Roadblocks set up by poor farmers are multiplying throughout Greece. Farmers in Thessaly set the tone, with three massive roadblocks in Larissa, Karditsa and Trikala, each involving thousands of tractors. The farmers’ mobilization is spreading throughout the country, reaching the customs offices of neighbouring countries, Bulgaria and Turkey. The government was unable to stifle the protests of the poor peasantry through repression and is now resorting to an attempt to pit other working-class strata against the farmers.
In a statement, the KKE, after welcoming the struggles of the farmers and condemning the attempts to suppress their struggles, highlights the reasons why the interests of the workers lie with the farmers. The statement reads as follows:
"The KKE welcomes the mass uprising of toiling farmers in Thessaly and other parts of the country, which shows that the straw has broken the camel’s back due to the policies that are destroying them: the unbearable cost of production, the lack of protection from natural disasters and animal diseases, and the attempt to burden them with the consequences of the scandals bred by the EU’s CAP and involving governments and their cronies.
The current protests are also a response to the government’s promises, supposedly ‘to support farmers’ income’, which convince no one. The government has resorted to repression with chemicals, riot police, and arrests to deal with the mobilized farmers, to whom it owes money. However, its effort failed due to the scale, determination, and organized disobedience of the toiling farmers.
The farmers’ struggle is just and concerns all the people who pay exorbitant prices for food, since between the farmers’ produce and the popular households lies a whole mechanism of wholesalers, industrialists, and the state itself through the taxes it imposes, which force farmers to sell their produce cheaply and households to buy it at exorbitant prices.
That is why their struggle must be supported by the labour and popular movement against the division, social polarization and repression that the government and its mechanisms will attempt.
We demand that all those arrested be released and that the police forces withdraw.”