Belarusian Workers' Association Calls To Terminate Strike
- 15.12.2021, 21:40
Belarusians will be able to defend their rights and freedoms.
The Belarusian Workers' Association appealed to Belarusians to end the strike, which began on November 1:
- Friends, associates, colleagues! A month and a half has passed since the announcement of the strike and the People's Quarantine. These one and a half months were very intense and without exaggeration one can say that no one remained indifferent to this event. Some were skeptical about the strike; many supported the strike. For some, the very word “strike” cuts the ears, because Belarus is the only country in Europe where a strike is something unusual and incomprehensible, although such actions are the most important form of workers' defense of their rights. These people chose to go on the People's Quarantine.
We would like to express our deep gratitude to everyone who supported the strike. These are the media and bloggers, Telegram channels and diasporas, which have set themselves the goal of covering events at Belarusian enterprises and bringing the topic of strikes in the media to the world level. Opinion leaders, politicians who made statements in support of the strike. Businessmen who supported the strikers. But, most of all, the people in factories and plants who stayed at home and stopped feeding the regime.
For a month and a half, we have all come a long way. We have learned to communicate with each other, to be in solidarity, to support and protect our colleagues. It is thanks to the well-coordinated work that we received information about the real state of affairs at the enterprises. We were able to convey information about mass layoffs and outright terror against Belarusian workers to world leaders and the media. We uncovered the facts of the preparation of factories and plants for sale to Russian oligarchs through deliberate bankruptcy and criminal privatization.
Also, thanks to the coordinated actions of local activists and the support of the media, we carried out a number of investigations into the activities of enterprise managers, corruption schemes and embezzlement of public money by officials. One of the investigations led to the arrest of a number of heads of MTZ and BELAZ for embezzlement and bribery.
Only together the people of Belarus were able to get the authorities to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks to this, the vaccination of the population was intensified.
Today we see that the number of unemployed has decreased over time. Therefore, we call on the strikers to end the strike. This does not mean that workers should stop defending their rights. This means that we need to take into account all the shortcomings, the positive and negative experience of one and a half months of the strike, in order to continue the resistance with renewed vigor.
Since November 1, we have taken together perhaps the most important step - despite the lack of support from a number of publicized leaders and “independent” trade unions, who refused to defend workers' rights even in the face of mass layoffs, Belarusians returned to the struggle and began to realize that everything depends on ourselves. Everyone realized that they are important and necessary for the common victory. We continue to believe that the “sanctions-strikes-protests” strategy is the most winning strategy.
The Belarusian Workers' Association does not consider the spoiling of ballots in a possible Lukashist referendum as a solution to the problems. Protecting workers' rights, freeing political prisoners and freedom from Lukashism - these are our primary tasks, on which we must and will work further, having worked out new algorithms and action plans for the near future. In spite of everything, we will not give up or give in. As long as the repressive machine sends our friends and associates to a reinforced-security jail for 15 years, we have no right to surrender. Workers of Belarus will be able to defend their rights and freedoms.
Together and until victory!
Long live Belarus!