Some socialists would have us ignore such repression of our fellow working class fighters because the regime that is doing the repression is in conflict with US imperialism. That was never the position of either Trotsky nor of real working class internationalism. Ignoring the crimes against the Venezuelan working class is most certainly not the position of the workers in Venezuela themselves. Doing so is a failure of real working class internationalism and working class solidarity.
By Venezuelan Voices On Tuesday, June 8, after ten years of judicial farce during which the process was restarted ten times and the judge was changed three times, the political prisoner Rodney Álvarez was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Judge Pablo Vicentelli and the prosecutor Regino Cova participated in the last stage of the judicial farce, violating Rodney Álvarez’s right to defense by preventing his lawyer from presenting his closing arguments. The conviction was handed down despite there being no evidence to prove that Rodney Álvarez committed the crime of which he was accused. As he has already served more than half of this sentence, he is eligible for release from prison, but the authorities are illegally conditioning this to an acceptance by Alvarez not to appeal the conviction. Unions and left oppositions organizations have rejected this monstrous sentence and demanded that Alvarez be released. Alvarez, a leftist worker at the state-owned company Ferrominera del Orinoco, is Venezuela’s longest-serving political prisoner. He was imprisoned on June 11, 2011, as part of a set-up promoted by the then governor of Bolivar state, Francisco Rangel Gomez, and the Bolivarian union mafia that terrorizes workers in the iron and aluminum industries in the southeast of the country. He has spent most of his time in prison in El Rodeo II, near Caracas, separated by more than 500 kilometers from Ciudad Piar, where his family and co-workers live. He has suffered three attempts on his life in prison. On December 27 he was shot, on August 6, 2018 he was stabbed six times and on July 5, 2019 he was brutally beaten. As a result of these attacks he has reduced mobility in one hand. The authorities have protected the perpetrators of these attacks by not opening any investigation. This is how the Chavista regime operates. Read more: https://venezuelanvoices.org/2021/06/11/maduros-dictatorship-sentences-political-prisoner-rodney-alvarez-to-15-years/ -- *“Science and socialism go hand-in-hand.” *Felicity Dowling Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#9142): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/9142 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/83480891/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
