Today, the YCL in Britain will be participating in a world day of action to stand in solidarity with the people and youth of Venezuela, alongside other Communist youth organisations and progressive and anti-imperialist youth around the world.
This action day is being coordinated by the World Peace Council and COSI, the affiliated peace organisation in Venezuela.
Why is it important to take part?
We will be standing against imperialist interference, for the right of the Venezuelan people and youth to decide their own future, and for the unity of people throughout the world in the struggle for peace and against war and imperialism.
We will be showing the youth of Venezuela that young people in one of the epicentres of imperialism, Britain, are with them.
These gestures of solidarity are particularly important in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, Socialist principles of peace, fraternity and cooperation of all people are being demanded.
Principles that fly in the face of capitalism, a system based on exploitation, oppression and imperialist aggression on a global scale.
Above all else, the United States continues to enforce unilateral sanctions against the Venezuelan people and the Department of Justice “indictment for drug trafficking” against top Government officials, and the social and economic blockade against Cuba.
The U.S. blockade against Cuba has already prevented the arrival of test kits and ventilators from China. Last year it cost the Cuban health sector alone $104 million.
We are calling on the youth of Britain to show their solidarity with the Cuban and Venezuelan people.
In the last week, we have called upon our members and friends online to support the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in lobbying the British Government to make representations to the United States to end or at least temporarily suspend the blockade to allow in vital supplies.
Already, 51 British MPs have written to the Government.
Add your voice to the demand here and join those of almost 15,000 people, including passengers from the British cruise ship Braemar who have thanked Cuba for rescuing them in their hour of need.
We are also calling upon our members and supporters to join today’s World Day of Action in Solidarity with Venezuela.
World Peace Council and COSI statement
On 19 April, as the 210th anniversary of the Venezuelan people’s cry for independence against the domination of the former Spanish Empire is commemorated, we express our firm support for the struggle of the Venezuelan people to preserve this independence and to exercise their right to sovereignty and self-determination.
We reiterate our energetic repudiation of any attempt to meddle in the internal affairs of the people of Venezuela, as well as all plans drawn up from imperialist powers that look to force a violent change of government in the country.
Included in these plans is a recent manoeuvre from the U.S. Government with its so-called “Transition Plan for Venezuela”, to which its European allies and some South American governments automatically joined.
This plan seeks to take a new escalatory step of interference and aggressive actions against Venezuela, which, within the conjunctural framework of the global pandemic, aims to justify the means of escalating the blockade and the illegal unilateral sanctions which complicate the effects of the global pandemic for the Venezuelan people.
For this reason, we denounce that maintaining and widening unilateral and extraterritorial coercive measures constitutes a crime against the people of Venezuela. We call for the immediate lifting of the illegal sanctions of the US and European governments against the country.
Likewise, we demand the return of financial resources owned by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela illegally held in international banks so that they can be used in the country’s pressing needs in the fight against COVID-19 and in the development of the national productive capacity.
Finally, we alert the peoples of the world to the serious threat of military intervention and imperialist war against Venezuela. The U.S. Government is looking to prepare a favourable international stage for war in Latin American and the Caribbean.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s actions against Venezuela’s president and senior officials of the Bolivarian government, the unusual increase in the U.S. military presence in Colombia, the joint U.S.-Colombia military exercises near the Venezuelan border and the recent deployment of the U.S. navy in the Caribbean Sea under the pretext of the fight against drug trafficking constitute clear evidence of U.S. imperialism’s dangerous steps to provoke a war against Venezuela.
We call on the peoples of the world to stop the war-crazed madness of imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean, and to defend the right of the Venezuelan people to self-determination and peace.
What can you do to show solidarity with the Venezuelan youth?
- Share this statement and the Venezuela Graphic attached above via email and social media.
- Print and take a selfie with the Venezuela Sign A4 attached here.
- Make your own Venezuela Sign and take a selfie with it. Use the same slogans and hashtags as on the sign we produced.
- Record a short video clip (up to 1 minute) of yourself explaining 1 reason why it is important to express our solidarity with the Venezuelan people and youth from Britain.
With all of these actions:
- Use the hashtags #HandsOffVenezuela, #JuventudSolidariaConVenezuela and #WFDY.
- Send to us/tag us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
If you are looking for things to talk about in a short video clip, you should read a part of this statement, or talk about some of the achievements in Venezuela under the anti-imperialist and socialist orientated Government.
There is more general information about Venezuela on the British Venezuela Solidarity Campaign website.
You might also like to read the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s statement about the need to cooperate on COVID-19 despite political differences.
Solidarity is about working people defending each other, so let’s do what we can in these challenging circumstances to defend the people and youth of Venezuela.
The Young Communist League fights for peace and Socialism, and an end to British imperialism and the “Special Relationship” with the United States.
Join us today to protect and fight for the people at home and abroad.
For popular sovereignty and self-determination!
Against imperialist interference, British youth in solidarity with Venezuela!
Robin Talbot
Chair
Young Communist League
19 April 2020
London, Britain
