A report on the January 8 rally in Paris in support of Timothée Esprit

We hereby publish an unofficial report we received via E-Mail:

Dear friends, dear comrades,

There were a whole lot of supporters and organizations (more than 200 people) who responded once again to the gathering called for this evening, Wednesday January 8, 2025 in Paris, by the Unitary Campaign, the LJR, the JR, the FSE, the CGT Énergie Paris and the CGT Culture in support of Timothée Esprit, to all those repressed from supporting Palestine and to reaffirm once again our determination to see Georges Abdallah released on February 20 next.

They are part of our struggles! We are part of their struggles!

Support for Palestine is not a crime! It’s a right!

Reinstate Timothée Esprit! Free Georges Abdallah!

Below the CUpLGIA statement read at the beginning of the assembly:

Resistance is a right!

Let’s support Timothée Esprit, all those repressed for supporting Palestine and demand the release of Georges Abdallah!

“I have been active in the company for fourteen years. Today (May 21, 2024) I was summoned. I just learned the reason this morning: they want to fire me for my commitment to Palestine. This pattern is new. We have had comrades from the CGT and political activists who have been summoned for advocating terrorism, but what is new here is that I am threatened with dismissal. […] This is a new milestone reached, at the national level, on union repression and political repression.” This is what Timothée Esprit declared during the first rally organized in Lacq to support him and denounce the repression that had just fallen on him.

Timothée Esprit is a worker and union activist, CGT delegate of the Toray Carbon Fibers chemical factory – the world’s leading manufacturer of carbon fibers – located near Pau in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques; he is also federal secretary of the National Federation of Chemical Industries of the CGT (FNIC-CGT), one of the most combative federations of this union.

Timothée therefore learned of his dismissal last spring on the grounds of his support for Palestine since he was accused of having published a photo of Palestinian PFLP resistance combatants on his personal Facebook account. Therefore, on June 14, he took action before the industrial tribunal to challenge his unfair dismissal. This court dismissed the jurisdiction of the summary judge on June 28 and therefore refused the legitimate requests of our comrade. A new trial was held today, this time before the Pau Court of Appeal, during which the summary proceedings against this arbitrary dismissal were re-examined and on this very important day, it was essential for us to call for a day of national action in solidarity with the supporters of Palestine, of which Timothée Esprit is a member, confronted with union and political repression, the arbitrariness and violence of which continue to become more widespread and harsher. Our solidarity and our total support for these comrades in struggle, we express it here, this evening, in Paris, but it is also expressed elsewhere in France with rallies organized today, sometimes jointly, in Pau, Lyon, Grenoble, Limoges, Lille and Montpellier.

“Toray has hellish working conditions and incredible union repression. I am the fourth member of the CGT dismissed since 2022. And there have been warnings, layoffs and summonses of employees for illegal strike … I was summoned to the gendarmerie, I suffered disciplinary sanctions for complaints about working conditions; we have just had the dismissal of three CGT activists barely a year ago. We are in a direction that is firing on all cylinders against anyone who even dares to raise his head.”

“A management that is firing on all cylinders against anyone who even dares to raise their head” – what Timothée Esprit states here on the local level of his factory resonates just as much, in this class war, at the national level for a State ready to repress any voice that is raised for another possible world than at the international level in this war of oppressed peoples against imperialism, when the latter rise up for their emancipation and their liberation from the yoke of oppression and colonization. Raise your head, confront, combat and resist for just and legitimate rights, for this just and legitimate right to revolt because resistance is a right, this is what the workers in struggle and their worthy union representatives do every day, but also more broadly the working classes and oppressed peoples and it is no coincidence that this ferocious repression falls on them: it is indeed the sign of this resistance which rises against the common enemy.

In this class war and against imperialism with clearly defined contours, a people is at the forefront of the combat with all its solidarity supporters at its side: this people is the Palestinian people who for more than a century have resisted and coped despite all the barbarity of the occupier. And even today when this heroic people is facing one of the worst moments in its long history of struggle against the genocidal settlers, the Palestinian people are still there! Despite the oppression, the terror, the atrocities of all kinds, despite this crime against humanity committed not only after October 7, but for more than a century of occupation, Palestine is still there and it opposes, through its indomitable lions and its combatant vanguard, a scathing historical denial to all these reactionary Zionist war criminals who since 1948 have announced the near end of the Palestinian revolution under pretext that “the causes also age over time and in turn end up dying and disappearing”. Palestine is still there as alive as it is resistant because the entire history of national liberation struggles and the ongoing genocide has also clearly demonstrated: the Palestinian people have no other escape than to struggle, to combat and to free themselves from the yoke of the settlers in order to continue to exist.

So yes, let’s say it again here: glory to the combatants who use their weapons to drive out the settlers! And from the sea to the Jordan, long live the struggle of the Fedayins! And also unconditional support to all those who, day after day, use the weapon of solidarity in support of the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance and who for and because of this must face on the front lines all the blows of repression.

So let’s chant our support for Timothée Esprit loud and clear this evening! Our support for Abdourahmane Ridouane, president of the Pessac Mosque who will appear in court on January 13, on the official charge of advocating terrorism which, we know well, corresponds in reality to his unfailing determination to denounce the genocide in course and support the Palestinian resistance. Let us chant this evening our unconditional support for all those repressed in support of the just and legitimate Palestinian cause and for one of its historic fighters who is our comrade Georges Abdallah: because Georges Abdallah is our comrade, because he is our struggle and that we are part of his struggle; because like him, we are resolutely internationalists and fundamentally anti-imperialists; because, like him, we know that capitalism is nothing but barbarism and so we cry: “honor to all those who oppose it”; because, like him, we want the end of colonialism throughout the world and a free and victorious Palestine and Kanaky. Because we are right to rebel! Because, like him, we think that “Certainly there is room for other futures!” and that not only is another world possible but above all necessary.

May Timothée Esprit be reinstated!

Let all charges against repressed pro-Palestinian activists and trade unionists be dropped!

On February 20, may Georges Abdallah be released!

And until then, let’s continue the struggle to snatch from the jails of the French state this torch of resistance that is Georges Abdallah (January 25, new national day of actions – from February 27 to March 2 “flood your city” – February 8, new national demonstration in Paris – February 19 coordinated rallies throughout France in front of places of representation of the French State) for victory or victory!

Paris, January 8, 2025

Unitary campaign for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

Campagne.unitaire.gabdallah@gmail.com

Facebook: pour la libération de Georges Abdallah

Instagram : cuplgia – Tweeter : CupLGIA

Additionally to the mentioned actions in France, there we supportive actions reported from the Netherlands and Germany.

In the Dutch city of Zeist, in its working-class and student districts, slogans were painted for the freedom of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, in support of Timothée Esprit and for the freedom of Palestine.

Source: Communistisch Comité van Nederland

In Germany, too, activists from the Red League have taken up the call of their French class brothers and carried out actions. Several locations from Toray in Germany, the headquarters of “Toray International Europe GmbH (TIEU)”, the headquarters of “Toray Resins Europe GmbH (TREU)” and a close bus station, became target of Dazibaos and banners hung up with the slogans: “Toray, exploiters! Solidarity with Timothée Esprit!”.