The delegation from the World Anti-imperialist Platform had a meeting with the Labor Party (Taiwan). Wu Rong-yuan, Chairman of the Labor Party (Taiwan) congratulated the Taipei Colloquium on its success and expressed his gratitude.
He said, “In recent years, the US has carried out the anti-China policy and has created a turning point in the situation, and the Chinese mainland defines it as a major change that has not happened in 100 years. As we know, the confrontation between China and US is the most central in the world anti-imperialist struggle,” he said, adding, ”As Taiwan, a part of China that has not been unified under special historical conditions, we are waging the last struggle. This is a crucial period for national liberation and reunification,” he emphasized.
He added, “China is one nation, so we believe in peaceful reunification. It has consistently advocated peaceful reunification for 40 years despite numerous provocations because war leaves too deep a scar. Today, the peace in the Taiwan Strait is safeguarded by China. Reunification is also in line with the laws of historical development. The peace we demand is an active peace,” he said.
The delegates from Turkiye, Greece, and the “Republic of Korea” then briefly shared the current situation in their respective countries.
Bahatin Özdemir, publisher of Yeni Donem in Turkey, said, “As a part of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey started to build a nation-state in the 1920s and especially after 1950, it came under the guidance of the United States and became a part of NATO. The struggle, which started as a student movement in the 1960s and 1970s, separated from the revisionist and reformist movements in the 1970s and evolved into a revolutionary struggle. Although Turkey has been evident in the socialist and working class struggle since the end of the 1900s, the construction of the national state, the Armenian genocide, and the exchange with Greece have hindered the socialist struggle and the working class struggle,” he explained.
Turkey has been ruled by a religious-fascist government for more than 20 years. It conducts proxy wars in Iraq, Armenia and Syria, and carries out operations with the forces it has created and supported, together with the United States or alone. We use all kinds of methods of struggle against the imperialist-capitalist system. The working class and trade union struggle, the youth and student struggle, the women’s freedom struggle are the leading ones,” he said.
Dimitrios Patelis, the coordinator of the Central Council of the Revolutionary Unification (Greece), said, “As we know, stereotypes created by imperialist propaganda are exploited on the battlefields of countries. In 1964-65, Greece waged an anti-imperialist movement, a national liberation movement, and a social class struggle against capital. The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) was founded on the basis of the October Revolution in Russia, but now it created the theory of the “imperialist pyramid” and defines World War 3 as a war between imperialisms.
And “The KKE has a dogmatic interpretation that all countries become an imperialist country at some historical stage. They are using the revolutionary tradition to divide and destroy the international communist movement. Their dogmatic ideology is very disrespectful and modifies Lenin’s theory. According to their imperialist pyramid, “stages,” “tactics,” and “fronts” are all denied. They believe that the current situation is the same as World War I, and that nothing has really changed since the 1940s, except for inter-imperialist wars and the use of imperialist blocs to change positions, which is due to the lack of revolutionary scientific theory. Against this catastrophe, we must fight with anti-imperialist struggle,” he said.
Kim Dae-bong, secretary-general of the People’s Democracy Party (PDP) of “Republic of Korea (ROK),” said, “The pro-Japanese traitor President Yoon Suk-yeol in ROK is trying to declare martial law to wage a local war. Just as, a former military dictator Chun in 1980s, Chun Doo-hwan’s military fascists formed the Hana Association within the army, Yoon has now formed the Chungam faction, a political, military, and economic clique. On 30 August, crackdown on the PDP was a signal of martial law. The anti-fascist propaganda group is trying to suppress the forces at the forefront of the anti-Yoon struggle and clean up the rear,” he said, introducing the anti-fascist struggle of the PDP and the World Anti-imperialist Platform’s Joint Struggles against Imperialism in the world.
After the meeting, the delegation visited the cemetery to commemorate the Taiwanese activists who passed away in the 1950s during the unification and worker’s movement.
The monument with a sunflower by the entrance to the cemetery was erected in 2002 by the Memorial and Remembrance Project. The sunflower symbolizes “revolutionaries toward the sun” who were working for a new world for workers and peasants at the time. The inscription on the monument reads, “He strived for national, democratic, reunification and prosperity, but could not fulfill his grand intentions and fought to the end for patriotism and love.
The cemetery consists of three gravesites. The first, which the delegation visited, contains about 200 graves, but the actual number of people executed by firing squad remains unclear.
One of the patriotic martyrs who was a teacher wrote, “With a limited life, I pioneer an infinite future. Though I fail, I go gloriously,” before his death.
The guide explained the harsh conditions of the time, when even the Kuomintang government did not publicly discuss white terrorism until the 1990s. The Labor Party in Taiwan visits the cemetery twice a year to pay their respects.
