For almost half a year, the chairman of the Kurier trade union (representing food delivery couriers), Kirill Ukraintsev, has been in custody. He is charged with repeated violations of the law for holding public events. But in fact, he is being persecuted for legitimate trade union activities, and for defending the rights of one of the most disadvantaged and disenfranchised groups of the working class.
We are pleased to announce that the appeal to support the work of the Trotsky House Museum has raised just over US$3500! The Leon Trotsky House Museum in Coyoacan, Mexico City, is a unique institution dedicated to preserving the legacy of the great Russian revolutionary. This is the house where Trotsky lived and worked in the last years of his life, with his wife Natalia and his grandson Esteban, until his assassination in 1940.
Thousands tuned in for an online rally on 25 November to launch a Brazilian campaign in support of the Leon Trotsky House Museum in Mexico. The meeting was hosted and introduced by Roberto Robaina a PSOL (Party of Socialism and Freedom) councillor in Porto Alegre and leader of the MES tendency within the party, Serge Goulart (from the Esquerda Marxista, Brazilian section of the IMT) and Israel Dutra, the PSOL International Relations Officer. Speaking at the meeting were Esteban Volkov, Trotsky’s grandson, Gabriela Noriega, the Museum’s Director, Leonardo Padura, the renowned Cuban writer who wrote “The Man Who Loved Dogs”, and Alan Woods, editor of “In Defence of Marxism” website and a leading figure of the International Marxist Tendency.
Comrade Amar Fayaz was abducted on 8 November by state authorities of Pakistan from Jamshoro and his whereabouts are still unknown. This has become a common practice in Pakistan in which political workers, journalists and other citizens who raise their voices against the government or its policies are abducted with the help of police and security services, and are kept in inhuman conditions and severely tortured.
On 8 November at around 1:30 a.m., men in two jeeps of the kind typically used by security agencies for abductions, along with three police cars, abducted comrade Amar Fayaz in Jamshoro, Sindh. He was sitting near the gate of Liaqat Medical University in Jamshoro when this incident happened. No one knows his whereabouts since then. We appeal to all our comrades and supporters to struggle for his release!
