Solidarity Statement to Chinese Labor Leaders
January 3, 2003
BMP International Department
Defend the Persecuted Chinese Worker Leaders
We Stand in Solidarity With the Chinese Workers
The BMP strongly condemns the persecution by the Chinese government of worker leaders Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang. According to news reports and the information we have received these worker leaders have been charged with “subversion”, a charge that carries with it the death penalty. Their families and lawyers have been denied access to them. We have also learnt that other worker leaders have been arrested.
According to some western media reports Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang are to be executed.
The charge of “subversion” was the same excuse used by the Chinese government to persecute, jail and murder the worker martyrs of the Tiananmen Square workers and students uprising under cover of it being a foreign plot to overthrow the government. Much to the shame of the Philippines progressive movement, sections of the labor movement in this country then, supported the actions of the Chinese government.
We, in the BMP, reject these lies peddled then and today. We stand resolutely with the Chinese workers as they resist job losses, non-payment of wages and attacks on their welfare benefits and living standards by a government that is hell bent on privatizing China’s national assets and introducing capitalism under the cover of “market socialism”.
In November 2002 a seven-year ban on foreigners purchase of state enterprise shares listed on stock exchanges was removed, opening the way for the privatization of an estimated US$300 billion of state assets. It’s the Chinese government that is opening the way for massive foreign capitalist intervention in China, not the workers. The privatization program will result in massive job losses. The workers are merely defending themselves.
As a result there has been an increase in workers struggles. In the early part of 2001 some 90,000 workers in northeastern China protested demanding work, unpaid wages and punishment for corrupt government officials and enterprise managers. In March last year protest actions involved 50,000 oil-workers in Daqing, 30,000 metal workers in Liaoyang and 10,000 coal miners in Fushun. The Chinese government is clearly attempting to persecute and smash this powerful movement of the Chinese working class that is arising in opposition to a privatization program leading to capitalist restoration, resulting in major attacks on the working class.
We stand united in solidarity with the Chinese workers and call on the international workers movement to launch a campaign in defense of these comrades.
TO CONTACT THE BMP INTERNATIONAL DEPT:
Email: bmp_philippines yahoo.com