Yürüyüş No. 76, July 22, 2018
PEOPLE’S JUSTICE AGAINST SYSTEM LAW
IN PROPORTION TO OUR PAIN, WE WILL BE JUST, IN OPPOSITION TO THE UNJUST SYSTEM!
WHILE THIS SYSTEM DOES NOT CHANGE, WE WILL CONTINUE TO BE SLAUGHTERED IN SOMA, SUR, GAZI AND SIVAS!
THE MOST VALIANT SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE PEOPLE WILL CONSIDER TO RECEIVE THE HEAVIEST PUNISHMENTS AND BE IMPRISONED!
WHILE THE SYSTEM DOES NOT CHANGE, THE PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE WITHOUT JUSTICE!
We are fighting with a drawn sword against the strength of imperialism, which appears to be that of a giant, with the tanks, shells and armoured vehicles of fascism. We are fighting with a drawn sword for justice.
There are two basic demands of the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world and the exploited and oppressed poor people of Anatolia: BREAD and JUSTICE.
We are fighting for bread and justice.
Just as no people can live without bread, it cannot live without justice.
For this reason, as people’s fighters, we fight against those who take our bread from us and deprive us of justice.
This land is in the grip of injustice. “The scales of justice” are always weighed in favour of the rich.
Those who claim that its “eyes are blindfolded” and that it is impartial will learn from bitter experience. All the courts of the system, its prosecutors and judges, appeal courts, supreme courts, render judgments in favour of the interests of the exploiters.
We are fighting with a drawn sword for justice.
A drawn sword means “a sword drawn in anger”. We have drawn our sword in anger. Because it is time to fight. Because this is no time to give up weapons and bury them in concrete.
When on the battlefield we do not wave our sword to left and right, our eyes are not blindfolded. We see who is friend and who is enemy.
We know who dispenses justice and who destroys it.
We fight with a draw sword while knowing and seeing our aims, distinguishing what is right and what is not right and who is friend and who is enemy. We know the system is the enemy and the system is an enemy to us. This is also the reality.
“The independent courts” reach their verdicts in line with this.
“The Independent Courts” And Two Forms Of Justice And Three Forms Of Punishment
In Manisa’s Soma district on May 13, 2014, there was a massacre of 301 miners, and verdicts have been reached about 51 suspects in the case, of whom five are in jail. According to the verdicts delivered last week, Can Gurkan, the chairman of the Soma coal processing board, was sentenced to 15 years for “sudden and negligent manslaughter”. No punishment was given to the firm’s senior bosses.
The system judge sees the murder of 301 miners as “negligent”. They pretend not to notice that the working conditions in the Soma mine were a deliberate part of the conditions paving the way for the massacre, that in legal language this was “premeditated”. Because… We will come to the reason later.
WE ARE IN ANOTHER COURT PROCEEDING. The suspect is the mafia boss Sedat Peker who says he will take a shower in the people’s blood. The mafioso Sedat Peker, who supports the AKP government and directly Tayyip Erdogan, threatened democratic academicians, saying “we will make your blood flow in the gutters and we will take a shower in it”. On the anniversary of the July 15 putsch he said:
“After we have caught and hanged those outside of the prisons, we will then go into the prisons. We will hang them in the prisons too.”
The court acquitted Sedat Peker after charges were brought for uttering those words. The court said, “It is the debt and duty for every Turkish citizen to be against terror organisations and on the side of the state.” With threats, intimidation and violence being this blatant, the mafioso was acquitted and told he had “done good”. Why? We will come to that.
HERE IS ANOTHER COURTROOM. The 21-year-old university student Alisan Taburoglu was sentenced to 21 years in prison by the 14th Serious Crimes Court for taking part in actions for free education.
Alisan’s crime was much more serious than killing 301 miners or being a mafioso who said he would drown the people in blood. This is what the verdicts said. Why?
The Justice Of The System Has Two Measurements For Crime And Punishment; The Measurement Is Class
What does justice mean? “Harmony with justice and law, observing what is right, correctness… The presence of what is right for everyone…”
This cannot be given by the laws of the system.
Laws are practised according to people, the times, strength and class position. In the laws it is a crime to kill people. But an armed unit of the state may kill someone in the middle of the street.
It is a crime to torture. But when the state does it, this is not counted as a crime. It is a crime to tear down someone’s house if they do not wish it. But the state tears down homes illegally. This is not a crime.
In the justice of the system, whether it is a crime or not to “kill someone” depends on who is killed. It is a “crime” for a revolutionary to kill a torturer.
When a torturer kills a revolutionary he is “doing his or her duty”.
