By: PTR–CcC (Partido de los Trabajadores Revolucionarios - Clase contra Clase), from Chile

Thursday, August 16, 2012

With a mobilization that brought together thousands nationally, August 8 was marked by the intransigence of Piñera’s government and police repression dictated from the Interior Ministry. More than 70 students arrested and prosecuted while, hours before, student-occupied high schools like Betsabe Hormazabal of San Miguel, Insuco 2, Alcántara Cordillera, and the Pablo Neruda High School of San Temuco, were cleared. The female students at Betsabe Hormazabal High School charged that they were groped and abused while they were being held at the police station. A repugnant act that recognizes that the employers’ law and their repression has no limits. Manuel Gutiérrez was murdered on August 24, with this same impunity. This year of 2012 began with expulsions, repression of the shantytown residents and workers of Aysén, Freirina, the Mapuche people and does not stop at the criminalization of everyone who questions the government’s interests.

The regime of the Concertación and the right wing: The approval of the Hinzpeter Law in the Security Committee of the Chamber of Deputies took 20 minutes.

The August 8 mobilization was repressed before it began, and the anger of the young people who were no longer afraid to fight for their rights was expressed in the streets. While the leaders of the CONFECH, CONES and ACES, through their declaration of 5 demands, put the forces of the student movement in dialogues with Parliament, they are leaving aside the struggle that we, more than a million students, carried out in the streets for free education now. The supporters of the regime show their true face, once again: after the August 8 mobilization, the damned Hinzpeter Law, that lengthened jail sentences, that will be focussed on those who confront the police, that will criminalize those who organize mobilizations, that will prohibit gathering in public spaces, among other measures that seek to put an end to social protest, gets approved in the Security Committee.

We cannot wait any more: We must follow the path of the high school students and take up the struggle of 2011 again.

More than 10 high schools under occupation are now the panorama of the high school students’ movement. Meanwhile, the employers’ government is making laws to suit itself: the regressive tax reform proposed by Piñera and now the Hinzpeter Law. The educational market is sending signals of its crisis; the National Accreditation Council is being accused of embezzlement of funds, an element in addition to the scandal of the Universidad del Mar. We cannot allow this anymore; we must again take up the struggle of 2011, to put an end to Pinochet-style education.

No more crumbs: Free education is achieved with struggle, marches, occupations and without bureaucracy!

Gabriel Boric, a militant of the Autonomous Left and President of the FECH, states that this is the time to go on the offensive and that August would be a month of mobilizations. The CONFECH, led by the Communist Youth, the Autonomous Left and the UNE, has presented an “ultimatum” to Parliament. What is concealed behind these statements? They want to mobilize us for the letter of their 5 demands, without realizing that it is impossible to struggle against education of the market by regulating the profit of the educational businessmen. Our struggle is not for more scholarships or reductions in the interest rate for credit; our fight is for free education and not for an uncertain future.

This August 24, let us raise a plan of struggle to stop the Hinzpeter Law and put an end to the impunity of those who murdered Manuel Gutiérrez. The CONFECH must call a national student strike.

From the Revolutionary Workers’ Party [PTR], we believe that it is urgent for the CONFECH to call a national strike on the day the Hinzpeter Law is approved and on August 24 against the impunity of those who murdered Manuel Gutiérrez; the universities must be shut down. If the leaderships want to mobilize, they must begin now to organize from the grassroots a plan of struggle that will contain these dates as a foundation to raise a big national strike of professors on August 28. It is necessary to retake the struggle of 2011 on the way to putting an end to everything inherited from Pinochet.

August 16, 2012