A meeting of members of the Committee for Public Education (CFPE), the rank-and-file educators’ network in Australia, last night called for urgent action by educators to demand the immediate release by the fascistic Ukrainian regime of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a socialist anti-war leader.

In moving the resolution, CFPE convenor Sue Phillips warned that Syrotiuk’s life was in danger in the notorious Ukrainian prison system after being fraudulently charged with undermining the territorial integrity of Ukraine and serving the interests of Russia.

The meeting voted unanimously to support the call issued by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee for workers and students to sign the online petition, post statements and pass resolutions demanding his freedom.

The resolution, published below, notes that Bogdan Syrotiuk is a leading member of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), a Trotskyist youth organisation active in Ukraine and throughout the rest of the former Soviet Union, fighting for a unified struggle of Ukrainian and Russian workers against the reactionary war of the regimes in Kiev and Moscow

In another resolution, also published below, the meeting unanimously endorsed the statement issued last week by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) for workers everywhere to take action against the violent police-state crackdown on the university protests across the US and internationally against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

We urge all our readers to circulate these resolutions as widely as possible and bring these campaigns to the attention of your co-workers and fellow students.

Free Bogdan Syrotiuk!

The Committee for Public Education, the rank-and-file educators’ network in Australia, calls on all teachers, school and university staff and students to urgently support the global campaign to demand the release of Bogdan Syrotiuk.

A socialist opponent of the fascistic Zelensky dictatorship and the NATO-instigated Ukraine-Russia war, he was arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, on April 25 in his hometown of Pervomaisk in southern Ukraine.

Bogdan, 25, is a young leader in the fight for a unified struggle of Ukrainian and Russian workers against the reactionary war of the regimes in Kiev and Moscow. He faces trumped-up charges of undermining the territorial integrity of Ukraine and serving the interests of Russia. His life is in immediate danger in a prison system where torture and abuse are rife, even according to the US State Department.

The Ukrainian regime’s attempt to depict Syrotiuk as a supporter of the Putin regime and its invasion of Ukraine is completely bogus. He is a leading member of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), a Trotskyist youth organisation active in Ukraine and throughout the rest of the former Soviet Union. The YGBL opposes the oligarchic capitalist governments in both Ukraine and Russia.

His arrest is part of the Zelensky regime’s repression of left-wing movements, whose opposition to the US-backed proxy war is meeting a growing response among Ukrainian workers and youth. His arrest further exposes the lying claim that the US-NATO war against Russia is being waged in defence of democracy. Ukraine is a police state under martial law, in which all dissent is suppressed.

It is no accident that the same governments in the US, Europe and Australia that are collaborating in Israel’s Gaza genocide are also pouring billions of dollars of military weaponry into the war against Russia. Gaza and Ukraine are interconnected fronts in an escalation of military conflicts for global hegemony that threatens a nuclear catastrophe.

The fight for Bogdan Syrotiuk’s freedom is therefore an essential component of the struggle against imperialism, genocide and fascism. We support the call issued by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site for his immediate release.

We urge school and university staff and students to sign the online petition, post a statement on that Change.org site, bring this campaign to the attention of your co-workers and fellow students, and pass resolutions demanding freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk.

Workers must halt police crackdown on campus anti-genocide protests!

The Committee for Public Education, the rank-and-file educators’ network in Australia, supports the call issued by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) for workers everywhere to take action to force an end to the violent police-state crackdown on the university protests across the US and internationally against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Workers must come to the defence of the courageous stand taken by students and faculty members in the face of police and Zionist violence, mass arrests and expulsions, and stop the assault on the fundamental right to free speech.

As the IWA-RFC statement explains, this repression against anti-genocide and anti-war demonstrations—also witnessed in Germany, the UK, France and Ukraine—is a warning of the martial law conditions that will be imposed as these governments plunge workers and youth into wars against Iran, Russia and China.

In the words of that statement, these issues can only be resolved not on the campuses but in the factories, warehouses, railroads and docks. “The working class, the most powerful social force on earth which creates all wealth through its labor, must leverage that power to force an end to genocide and war.”

The US-led lurch toward another barbaric world war is driven by the insatiable demand for corporate profit and the struggle for resources and power between the rival capitalist nation-states. This means that the fight against war must be connected to the struggle for socialism to end the capitalist system itself.

We urge university staff to stand with the students and we urge the students to turn to education, health and dock workers and other key sections of the working class for support. Workers can and must organise independently of the trade union bureaucracies to stop weapons deliveries and arms production.

We specifically urge the development of action along the lines called for by the IWA-RFC statement: “Demonstrations, mass meetings and delegations of workers to campus protests must be organized, culminating in a nationwide and international strike to force an end to the assault on the basic right to free speech.”