Now, at this point, what is an “independent judiciary”? Let us make a short summary:
According to the fascist state’s “independent judiciary”, exploiters, bosses, merchants, in short all the rich, imperialist bosses, Mafiosi, torturer-murderer police, are people THE LAW NEEDS TO PROTECT. Revolutionaries and patriots are forces THAT MUST BE DESTROYED. The courts must hand down verdicts in line with this. Every section of progressives, democrats or opposition which come out against the system in one form or another MUST BE RENDERED INEFFECTIVE. Judges use the sword of the state according to this.
The state’s judiciary works in this way. Everything said other than this is lies and distortions.
This System Has Collapsed Under Its Injustice
While on the one hand the system talks of an “independent judiciary”, “everyone is equal under the law”, the real character of its justice is concealed. But on the other hand, in the courtrooms its true class character cannot be hidden.
“Justice is the basis of property is written in the courtrooms. Which “property” is its basis?
The old meaning of property was “the entirety of lands in the sovereignty of the state”. So the old meaning in short merely signified “the country”.
This meaning is correct: justice is the basis of a country.
If there is no justice, that country collapses.
And it has already collapsed.
It has collapsed with exploitation, tyranny and plunder. Torturers, killers, those who kill people by burning them alive, are rewarded and promoted and this is an indication of collapse. Tens of thousands of our people are buried in mines, killed in “work accidents” in factories and on building sites, and this is an indication of collapse. Millions of people bog down in drugs and prostitution and this is an indication of collapse. Seventeen “families” have all the wealth of the country, while out of 80 million, two in three are condemned to poverty.
At this point, the courts in a collapsed country, in a collapsed political system, have merely the duty of protecting the system.
And this is why in neo-colonial Turkey the slogan in the courtrooms mentioning property does not refer the “country” but to private property. That was what the Soma verdict said: the owner of property is guiltless!
We Do Not Say There Is No Legal System! We Do Not Say There Are No Laws! We Say There Is No Justice.
For a verdict to be legal, for it to conform to existing laws, does not mean it is just. Every system has a legal system. Fascism also has a legal system. Imperialism also has a legal system. The issue is its character.
Whether or not there is justice of the people depends on one of these conditions – it is not enough to punish whoever pulled the trigger. Whoever put them up to it must be punished. There is a political responsibility for every crime. There are social and political conditions underlying every crime.
One of the conditions determining whether or not there is people’s justice is the participation of the people. Judgment without the people is not judgment. And no such verdict in which the people have not participated can be just.
People’s justice takes in hand crime and punishment, and the economic, political and social conditions that created it. The verdict in people’s justice is given with the participation of the people.
To continue its democracy game, the system cannot escape from giving obvious punishments for obvious crimes in order to legitimise itself to its own masses. But this is secondary in the aims of the system’s judiciary. What is essential is this: those who defend the rights and freedoms of the people, those who sing the folk songs of the people, ARE IMPRISONED AND GIVEN HEAVY SENTENCES, with prosecutors wanting decades of prison time for them. While those who plunder from and massacre the people, cause workplace accidents, commit rapes and other perfectly blatant crimes ARE ALLOWED TO STAY OUT OF JAIL WHILE ON BAIL and ACQUITTED.
“When will we see a day when justice is not on the side of the rich but on the side of the poor?”
The Answer To This Question From A Soma Mother Is People’s Justice
Gulsum Colak, one of the mothers of someone killed in the Soma mine, asked: “We lost our children four years ago and want justice. When will we see a day when justice is not on the side of the rich but on the side of the poor?” (The press, July 14, 2018)
Gulsum Colak asks a perfectly correct question.
She does not ask why Can Gurkan, the owner of the Soma mine where the massacre happened, got 15 years instead of life imprisonment.
Because Colak sees that it does not make a difference whether he got 15 or 25 years. She asks a question and at the same assesses the class character of justice.
The answer to the question is not in bourgeois law but in giving a sword to people’s justice.
History says: when government is in the hands of the people, justice will be on the side of the poor.
But when the courts are people’s courts, justice will be on the side of the poor.
People’s justice is not about some “punishment” expressed in numbers.
Does the punishment prevent other Somas? Does it remove others like Can Gurkan?
THIS SYSTEM MUST CHANGE in order that there are no more Somas.
The struggle for People’s Justice is therefore a struggle to change the economic, social and political system.
Poverty And Injustice Are The Two Basic Reasons For The Struggle
Poverty and injustice are the inevitable results of neo-colonialism. No neo-colonial country can remove poverty and injustice. Because this is how neo-colonialism continues. And as it will not destroy poverty and injustice, it also cannot destroy the struggle. POVERTY AND INJUSTICE ARE THE TWO Basic REASONS FOR THE PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE.
People’s justice asks, whenever there is a “workplace accident”, a massacre, billions in poverty, hundreds of millions hungry, the REASON for all these things.
