April 2024
Defend
Michael Pröbsting (RCIT) and Der Funke (IMT)
Stop Austria’s Repression of Pro-Palestinian Protest
Internationalist Group at
April 26 New York protest to defend Austrian leftist Michael
Pröbsting and supporters of the International Marxist
Tendency. (Internationalist
photo)The trial of pro-Palestine activist Michael Pröbsting in Austria for a video statement expressing solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and opposition to the Israeli Zionist state ended with a “guilty” verdict and a conditional prison sentence of six months. We print below a statement by the League for the Fourth International at an April 26 protest in New York City against the frame-up trial.
On May 2, a trial is slated to begin in Vienna, Austria against Michael Pröbsting, the international secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) on the lying charges of “suspicion of incitement to commit terrorism” and “approval of terrorist criminal actions.” These charges could bring up to 2 years in jail. The criminal complaint cites a RCIT leaflet from last October opposing the Zionist state of Israel. Also under attack are two Austrian socialist youth leaders, Sonja and Alex, affiliated with the International Marxist Tendency, who were hauled in for interrogation by the state prosecutor in February. The League for the Fourth International calls to defend Pröbsting, Sonja and Alex and all those subject to repression against opponents of the U.S./Israel genocidal war on Gaza, in Austria and elsewhere. We say: Drop the charges, lift the bans, stop the inquisition against pro-Palestinian protesters.
These cases are a small part of wave of repression unleashed as part of the Zionist/imperialist war on the Palestinian people that has already murdered well over 40,000 residents of the Gaza Strip. That is over 2 percent of the entire population packed into this tiny enclave – smaller than the borough of Queens – that is known as “the largest open-air prison in the world.” This mass murder is financed and armed by U.S. imperialism. The Pentagon has supplied every heavy bomb and every warplane used to carry out this slaughter, mainly killing children and women in their homes. This mass murder is being carried out by the Democratic administration of “Genocide Joe” Biden, backed by Congressional representatives of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America, even as they call for empty “restrictions” on the U.S.-supplied weapons. All DSA members thereby bear personal responsibility for this “genocide made in U.S.A.”
In Austria, a pro-Palestinian protest was banned last October 11 and criminal complaints filed against more than 300 demonstrators for violating the ban. The grounds for the prohibition was the claim that the protest slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was a “call for the violent annihilation of Israel.” The magazine Profil accused organizers of “Anti-Semitism in Vienna.” This is grotesque coming from a state and pro-Israel forces that support genocide in Gaza. The Austrian demo ban followed similar action by police and local and state governments Germany. Cops there have outlawed and violently attacked countless demos in defense of the Palestinians, while the federal government banned Samidoun, the Palestinian nationalist defense organization. On April 12 in Berlin, an army of 900 cops smashed a Palestine Congress, on the grounds that various of the speakers were banned from political activity.
Here in the U.S., just in the last week in New York, hundreds of students and other defenders of the besieged Palestinian people have been arrested for participating in protest encampments in defense of Gaza. Now this repression is spreading across the U.S., with mass arrests at Yale University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas and yesterday a vicious cop attack on protesters at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. These bans are increasingly ludicrous. Two days ago, some 200+ protesters were arrested as they held a pro-peace seder on the street in Brooklyn during Passover, calling for peace in Gaza. Talk about antisemitism! And in dissolving the Berlin Palestine Congress, police banned praying in Arabic, or singing in Hebrew at a protest camp outside the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament. What’s next? Banning the words “salaam” and “shalom,” Arabic and Hebrew cognates for “peace”?
The forces prohibiting actions in defense of the Palestinian people – and spreading the filthy libel that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism – are the same ones waging a war of extermination on Gaza. They are also waging an imperialist proxy war against Russia over Ukraine, in a drive for counterrevolutionary war on China pointing to World War III. And they are fueling genuine anti-Semitism, from the fascist Austrian Freedom Party to the fascistic Alternative for Germany to Christian Zionists like U.S. House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson, who came to Columbia yesterday to call to bring in the National Guard to suppress student revolt. Against the orchestrated McCarthyite repression, we call on the workers movement to defend the protesters, to undertake international labor action to halt arms shipments to Israel, and stop the annihilation of the Palestinian people. Israel out of Gaza, the West Bank and all the Occupied Territories!.
Drop the charges against Michael Pröbsting! Put a stop to pro-war repression in Austria!
Mobilize the power of working class against police attacks and witch-hunt inquisitions!
For international workers action to stop transport of war materiel to Israel and Ukraine!
All out to defend the Palestinians against the genocidal U.S./Israel war on Gaza!