Czech youth group protests U.S. military facility

The following statement was issued by the Communist Youth Union (KSM) of the Czech Republic on Aug. 3 regarding the Czech government’s intention to place a U.S. early-warning system in their country. It illustrates both the continuing aggressive role of the U.S. and NATO in Eastern Europe and the existence of progressive forces in that region that are resisting renewed imperialist domination. The translated statement has been edited for clarity.

The Communist Youth Union (KSM) sharply rejects the intention of the Czech Republic’s government to place on our territory a U.S. early-warning system component — a center to collect and process the system’s data.

Approximately 70 percent of the citizens have rejected the government’s intention to place another component of the mentioned system — a U.S. military radar — in the Czech Republic. Some 200,000 of them expressed their resistance with their signatures under the KSM petition along with tens of thousands of signatures under the petitions of other initiatives. After all this, the government of the Czech Republic still continued secret negotiations on the placement of the U.S. military facility on our territory behind the public’s back.

The ruling forces intend to carry out this important act without allowing any expression of the people’s will and without discussion in the Czech Republic’s Parliament. Any attempt to cover up this agreement by bringing up its eventual possible connection with NATO (and not just a Czech-U.S. deal) is completely without merit and misleading. It is clearly based on a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Czech governments. ...

The right-wing parties as well as the Czech social democratic party demonstrate whom they really serve with their pro-U.S., servile and yea-saying attitudes. They perform as a gear transmitting the interests of the imperialist structures — the U.S. government, its criminal instrument NATO, as well as the European Union.

It is domestic and foreign capitalists and not working people who possess real power in our country. During the capitalist economic crisis, these forces on one hand further intensify the class struggle against the working and unemployed people through the painful cutting of their social and legal position; they simultaneously have full responsibility for the policy of aggression and occupation concerning deployment of Czech army mercenaries and military equipment, especially in occupied Kosovo and Afghanistan.

The Communist Youth Union (KSM) carries on its struggle against the placement of the U.S. military facility on our territory and for leading our country out from under the imperialist yoke of the U.S., NATO and the EU.