Central Executive Committee, YCL-LJC
Nov, 2016
November 17th marks International Students’ Day and it is commemorated around the world by honouring the militant history of the student movement and reinforcing our struggle in the present.
November the 17th has been designated International Students’ Day since the 1939 execution of 9 Czech students at the University of Prague, and the sending of 1200 anti-fascist students to concentration camps by the Nazi occupiers of Czechoslovakia.
International Students’ Day also coincides with the 1973 Athens Polytechnic student uprising, which saw students heroically stand against the military junta in Greece. This history is now commemorated at all schools in that country.
We remember these and many other stories of the international student movement and honour the legacy of the comrades that have fallen in these struggles, but the student movement continues to fight for peace, democracy and social transformation today.
In Canada and in other capitalist countries around the world, students are facing skyrocketing tuition fees, mounting debt, the privatization of education, attacks on campus workers, the elimination of programs and classes, and the corporatization of research. More and more students now graduate without a future: either unemployment, or work in precarious, part-time, low-paid, non-unionized jobs. Students in Canada are fighting for free, accessible, quality and emancipatory education. Only two weeks ago we saw thousands of students mobilize in almost forty cities across Canada and Quebec demanding the abolishment of tuition fees.
International Student Day also allows the student movement in Canada to learn from international mobilizations. Whether it is in Mumbai, where for nearly a year the students of Jawaharla Nehru University have been at the forefront of mobilizations against the ultra-right nationalist government of Modi, South Africa where the Fees Must Fall movement has been struggling to abolish tuition fees, or in Chile where students continue to fight and make gains towards free public education against an education system brought in by the fascist Pinochet dictatorship.
When we speak about the global student movement we must also speak about the important role students must play as a dynamic force against imperialist war. The present situation where the danger of a world war or of globalized conflict is becoming more and more likely, students must unite internationally to impose peace and refuse pro-war policies of various governments. This includes the need to strengthen the peace movement in Canada where the Trudeau government has sent troops to Iraq, Eastern Europe and is now promising to send troops to Africa.
On this day, we as the YCL-LJC salute our sister organizations in the World Federation of Democratic Youth. The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) is an international anti-imperialist federation of youth organization, with member organizations in over 100 countries. As we begin preparations for the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students next year, we can put forward this important event’s slogan for International Student Day: “for peace, solidarity and social justice, we struggle against imperialism – honouring our past, we build the future”!