“We can stop them! We do not owe anything-We will not pay your head tax!”- Massive demonstration of PAME.

The working people of Athens sent this message yesterday, the people of toil from the neighbourhoods of Athens and Piraeus, workers, women, self-employed, pensioners, unemployed and students who flooded Syntagma square in their thousands. Rallies were correspondingly organized in dozens of cities all over Greece. In a large and lively demonstration the ordinary people proclaimed their clear and immovable decision: “We do not owe anything- We will not pay!”. The demonstration was a clear message of defiance in the face of the payment orders of the tax office which are being sent in a mass way to every family from the working class and the popular strata, while a new tax raid was voted through yesterday in Parliament by the government which calls on every home-owner even of the smallest property to pay a permanent and expensive tax via the electricity bills.

If we add to these heavy taxes the new round of measures which provide for new taxes, a new dramatic reduction of salaries, a reduction of pensioners by up to 50% with the dismissal of 30,000 public sector employees with the immediate prospect of this number reaching 200,000 etc. The families from the working class and popular strata will be led to mass destitution and bankruptcy.

PAME, the class-oriented trade unions with an organized intervention in this period are collecting the payment orders from the workers and in mass way proclaim that they are not going to pay despite the massive intimidation of the government, concerning auctions and imprisonments, at the same time when big capital is being given provocative tax exemptions and is receiving new privileges.

Now the only path is the organized mass refusal to pay, PAME calls for new activity against the heavy taxes on the 28^th of September, after the massive demonstration on Wednesday 21/9, coming to a head with the strike in the public sector and former state companies on the 5^th of October and a general nationwide strike on the 19^th of October.

It should be noted that a large delegation of the CC of the KKE was present at the rally, headed by the GS of the CC of the KKE, Aleka Papariga who made the following statement to the media: “Not one step back. The large majority of the people must do what they are thinking of doing- not to pay the heavy taxes, to refuse to be backed up against the wall. We must make their lives hell. This confrontation begins exists today and for the next period.”

It should be noted that at the rally of PAME a solidarity resolution with the Palestinian people was adopted and with the demand that Palestine become a member-state of the UN, recognised with its 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.

22/9/2011