Furthermore, the Party's General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas made an emergency visit to Kalamata, while members of the KKE and its youth wing, KNE, proceeded to protests in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities. Demonstrations are also scheduled for today throughout the country.
The statement of the KKE (here in Greek) reads:
“The recent fatal sinking of a boat carrying uprooted people off Pylos is added to the horrific list of dozens of similar shipwrecks in the Mediterranean and the Aegean taking place every year. So far, the death toll has risen to dozens of people and keeps increasing. It is revealing that according to UNHCR figures, the number of dead and missing uprooted people in the Mediterranean, has already reached 1,037 halfway through 2023, while last year this number reached about 2,400!!!
At the same time, the EU staffs and bourgeois governments are in feverish negotiations on the New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, as expressed in the last Council’s decision a few days ago in Luxembourg. The governments of the so-called first host countries, such as Greece and Italy, have a leading role in this. The new Pact being promoted marks the breach of the Geneva Convention on refugees and signals a further intensification of repression against the uprooted.
We call upon the Greek people to rise up against the ‘normality’ of daily news about dead and missing people in Evros and the Aegean. To strengthen their struggle against the country’s involvement in imperialist plans and the war, which are carried out for the profits of the imperialists and cause the death and uprooting of millions of people. To demand the effective protection of the uprooted and the abolition of the entire unjust framework of repression against them.
Faced with the dilemma ‘it is either their profits or our lives’, there is only one answer. We choose the people’s lives!”
