We obtained following appeal from Ukrainian independent student union "Pryama diya" (i.e. Direct Action) with a request to distribute it in IWA. This union decided some time ago to seek the membership in the IWA and participated actively in some IWA solidarity campaigns (with ASI, FAU etc.).
The comrades from "Pryama diya" inform that they will organize protest days against repressions on 20-22 April. Comrades ask to send protest letters and to organize pickets in front of Ukrainian embassies
Serbian ruling class continues enhanced repression against the libertarian movement, the repression that began with the arrest of the Belgrade six - Sanja Dojkić, Tadej Kurepa, Ratibor Trivunac, Ivan Vulović, Nikola Mitrović and Ivana Savić - in September 2009. Until then unknown anarchist group “Black Ilija” claimed responsibility for throwing two bottles of burning liquid on the pavement near the Greek embassy in Belgrade, as a reaction to the barbaric treatment of the rebels by the Greek state, thereby causing damage of 18 Euros to the embassy.
Regime media aided by the regime analysts and “well-informed sources“ have launched a hunt against the only anarchist organization that publicly operates in Serbia - Union Confederation” Anarcho-syndicalist Initiative (ASI), section of the International Workers Association. What has began as a media speculations about the connection between ASI and events in front of the embassy, was completed with the arrest of four members of the ASI Belgrade local group, and two other Belgrade anarchists, and, later, after the intervention from “the top seat”, the raising of the first indictment for the crime of “international terrorism” in Serbia. The Belgrade six spent next five and a half months in terrible conditions of isolation and torture of the Central Prison in Belgrade.
Workers of the world celebrate this year's First of May with a new peril looming over their heads—The Global Financial Crisis. Yet, every capitalist crisis is a crisis for the bosses and politicians and an opportunity for the workers! Interests of world's working masses are always sharply opposed to the interests of our rulers! We must always recognize this simple and profound fact and use it to promote our liberation.
Another Mayday has come, and with it the time to remember, in struggle, our comrades – five anarchist workers who died in a war between classes that we are still fighting today. They were murdered by the State because they didn't accept without resistance that they had bosses who lived off of their labour, because they didn't accept that the State and the Capital had power over their lives.
The Secretariat has in the period requested the Sections and Friends of sending us information “about parallel organizations using the initials IWA-AIT”, documenting the confusion they are making. The SP of the Regional Committee of the CNT-AIT of Catalunya- Balears sent in 2005 an information against the “Joaquin Costa CNT”.and the USI-AIT has in the past forwarded information about the “USI- Rome”. Besides this, e-mails have been sent to the “AIT-Minnesota” of not using the “AIT” and they changed their name to “Syndicalist Action Network”.
We will end this report with an event that happened a couple of days before we were elected as members of the IWA-Secretariat by the NSF in January. A person telephoned and said the Secretary of the SAC, Hannele Peltonen, had mailed him and said she wanted to meet the IWA-Secretariat now when it was in Norway. The SAC and the IWA could sit down and talk together in the same language. It was also mentioned SAC`s Congress decision of 1998 about the IWA. To this it was answered that the IWA-Secretariat would not break the IWA-decision of no contact to the SAC, but if they had something new to say, they could send it to us, and the information could be passed to the Sections.
