Venezuela: Solidarity with the Kazakh people, Solidarity with the Kazakh people

In the last hours of yesterday, Monday 17 from January, our colleagues from Marea Socialista (MS), Venezuelan section of the LIS, They reported that our colleague and spokesperson for the workers of the transnational MASISA in Guayana, Jean Mendoza, arrested this past weekend, He had been released after his presentation in the criminal courts of Puerto Ordaz, but with a precautionary measure and not with full freedom.

From the early hours of yesterday morning a contingent of MASISA workers gathered and waited all day in front of the court headquarters in Alta Vista, Puerto Ordaz, pressing for the release of the detainee, your labor spokesperson and prevention delegate elected by MASISA workers.

How our colleagues point out, the Chilean transnational, that pays Venezuelan logging workers a tiny part of the salary they receive in Chile, Peru, Mexico or Argentina, thanks to the wage insecurity policies applied by the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, used a reactionary law approved by the recently closed National Constituent Assembly, created by the PSUV, that is allowing the complaints and claims of labor activism to be incriminated for “incitement to hatred”, popular and critical left, in addition to being used politically against the opposition. Now, with the “Law Against Hate”, criticism of the government or complaints against companies for violation of labor rights, instead of being processed properly in the labor courts, become criminal accusations that allow workers to be imprisoned for up to 10 years as common criminals.

The release under precautionary measure of Jean Mendoza is seen as a victory of the pressure of the mobilization of his fellow MASISA workers and of worker solidarity in Guayana, as well as the national solidarity of union sectors, popular activists and political currents, like those who gathered yesterday in Caracas in Parque Carabobo to protest in front of the Prosecutor's Office (national headquarters of the Public Ministry). But, international solidarity is also highlighted, fundamentally promoted by organizations of the revolutionary left that are part of the International Socialist League (LIS) in many countries around the world.

The precautionary measure with which the freedom of the worker spokesperson Jean Mendoza is conditioned, as explained by one of his defense lawyers, imposes a system of submission to court every 30 days, the prohibition of leaving the country and also includes prohibitions related to the use of social networks and electronic media.

Although Mendoza obtains an important partial victory, regaining your freedom of movement, upon leaving the detention center, The limitations to which he will be subjected represent a reduction in his rights and give an advantage to the employers., while hindering the exercise of Jean's spokesperson in favor of the workers. The result towards which the courts are reaching continues to be unfavorable to the workers and complacent with the transnational. That is to say; This is a measure that does not restore the rights of the labor spokesperson but rather constrains them and thereby helps the company to neutralize the worker., something that portrays very well the sense of class "justice", the orientation of the bourgeois judicial system.

For now, so, the fight is refocused towards the objective of achieving #FullFreedomForJeanMendoza in addition to continuing to accompany workers in their wage demands and for the exercise of their union rights. Along with this, the need felt by workers to demand the repeal of the "Law Against Hate" grows. (used against the labor movement) and that the criminalization of the labor struggle be put to an end.

Workers and solidarity movements will hold meetings to review this workers' struggle and its results, to continue strengthening the organization and unity of the working class in the defense of their rights.

This commitment is fully assumed by those of us who are part of the International Socialist League..

• This article was modified based on the publication of aporrea.org (https://www.aporrea.org/trabajadores/n370790.html)