Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Thanasis Pafilis on Macedonia Issue: "NATO and EU are the people's murderers, not guarantors of borders"

Speaking earlier today (Wednesday) at the Greek Parliament, the parliamentary spokesman of the Communist Party of Greece Thanasis Pafilis, mentioned that nobody must see the Macedonia name issue (between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) "detached from all the developments in the wider region and especially in the Balkans". 

Thanasis Pafilis attacked both those who organize nationalist rallies - such as the one that took place three days ago in Thessaloniki- as well as those who express cosmopolitan views, underlining that both "do not challenge the accession of this country in NATO and the EU". More specifically, the KKE MP said: "The government's urgency [to solve the problem] - we don't know what agreements made in the USA- is exactly related with that. Because the USA and NATO in general are interested to incorporate FYROM in NATO and the EU, in order to finish the encirclement of Russia". 

Furthermore, Pafilis refered to an additional dimension of the issue which has to do with the interest of Greek business groups based in FYROM to utilize Skopje's NATO-EU accession process in order to broaden their profit-making investments in the region.

The KKE parliamentary spokesman denounced the efforts of both SYRIZA government and the opposition parties to present NATO as a "guarantor" of security and peace. "Really, should the Greek people forget who dissolved Yugoslavia and sharpened this problem? Wasn't NATO which dissolved Yugoslavia thus changing the borders that had been formed after the second World War? And you come today to say to the world that NATO, which slaughters humanity, is a guarantor of borders? Does the government, which pretends of being a left government, compete with New Democracy on who will integrate FYROM in NATO?".


Thanasis Pafilis also criticized the hypocrisy of SYRIZA over the nationalist demonstrations, pointing out that the governmental partner [the far-right ANEL party] participated in the last one in Thessaloniki. Moreover, as he said, the predecessor of SYRIZA - Synaspismos- had participated in all nationalist rallies that had been organized back in 1992.

Expressing a firm and consistent internationalist stance, the KKE MP underlined that the working people of Greece have nothing to divide with other people. "Those who send the people in the slaughterhouse" Pafilis said, "are those who own the wealth, the business groups, your system where the 1% owns the 86 of the world's wealth. These are the murderers of the people, these are the ones who slaughter the people in order to control their resources, the routes of energy" he added.

Source: 902.gr / Translation: In Defense of Communism.