The day of March 21 was declared as the International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination by the UN after the racist murder of tens demonstrators in South Africa in the year 1960.

Today, after 49 years, the world still lives many cases of racism and discrimination although many achievements occurred during the past decades. The Apartheid regime of discrimination collapsed under the big struggles of the people of South Africa and the international solidarity with them. Hundreds of millions of people got the right to vote after deprivation of this basic right due to color or religious or ethnic discriminations.

But we still see nowadays other forms of discrimination and a developing trend of xenophobia and hatred against foreigners in many regions of the world. Especially in Europe, the right wing forces are spreading the ideas of hatred and separation against foreigners and against progressive ideas. They are pushing the workers and the youth to blame the foreign workers for losing their jobs instead of revealing the responsibility of capitalism and national governments for economic problems and unemployment in their countries.

At the same time, in the same countries immigrants are not granted visas or work permits, becoming an easy target for human traffic and intense exploitation (and even slavery at times). It is remarkable that these workers, many of them youngsters, are indeed a crucial labor force in for most of the hosting countries and, if they were legal, its contribution for the public systems of Social Insurance would be more than enough to make most of these systems economically viable.

However, imperialism prefers to treat these people as slaves, with no rights, having high profits and excuses to increase the fear and division atmosphere among the youth and workers of many countries.

After 9/11 more hatred against Arabs and Islam spread in the United States and many regions in Europe, known as “Islamophobia” in a new form of separation between people and to create an illusive enemy to keep wars igniting around the world and feeding big-armed industries.

Also the wall of separation in Palestine and the Zionist policies of ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion form a big threat for the lives of millions of people whose only crime is that they are Palestinians.

Today, the world is once again called to struggle against all forms of racial, ethnic and religious division that are used as tools for separation and wars, and for more exploitation.

In this significant day, WFDY calls upon all its member and friend organizations to work for the elimination of discrimination and express international solidarity that crosses all borders of separation to be united in our struggles for our rights, against imperialism.

It has been six years till now since USA supported by a coalition of imperialist forces and puppet allies started the war against Iraq in order to “democratize it” and “free it from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein”. Now after six years, Iraq has only witnessed increased suffering, death and poverty and what was “freeing Iraq” turned out to be occupying Iraq.

Now Iraq is under occupation from the same imperialist governments that formerly supported the dictatorship regime since the early 1980s in all of its wars against its neighbors and in its internal criminal policies against its own people.

The massacres against the communists all over Iraq in the early 1980s and the wars against the Shiaa in the South and the Kurds in the North were tolerated by the “International community” for long years since Iraq was committing to their policies in the region and supplying them with oil. USA and its allies supported all those practices before, and only turned to oppose them when they felt the need to be present militarily in the region, in the Gulf region and inside Iraq where huge reserves of oil are the aim.

Now after the falling of the regime that WFDY denounced for long, Iraq is occupied by USA and its allies. It is a new battle now for Iraq to be liberated from those occupying forces and only resistance will lead the process of liberation.

WFDY reiterates its support on this occasion to the Iraqi people in their struggle for real independence and to liberate their country from this occupation.

Iraq can only be free through the will of its own people and youth, and will achieve real democracy only after liberating itself from occupation.

Let this anniversary be another step in our struggle against war and occupation, for freedom and progress and for international solidarity.