Free All Anti-NATO Protesters! Drop All Charges!

We print below an April 8 joint protest statement by the Komitee für soziale Verteidigung and the Comité de Défense Sociale, which are fraternally allied with the Partisan Defense Committee in the U.S. The KfsV and CDDS are class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organizations associated with the Spartakist Workers Party of Germany and the Ligue Trotskyste de France, sections of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist).

The fraternally allied Komitee für soziale Verteidigung (KfsV) and the Comité de Défense Sociale (CDDS) strongly protest against the first series of sentences handed down to demonstrators against the NATO summit. In summary hearings reminiscent of police-state dictatorships and in violation of their most elementary rights, six young French and German people received sentences ranging from six-month suspended sentences to six-month prison terms with banned entry into France. Further, three French youths, who were arrested outside a supermarket for buying white spirit [paint thinner], are being held in detention until their trial on May 5. Days after a man’s death at the hands of the police during the London G20 protest, dozens of demonstrators were injured, some severely, during the brutal state attack on the anti-NATO protests. Over 300 demonstrators were arrested. French president [Nicolas] Sarkozy demanded that protesters be “punished with the most extreme severity.” In the weeks to come there will doubtless be further arrests. The KfsV and CDDS declare: Down with the outrageous sentences against anti-NATO protesters! Drop all charges immediately! Free all anti-NATO protesters!

In France as well as in Germany, the capitalist state, in the lead-up to the summit, pulled out all the stops in order to prevent mass participation in the protests: a menacing police deployment was mobilized; a witchhunt campaign against anarchists was carried out; the participation of known leftist activists was prevented by promulgating police registration requirements; the legal emergency team in Offenburg [Germany] was spied on; in the days before the protests, travel bans were imposed on 3,000 people at the border; Strasbourg was in effect turned into a militarily occupied zone; and so on. The police terror and the sentences and trials now following it represent a continuation of the state campaign, which aims to criminalize and suppress every protest against the crimes of the capitalist rulers of Germany, France, the U.S., etc.

Today it targets courageous leftists who demonstrate against the imperialist NATO war alliance, an alliance with which the imperialists seek to bloodily impose their interests worldwide. Tomorrow it will target those who defy the capitalists’ interests at home, such as trade unionists striking against layoffs and wage cuts, or minorities and immigrants fighting racist discrimination. The workers movement must protest the brutal attacks on the anti-NATO demonstrators and the current outrageous sentences!