| Nella pagina riproduciamo il testo di un volantino distribuito dalla nostra sezione di Torino nel novembre scorso ad una iniziativa degli immigrati. | In this page you find the text of a leaftet given out last november by our comrades in Turin during a rally organized by immigrants. |
Turin, 30 October: Thousands of Arab workers demonstrated against the prohibition of the use of the veil in the photographs used for identity documents; against the thousand-and-one obstacles they have to face in renewing their permits of stay; against the lagers in which immigrants are imprisoned before being expelled and continuous police harassment; against the discrimination they come up against in their working and social lives.
Despite the violent attacks on the part of Italy’s institutions and the mass media, and their attempts to isolate the demonstrators, the mobilisation was highly successful. This was an initial response to the growing repression of the Government and police that has led to an increase in the number of expulsions and the blocking of the issue of permits to stay.
What is happening against the immigrants in Turin is neither a chance nor isolated event, but reflects what is happening throughout the country. And it is therefore no accident that immigrant workers are beginning to organise themselves against these measures in other Italian cities. On 3 October, and despite the prohibition of the police, three thousand Asian workers took to the streets in Rome in order to make same claims as those made in Turin.
This type of mobilisation must continue. It will allow immigrant workers to organise themselves and to develop an effective opposition against the attempt to use their isolation as a means of depriving them of all of their legal rights and ensuring that they remain underpaid and easily blackmailed. It is the only way of responding to the threat of the double noose of "legal" and illegal superexploitation (the exploitation organised by organised crime and financed by profit and capital). It is the only way of not submitting to a false "integration" that involves accepting inhuman conditions of life and work.
The Arab community must work on extending the organisation of the proletarian immigrants coming from other countries because the problems that need to be faced are the same, and the union of their forces can only strengthen their confidence, awareness and preparedness to claim their rights.
By taking to the streets, these immigrant workers have also offered an example to Italian workers as to how to oppose the degradation and competition existing among the exploited: fight against the Government and the bosses who are really responsible for the social degradation attributed to the presence of immigrants. It is true that Italian workers are currently indifferent (if not hostile) towards their class brothers, but it will not be long before the attacks of the bourgeoisie reawaken them from their torpor. While continuing to work towards this objective of unification, we internationalist communists undertake to support the struggle of immigrant workers and give our unconditional support to the sacrosanct struggle of the Arab-Islamic masses against the usury and murderousness of Western imperialism – in both its warlike and "peaceful" form (the embargoes against Iraq and Yugoslavia).