OFFICIAL NOTE
Workers’ Cause Party (Partido da Causa Operária – PCO )
PORTUGUÊS
“Those who call us terrorists wish to prevent world public opinion from discovering the truth about us and from seeing the justice on our faces. They seek to bide the terrorism and tyranny of their acts, and our own posture of self-defence.” (Yasser Arafat at the UN General Assembly, November 13, 1974)
On Wednesday night, a group of 27 Bolsonaro deputies, including Carla Zambelli, Nikolas Ferreira and Bia Kicis, demanded the investigation and eventual criminal conviction and arrest of a member of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Cause Party (PCO), comrade João Jorge Caproni Costa Pimenta.
The far-right deputies claim that the defense of the Palestinian armed resistance parties and organizations made by comrade João Jorge during a public demonstration on Sunday (22), constitutes an apology of the crime of terrorism. Our comrade’s intervention had an immense repercussion on social media, reaching more than one million views on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
This is not the first action against our party by the far-right, who support the genocide perpetrated by Zionists. Just two weeks ago, two regional party coordinators, comrades Francisco Muniz and Vinicius Rodrigues, received death threats from anonymous people on social media. Bolsonarist/Zionist groups also organized hacker attacks to take down our online portal Diário Causa Operária. Several militants of the Palestinian cause also suffered threats, such as PT (Worker’s Party) journalist Breno Altman.
Faced with the resounding failure of attempts by far-right activists to intimidate our comrades with threats of physical violence, the Bolsonarists saw the need to incite the bourgeois State against us, asking the police to launch an offensive against the party.
We see here a blatant contradiction of the far-right: after spending four years protesting against the truculent and dictatorial action of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) against freedom of expression, the Bolsonarists, today in government opposition, do the same as Alexandre de Moraes, trying to censor the PCO and any movement defending Palestine.
Alexandre de Moraes and the Brazilian far-right deserve each other; they are two sides of the same coin, both hypocrites and professional opportunists. It shows that the far-right’s self-propaganda – as the defender of freedom of expression – is a farce. It is shameful that a significant part of the petit-bourgeois left-wing has identified the defense of this fundamental right with the far-right and abandoned this traditional demand of the labor movement.
Years ago, the late far-right ideologue, Olavo de Carvalho, declared that the PCO’s defense of freedom of expression was not a principled position. Today, some of his followers prove exactly the opposite. In addition to a complete lack of principles, right-wing parliamentary leaders also show that if they have the chance they will be as truculent as the STF that they say they hate so much. The PCO is the only organized political force that actually defends freedom of expression without any reservations. This is a conclusion beyond any doubt.
The bourgeoisie, particularly the far-right, has always liked to brand its enemies as terrorists and supporters of terrorism. It was like that with the armed groups that faced the military dictatorship, it is like that with Hamas and other groups that went to war in the Middle East, but it is not like that when it comes to themselves.
When far-right militants set cars on fire in Brasília or tried to plant bombs at the airport in the Federal Capital, they said practically nothing. When Bolsonaro protesters held a riot in Praça dos Três Poderes, they refused to brand them terrorists, as they would do with any other movement. We see here, once again, the total lack of principles of these political sectors and their total lack of moral and political authority to talk about terrorism.
What happened in Israel with the carrying out of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm by Palestinian forces was just another chapter in the war waged between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people. What Hamas did cannot be considered a crime by any normal person. This is a war of national liberation. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians, with the bombings in the Gaza Strip, that is a crime and of the worst kind : state terrorism.
Brazil, like the vast majority of the globe, does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization, what removes any and all traces of validity from the Bolsonarist accusation, even in the face of the Brazilian bourgeois judicial system, one of the most undemocratic and fascist in the world.
We will repeat here, as the PCO National Central Committee, what was said by our comrades: we are 1.000% with Hamas and with all the militant groups who took the path of arms to fight against the Zionist genocide and defend sovereignty and freedom for the Palestinian people. And we say even more: the militants of these organizations fight with extraordinary courage and selflessness against an infinitely more powerful enemy, their attitude is typical of true heroes of the popular struggle.
The far-right is wrong to think that we will do like the petit-bourgeois left, which cowers in the face of threats, be they physical violence or police action. The PCO did not cower in the face of the military dictatorship, the STF, nor the far-right on the streets. It will not be a group of political upstarts and disqualified parliamentarians that will frighten us. Our party and our militants are made of much harder material than you could imagine.
We call on the entire left to express its solidarity in the face of this far-right attack and to close ranks in defense of the heroic and martyred Palestinian people, the organizations that are on the battlefield defending them and all comrades, from the most diverse organizations who (with the support of Rede Globo and “globalism”) are being persecuted by Brazilian Zionism-Bolsonarism and international imperialism.
NO TO THE GENOCIDAL BOMBING OF THE GAZA STRIP
NO TO THE OCCUPATION OF THE GAZA STRIP
DOWN WITH THE FASCIST DICTATORSHIP OF ZIONISM IN PALESTINE
ALL SUPPORT FOR THE PALESTINIAN SELF-DEFENSE FIGHT AGAINST ZIONIST STATE TERROR
OUT IMPERIALISM in THE MIDDLE EAST and in LATIN AMERICA
NO TO THE PERSECUTION OF COMRADE JOÃO JORGE PIMENTA AND THE PCO BY ZIONISM-BOLSONARISM
IN DEFENSE OF UNRESTRICTED FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND ALL DEMOCRATIC FREEDOMS
Executive Committee of the National Central Committee of the Workers’ Cause Party
São Paulo, October 27, 2023
