On 9 January 2022, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network marched in the Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstration in Berlin (also known as the Liebknecht-Luxemburg-Lenin Demo). The annual march brings together revolutionary leftists throughout Germany and parts of Europe to commemorate the assassination of communist revolutionary leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht 103 years ago.
Samidoun marched in a bloc of dozens of participants with comrades in the Freedom Network for Political Prisoners and Grup Yorum, calling for solidarity and liberation for all revolutionary prisoners around the world and showing solidarity with Grup Yorum, facing persecution and repression for their music of struggle. The bloc further stood with the Palestinian people in the struggle against Zionism, imperialism and reactionary forces.
Around 2,400 people from many different political organizations participated in the march, which proceeds to the cemetery where Luxemburg and Liebknecht are buried, and red flowers are laid on their graves. The annual event is highly internationalist, with widespread participation from German, European, Turkish, Kurdish and other international communist organizations and parties.
The Samidoun contingent carried Palestinian flags, Samidoun banners and a large banner reading “Boycott Israel: Free Palestine from the river to the sea.” They also invited attendees to participate in an upcoming screening of “Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight,” the film focusing on the life in struggle of Lebanese Arab Communist Georges Abdallah, jailed in France for over 37 years.
The Samidoun statement for the demonstration follows:
We stand today in honor of the workers in struggle throughout the years, who carried the banners of revolution in their era, and in honor of those who suffered and struggled inside the prisons and miserable cells, for the martyrs of the cause of justice everywhere. We carry the message of over 5,000 Palestinian prisoners who are paying the price for the end of colonialism, our prisoners who sleep on the ground of the cells and make their ceilings a sky of freedom. From Palestine and from the harsh refugee camps to here in Germany, we carry forward our dream of revolution and liberation.
We stand with those who struggle for freedom against reactionary forces, imperialism, Zionism and colonialism. We direct our message to them and to the whole world that our common struggle against imperialism is the recipe for inevitable victory; our united revolutionary cause is the path to liberation and return.
Our hope for a liberated world and a clear sky of freedom today places us in the position to take joint action. Imperialism attacks the people around the world and Zionism confiscates our lives in an attempt to kill the hope of revolution inside us. A hundred years have passed, and the Palestinian people are still fighting and willing to sacrifice for freedom. We believe in the inevitability of victory and return to Palestine from the river to the sea, and there can be no just peace in the world without our victory, our return and the defeat of colonialism.
There is no freedom without a united confrontation everywhere against forces of reaction, imperialism and colonialism. The freedom of the peoples is all of our duty, and unless we unite our ranks today, the journey of our revolution will be much longer.
Freedom for Palestine! Freedom for all revolutionary prisoners!
