THE Communist Party of Britain has condemned the brutal terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut and warned against the danger of an upsurge in racism and state repression that might result.

The party’s executive committee agreed at the weekend to send a message to the French Communist Party expressing condolence and solidarity with all those who lost loved ones in Friday night’s atrocities.

At the same time, Britain’s communists warned that the killers in France and Lebanon were the “direct descendants” of the terrorist groups supported, armed, funded and trained by the US, Britain and allied Middle Eastern dictatorships in Afghanistan in the 1970s and early ’80s.

“It has been the strategic objective of the Western imperialist powers to maintain or re-establish their political and economic domination of the ‘Greater Middle East’ region, using wars, coups and chaos to remove the obstacles in their way,” CP chair Liz Payne told the meeting.

The results could now be seen in the mass migrations of refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, as well as the further rise of fascist and far-right movements in the Scandinavian countries, France, Germany, Poland and Turkey.

She insisted that the struggle for democratic freedoms was indivisible, whether in France, Britain, Saudi Arabia or Iran, just as the fight against sectarian and state terrorism should be supported whether in France, Lebanon, Palestine or Yemen.

“In particular, the Nato powers and their Middle Eastern allies should stop arming and funding terrorist groups in Syria and start supporting the Damascus regime in its desperate battle against Isis and other sectarian forces,” Ms Payne said.

Instead, she reiterated the view of the Communist Party and its sister parties in the Middle East that political and humanitarian solutions are urgently required there, not more outside military intervention to promote Western imperialist interests.

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