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Statement by the trade union, CGT “Pôle emploi” (Employment Service) of the region, on Laurent Fabius’ visit to Kazakhstan
To: Monsieur Laurent Fabius, Minister of Foreign Affairs before his recent visit to Kazakhstan
We have just learned that you are planning to visit Kazakhstan on March 1, 2013, in the context of the development of relations between that country and France.
The political, economic, cultural and scientific relations with this country have intensified in recent years. This intensification that your government keeps and maintains, follows on from the actions of the previous governments under Sarkozy.
We are surprised that representatives of the French state maintain such good relations with the Kazakh state, especially with Nazarbayev, President of the Republic, who is welcomed with great pomp in the Palace of the Republic, while the people and workers of that country, the social movement and its leaders, have been facing bloody repression for several years in a highly disastrous social and economic context.
Do we have to remind you, Monsieur Minister, of the repression of the heroic strike of the oil workers in the city of Zhanaozen, which resulted, on Dec. 16, 2011, in a massacre of about a hundred people, hundreds of people injured and arrested during a peaceful demonstration?
Do we have to remind you of the regular assassination of trade unionists, the arbitrary arrests of activists of social movements and even of lawyers who defend the workers in struggle in this country?
Do we have to remind you of the semi-systematic attacks on strikers and trade unionists by the special forces of the police?
Monsieur Minister, we suppose you will shake hands with the executioners of Kazakh workers, to allow some French multinational companies such as AREVA and TOTAL to continue their business and increase their profits by overexploiting, in the most shameful and detestable way, the working class of this country.
So, instead of meeting with representatives of this criminal State for economic reasons, we ask you to meet the workers in struggle, from French, Kazakh or all other companies located there in order to exploit ’s abundant natural resources - an exploitation from which the workers never receive the fruits.
Go and meet for exaDeclaration_CGT-Pole-emploi-Lorraine_Visite-Fabius-au-Kazakhstanmple Vadim Kuramshin in jail, where he languished just for having been the advisor of the Zhanaozen strikers, and a recognized human rights activist. Go and meet Ainur Kurmanov and Esenbek Ukteshbaev, leaders of the trade union organisation ‘Zhanartu’, who are constantly harassed by the Kazkhstan authorities and constantly threatened with imprisonment and even of State murder, or Berik Zhagiparov, arrested last February in Zhezkazgan.
Monsieur Laurent Fabius, tell us, on matters of diplomacy and international relations, when is the change coming?
