The "Worker' Romania" Association at the extended meeting of the Executive Committee of UISTAACT

The "Worker' Romania" Association at the extended meeting of the Executive Committee of UISTAACT

The "Worker' Romania" Association took part in the extended meeting of the Executive Committee of UISTAACT, which took place between 5 -7 June 2019 in Paris, the meeting being held in the context of a serious crisis, brought about by the policy of extracting as many profits from the working class worldwide, and the eradication of national natural resources to strengthen the position of multinational corporations around the world.

These issues give our struggle a global dimension that will not only help us fight against neoliberal policies of inequality and austerity imposed on the working people by the international financial organizations, but also against those activities that are meant to ruin national states and subjugate them to the imperialist interests.

To dominate the whole world by force is the invariable strategy of American imperialism under Mr. Trump. All the peoples of the planet, those who love peace, must form a broad united front and launch an energetic movement against the looting of the capital and the exploitation.

More and more people around the world are affected by the specter of war, between 2011 – 2019, around 6 billion dollars were the losses of the agricultural sector in Syria, 120 million children of different nationalities and living in different corners of the world are facing growth problems due to the conflicts and the social issues associated with them. All this is happening as the defense budget around the world goes higher, especially in the United States under President Trump. Here I must mention that of the 242 years of existence, the US has been at peace for only 16 years!!!

In the war-torn nation of Yemen, around 22 million people out of a total population of 28 million are in urgent need of assistance and their daily food necessities are not met. The daily bombings undertaken by the horrific Saudi regime with American, British and French weaponry are causing thousands of deaths among the civilians daily. More than 3 million houses have been destroyed in Yemen, not to mention historical landmarks and cultural buildings. The fact that millions of Yemenis do not have access to running water, brings about the spectrum of cholera and other digestive diseases.

As the Indian colleague noted regarding his country, in India the major trend in this period has been the intensification of inequality in the county under NDA rule. Its extent is obvious from the fact that when this government came to power in 2014, the richest 1% in the country owned 47% of the wealth. Today that figure has grown to no less than 74% at a modest estimate. In other words, their wealth has doubled in this period, making India one of the most unequal countries in the world. At the same time, the assets of 99% have come down from 53% in 2014 to only 32% in 2018. Vulnerable sections of society like women and children not only face economic disabilities like wages that are considerably less than those of men, but also physical assaults with a rape taking place every 6 minutes in the country. Child abuse is also rampant and we see children maimed for begging, serving long hours in eating houses and subjected to dangerous labor in fireworks factories, brick-kilns, stone crushers and scavenging hospital garbage, not speak of the persistence of manual scavenging which is against the law.

In Palestine, farms and agricultural areas are bombed with toxical substances by the Israeli Air Force, this year's peaches and strawberries have been compromised due to these chemical substances spread by the Israelis. 1.6 million Palestinians, mostly in Gaza are affected by this and by the fact that they are not allowed to access water resources and Palestinian products are intentionally being kept in customs till they expire.

As the Cuban delegation pointed, Latin America and the Caribean region continue to be the world's regions which are most gravely affected by inequalities and where poverty affects more than 30% of the total population, which means that around 175 million Latin Americans find themselves in a state of poverty. The infant mortality rate in this area is higher than 20 children for every 1000 births, which is way beyond the Millenium Goals established by the UN.
For 2019, according to CEPAL, the region's economy will only register a small 1.7% of growth and the trade war between the US and China is expected to seriously affect the area, too.

The United States, on June 4, took unprecedented measures against Cuba which reinforces the economic blockade imposed on the island for more than 60 years, at a cost for the Cuban economy that in 2018 exceeded 134 billion dollars at current prices and the figure of 933 billion dollars, taking into account the dollarｴs depreciation against the value of gold in the international market. As it has been known, this new escalation, effective from June 5th, further reinforces the harsh restrictions that US citizens already suffer to travel to Cuba, it adds absolute prohibitions for boats of all kinds from the United States and It immediately bans cruise ships from visiting our country. These are actions that disregard the overwhelming opinion of US citizens, whose interest in knowing Cuba and exercising their right to travel was demonstrated by 650,000 of them that visited us in 2018, along with half a million Cubans living in the United States.

My country, Romania, ranks second in the world (after Syria) as the number of immigrants, 9 Romanians per hour, 17% of the country's working population, or one-fifth of the total population;

- we lost 40,000 physicians (between 2007-2017), 84,000 young people under 36 years of age, 19% of whom had higher education (61% women);

We are a source of skilled labor in Austria, Hungary, France, Germany and for the United States and Canada. The consequences, especially in the medium and long term, are terrifying: 5 to 6 million Romanians are permanently or temporarily abroad. Children left behind leave school, become illiterate, do not receive moral parenting education, which is why they will become a major problem in the next 5 to 10 years.

When a government takes action for Romanian employees and retirees, almost immediately, large multinational corporations launch various forms of protest, mainly through NGOs paid for by foreign capital. They are falsely called "representatives of civil society" and associations like ours must strive to make their voices heard.

The issue of imperialist policies against sovereign States was mentioned in the final document, and all the members decided to strenuously support the cause of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Bolivarian Venezuela, Syria, those president Assad has recently been re-elected with a high percentage of votes, as well as Cuba's fight to put an end to the historic blockade which has seriously affected the Caribbean nation for two generations now.

Ciprian POP

Secretary General

“Worker's Romania” Association