Why are billions hungry or on the verge of it when the face of the earth has enough to feed all? Why are a section of our people hungry and impoverished when our country produces enough to feed its 80 million people?
Why in this beautiful country do thousands die in workplace accidents? Why don’t bosses take safety precautions?
Why don’t governments maintain controls over these bosses?
Why do courts not punish these bosses?
Why, why, why?
People’s justice both asks such questions and answers them.
Private Property Is The Source Of The Crime
While private property and exploitation continue, massacres of the people, torture, workplace murders… will continue. Private property is the root of all evil. While there is private property, while the aim of the productive process is not the needs of the people but profit, thousands of Can Gurkans will emerge and in the mines and construction sites impoverished workers will continue to die.
There is a direct historical connection between private property and injustice. Injustice emerged when private property, that is, class society, did. There is certainly no justice and cannot be in a system that stays on its feet because one class exploits another.
Equality, freedom and justice have been the dream of the people for thousands of years. Many social movements, popular uprisings have emerged under the banner of bread and justice.
But:
- While the means of production are private property,
- While there are exploiters and exploited,
- While there are oppressors and oppressed, it is impossible to turn the dream into reality.
Only in conditions in which the means of production are collective property and it is impossible for human beings to exploit other human beings will HUMANS be equal in the true sense, not just formally and not on paper. And then real justice is possible.
The Struggle For People’s Justice Is The Struggle To Change The System
People’s justice means that crimes against the people, socially and politically, cannot be repeated.
This means not just sporadic incidents but a struggle for justice as a whole.
In the capitalist system the worker is humiliated, he or she never receives the due for labour performed, while in the socialist system labour is of the highest value. The value of the labourer and labour is known and the meaning of this is the guarantee of justice.
The rich have formed the laws to protect their own private property; whereas laws written for the poor protect their own rights.
The Soma Trial was certainly very striking and very characteristic. There have been thousands of trials opened over crimes against the people, there have been trials in relation to thousands of miners being killed at Yeni Celtek, Soma, Ermenek and so on; on the one side the holdings, on the other the workers killed, and their families, as a result of the lack of precautions in the places of production and the mines of these firms and their families.
On which side will the scales of justice fall?
How will the sword of justice shape rights? How will the scales determine what is right and what is wrong – on the side of the rich or the poor?
In this system the answer has been given thousands of times at thousands of trials; the scales of justice are in the hands of a tiny minority which controls the means of production.
But we, as workers murdered in the mines, as the patriots and revolutionaries of this country, as the exploited and oppressed poor people, must turn these scales to make our own laws and make use of our own legitimate rights. And this is PEOPLE’S JUSTICE.
The police, army and judges, that is, the organised state, protects the justice of the rich and the rulers; the fighters for people’s justice protect the rights of the people. The fighters for people’s justice have no place in the judiciary and laws of the system; for their aim is to tear down the existing legal system and laws.
The fighters for people’s justice act within the legitimacy of the people, carry out the laws of the people, issue the verdicts of the people and put them into practice.
People’s Justice Finds Its Entire Fulfilment In People’s Government
The concept of People’s Justice entered the language of the left and the people with actions by Devrimci Sol against enemies of the people. When people’s justice is spoken of, what comes to mind is fighters for justice demanding a reckoning from enemies of the people. In other words, the concept of people’s justice is identified with actions in which generals who oppress the people, monopoly bourgeois who exploit the people, torturer police and MIT chiefs who torture the people and revolutionaries and carry out massacres are punished.
The concept of people’s justice from that day to this is the name of a longing of the people and a concept that chills the heart and is a source of fear for enemies of the people.
This is the meaning of people’s justice. The demand and longing for people’s justice is one that absolutely cannot be postponed until after the revolution. It is natural and necessary to start to give it expression today in various forms. It is legitimate to demand a reckoning from enemies of the people. The account not demanded in the laws of the system, the justice not practised in the system’s judiciary is demanded and practised by the people’s fighters.
But people’s justice is not limited to punishment actions. This is just one part and one form of people’s justice. People’s justice is a concept that in every area eliminates private property, aims to scatter the bourgeoisie and the torturers and killers who act at the instance of the bourgeoisie and are nourished by it, and whose final aim is to change the system.
Why must this be done so comprehensively? Because while the government has not been changed, while the laws have not been made by the people, in reality we cannot speak of total justice.
The system of exploitation was founded on injustice, in all aspects, economically, socially and politically. For this reason the greatest displeasure of the people is injustice. To fight for JUSTICE, to organise the people, to lay claim to revolution is to defend socialism.
Being A Lawyer Of The People Is To Have The Will And The Courage To Defend People’s Justice In Courtrooms And Torture Centres, Morgues, Everywhere!
