and immigrants from Lesbos. The camp must be closed and no other RIC, closed or open, must be created.

Since 2016 the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has participated in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) Operation Sea Guardian in coordination with the EU’s Frontex border patrol. Refugees and immigrants have been placed into concentration camps on islands in the Aegean sea. Thousands of people have been stripped of their rights and forced into inhumane conditions, only exacerbated by the pandemic. 

The Canadian government and the CAF’s criminal involvement in the devastation of Afghanistan, Libya, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere has greatly contributed to the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean region. Canadian businesses, in particular mining corporations and the resource extraction industry, have contributed greatly to the global warming crisis which between 2008 and 2014, displaced an average of 26.4 million people per year by disasters brought on by natural hazards. This is the equivalent to one person being displaced every second. Since 2014 the Mediterranean sea has tragically become Imperialism’s graveyard for refugees and immigrants as more than 20 000 people have perished.

The entire region has been under the shadow of an escalation in competition over hydrocarbons by NATO members. Nationalist governments in Ankara and Athens are both rattling their sabres over long standing maritime disputes now renewed in the fight for gas reservoirs. As the title of the joint statement from TKP and KKE says, The people of the two countries can and must claim their right to live in peace! In a visit to Cyprus this month, US secretary of State Mike Pompeo lifted a 33- year arms embargo on the Republic in order to ‘deepen security co-operation’ between the two states. The heightening of tensions in the region brings urgency to de-escalation efforts in Cyprus. International law and the resolutions of the United Nations provide the framework for dialogue on a solution to the Cyprus problem on the basis of bi-communal, bi-zonal federation. 

Like the European Union, Canada Border Services Agency arbitrarily detains thousands of permanent residents and foreign nationals, including children, every year at Immigration Holding Centres and provincial jails. We call on the Federal Government to scrap the ‘Safe Third Country Agreement’ and all other xenophobic and racist immigration policies such as the temporary foreign workers program. 

In Canada as in the EU, there is a growing danger of racist and xenophobic reactionary groups. These groups and their dangerous ideas must be denounced and rejected at our places of work and study and anywhere else. Racism is a poison of the mind that divides young people and only benefits the bourgeoisie. Our basis of unity is always against prejudice and bigotry; we are united by our common interests.    

Peace and solidarity are needed now more than ever. As young communists we need to bring young people into the struggle against imperialist conflict that only benefits the ruling class and bring a proletarian internationalist vantage point to the struggles of young people.