The Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) and the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) of Trinidad and Tobago join with the militant and progressive people across the world to acknowledge the struggle of the resilient people of Palestine who have been undergoing oppression at the hands of the Israeli authorities for over seventy (70) years.
We therefore join the International Trade Union Leaders and activists to expose the criminal acts of the Israeli governments by their torture of the unyielding people of Palestine whilst the United Nations remains silent and thereby complicit in its actions.
We also condemn the role played by the United States, the European Union and their allies in their support of such criminal activity complicit in acts of torture and crimes against the innocent.
The Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union and the Joint Trade Union Movement will never be silent faced with injustice and stand firmly alongside our Comrades of the World Federations of Trade Unions (WFTU) in their recognition of the heroic actions of the Palestinian people and the demand for an end to Israeli settlements, the immediate end of the Gaza blockade and full recognition of an independent Palestinian State on the border of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital. Even after the break-up of the formal colonial system, the Palestinians people remain one of the few national entities denied basic human rights and first and foremost their right to establish an independent sovereign state in their homeland, the right to self-determination.
The ruling class in Israel, both on an ideological basis and to enhance their strength vis- a-vis the Palestinians, have forged strategic military, political and economic allegiance with global imperialist powers. The Political and Economic War waged against the Palestinian people has created unjustified and untold hardship, suffering and pain.
The OWTU stands in solidarity with the ordinary working Palestinian men and women who have shown courage and strength in their long and epic battle for freedom and to exercise a most basic right of nations. As progressive class oriented trade unions we have a moral and revolutionary duty to Palestinian cause as they continue to stand in the frontline against imperialism and confronting Israeli neo-colonialism.
Israel as an occupying power is constantly seeking territorial expansion and its inhumane apartheid wall are just few examples of the many acts of expropriation and dispossession, humiliation and daily suffering to which the Palestinian people are subject to under the occupation. The recent US elections result does not mean that there will be any significant change to US policy on Palestine as much as we would welcome such. We must continue to be vigilant and ever ready to stand as a force of resistance to imperialism and capitalism.
We stand firmly among these defenders of justice in declaring that the innocent people of Palestine must no longer continue to be treated as collateral damage. An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and the people of Palestine shall be vindicated.
In solidarity,
Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union
