Fight Back News Service is circulating following Oct. 24 statement from the Provisional Committee of International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) – Latin America and the Caribbean.

Since the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, there has never been an attack against the Chilean people like the one that President Sebastián Piñera has unleashed against the massive protests of the working class and peoples in that country. More than 18 dead, hundreds of disappeared, over 1500 political prisoners across Chile: these are the results of the repression by the armed forces and carabineros who took control of the country last October 18, when the government declared a state of emergency in the capital.

In spite of this, the massive mobilizations have not stopped; on the contrary, on October 23, 24, 2019 a General Strike was called, which paralyzed the main cities of the country as hundreds of thousands of Chileans flooded the streets, including original peoples such as the Mapuche people of the Andean region.

It has been thus because the demands of the masses of Chilean people are absolutely just. The protests were triggered by the increase in the price of public transportation, met by massive protests of the Chilean youth. Very soon the workers, people in the popular neighborhoods, the teachers and others joined in because the neoliberal measures of Sebastián Piñera’s government in collusion with the imperialist organizations (IMF, WB, OECD) are impoverishing the majority of the Chilean people.

The brutality of the repressive forces of the Chilean state has served to radicalize the actions of the people so that the mobilizations in Chile have become real popular rebellions, with looting and fires of large transnational corporations and government offices, the raising of barricades, roadblocks, work stoppages and strikes. The government has indicated that it could backtrack on some measures, but people refuse to back down because the politics of the Chilean regime and imperialism have had such a devastating effect on the lives of the population.

As the International League of People’s Struggle in Latin America, we stand in solidarity with the struggle of the working class and the peoples of Chile, we demand that Sebastian Piñera’s assault against the people be stopped immediately, that the state of emergency be lifted and that the Armed Forces return to their barracks. We demand the release of all political prisoners, punishment of those responsible for the murderer of more than 18 comrades in combat, as well as the return of the disappeared, alive.

We are certain that the struggle of the Chilean people will see victory sooner rather than later. We call for people throughout the world to develop a militant movement of internationalist solidarity because we are sure that the struggle waged by the working class and the people of Chile is a battle of the entire international proletariat, and that includes the struggles of the Haitian, Lebanese, Catalan, Ecuadorian, Kurdish people.

Faced with the deepening of the general crisis of the imperialist capitalist system, these popular uprisings are showing the path that the whole international proletariat must take to bring us closer to a new wave of proletarian revolutions, as the only real way out of the world imperialist system.

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