We cannot postpone the struggle for complete justice to the future by saying true justice will occur under socialism. The area of law is an important arena in the struggle between the classes. In the area of the judiciary, indeed in every area, war can be continued.
The judiciary of the system and its judges had turned the “defence” into just another part of the system’s injustice. But since the second half of the 1980s, this judicial system has been undermined. Since then a type of lawyer has arisen who does not conform to the status quo.
This kind of lawyer does not restrict him or herself to trying to get a lesser punishment for the client, but fights in the same rank as the client, struggles according to the same ideology may shout the same slogans as the client in the courtroom, and is not simply a lawyer but a defender in every way.
Being a lawyer of the people is to be a representative of people’s justice in the courtrooms and resistance areas.
Being a lawyer for the people has become a war for justice in the torture centres.
Fascism’s game of the “independent judiciary” has been undermined.
Being a lawyer of the people has become the struggle to turn private property into social property.
They defend their clients’ rights with the awareness of socialist legitimacy. They make no concessions when making a defence. They do not refrain from explaining its rightfulness and correctness. For this reason they have been expelled from courtrooms. When their clients boycott hearings so do they, and when death sentences were passed they would hurl their legal robes at the judge and prosecutor (as a form of protest).
For this reason they have become identified with people’s justice.
Fascism Is A Form Of Rule By Private Property
In colonial countries like ours, in which owners of private property are not able to rule the people with bourgeois democracy, they cannot continue exploitation with bourgeois democracy. This is why they resort to fascism. Fascism essentially rules through repression and terror and democratic rights are secondary and there purely for show.
This form of government uses the mechanisms of justice to suppress demands for justice. The justice of the bourgeoisie tries to destroy the threat that the people constitute. To neutralise this it tries to divide the people and destroy solidarity. This is why we must counterpose people’s justice to bourgeois “justice” and people’s solidarity to exploitation.
There is no independent judiciary in system justice; the judge is of service to the most powerful class. The “laws” are those of the bourgeoisie which controls the system. Their control is in the hands of the bourgeois government. There is no “separation of powers” in the system bureaucracy. To strengthen the deception that the state and judiciary are “impartial” and “independent”, those who run the exploitation put forward the idea of “separation of powers”. According to their thesis, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is run by three forces, legislative, executive and judicial, and these forces are independent of one another and control one another.
The separation of powers of the bourgeoisie is actually a valid mechanism for the bourgeoisie’s own internal balance. But as the exploitation of the people and the repression have reached such a point that there is no separation between these powers, the three cooperate closely and are in fact a complete bloc.
We Will Be Just In Proportion To Our Pain!
Up to the present we have paid a great price. After this we will pay a grater one. With our blood and lives we will win power and we will never give it up to the bourgeoisie. People’s power is a democracy for the people, a dictatorship for the bourgeoisie.
We do not come out with statements like “we are against dictatorship” in an attempt to ingratiate ourselves with the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie, and nor will we do so. We are on the side of proletarian dictatorship.
The dictatorship of the proletariat practises democracy for the people, dictatorship for the enemies of the people. Justice is founded on that.
Justice will be established by destroying injustice. The fighters for people’s justice nurture and will nurture the veins of justice.
People’s justice will practise dictatorship towards whom? The answer to this question, and why, appears in what we have said.
The murderers bring us to questions of WHY. The exploiters and those who set the murderers in motion are another reason for WHY. The question of why is brought to us by the tortures, massacres, rapes, prison massacres, isolation tyranny, as to why and how these are practised.
Later DEMANDING A RECKONING comes on the agenda.
There is just a handful of exploiters who set others in motion.
Around them, there is a circle of enemies of the people there to protect the system of exploitation.
256,000 police, 233,000 private security, a 650,000-strong army, courts and something like 400 prisons to protect the system. People’s justice will demand a reckoning from them.
A handful of exploiters and those who protect them, a minority under every circumstance. The people are millions. Today 80 million. We even make the Palaces of Justice and the prisons. We even do all the work for the exploiters and enemies of the people. It is the people who paint and plaster the prisons and who clean the homes of prosecutors and judges. The people are millions… We make the bread, we stitch the clothing, we cut the hair, we cook the food… Whatever the technical superiority, WE ARE THE PEOPLE AND THE ORGANISED FORCE OF THE PEOPLE TOGETHER WITH REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE CANNOT BE DEFEATED!
Justice is something everyone deserves.
It is PEOPLE’S JUSTICE that will give everyone what they deserve.
People’s government will give the people freedom, democracy, equality, prosperity and security. The enemies of the people will be punished! Not more or less than they deserve. What awaits them is their account to be rendered to the people.