William Lehman, the Pennsylvania Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate for UAW president in last year’s election, issued the following statement defending the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka.
The Board of Governors, packed with trade union officials and leading Democratic Party operatives, refused to take up a Student Senate resolution calling for the university to divest from companies complicit in Gaza genocide.
“The cowardly thugs trade union bureaucrats who serve as the hirelings of the capitalist regime stupidly believe that they can intimidate our party with such reactionary tactics. In fact, they draw upon themselves the contempt of the working class.”
“The attack by two SLPP thugs shows the pathetic state of the ruling Wickremesinghe regime which resorts to physical violence to stop the cultivation of socialist consciousness among workers and youth.” Andrei Ritsky, Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists from the former Soviet Union.
The SEP calls upon workers, youth and students in Sri Lanka and internationally to defend our party’s democratic right to freely engage in its political activities.