The latest developments, with thousands of refugees and immigrants stranded at the Belarus borders with EU countries (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia) are yet another result of imperialist interventions and wars led by the USA, the EU, and NATO. It is a manifestation of the inhuman capitalist exploitation faced by the people and a desperate struggle for survival, forcing millions of people to choose increasingly dangerous escape routes, to fall into the hands of traffickers.

The collapse of the unacceptable agreement between the EU and Belarus on the refoulement of refugees, following the attempt of Euro-Atlantic imperialism to topple the current political leadership of Belarus, has led —among other things— to the current appalling exploitation of the refugee-immigration question, in the context of geopolitical games and negotiations between the EU and the Belarusian authorities.

The solution to the problem does not lie in the policy of brutal repression, refoulement, deportations, entrapment, and prison-like infrastructure promoted by the EU, which not only does not touch the causes of the problem but is a policy that tortures thousands of people. The solution lies in the struggle against imperialist interventions and capitalist exploitation, for the real protection of refugees’ rights, the granting of asylum in the countries of their real destination while guaranteeing all their rights to decent housing, work, education, social welfare, and full implementation of the Geneva Convention and international treaties on the protection of refugees.

The KKE expresses its solidarity with the refugees and immigrants and denounces the instrumentalization of this serious issue by the EU, NATO, and the bourgeois governments. It calls on the peoples of Poland, Belarus, and the other peoples of the region to turn their backs on nationalism and racism, to strengthen solidarity with the people who are victims of imperialist wars and exploitation.

We demand the immediate withdrawal of all Greek armed forces from NATO exercises and the Euro-Atlantic intervention plans in Belarus, in the context of competition and the encirclement of Russia. No participation in NATO plans. The bases of death must be closed. Disengagement from imperialist unions.

ATHENS 16/11/2021

THE PRESS OFFICE OF THE CC OF THE KKE