On March 10, 2001, while going by bus, an eighteen year old Romany, Mario Bango, killed with five knife stabs a neonazi, Branislav Slamka, who first attacked Mario's brother Edo from behind. Mario is accused of a health harming with consequence of death, for which an unconditioned imprisonment for 5-12 years threatens to him. After this act the State and capitalist media unleashed an extremely strong, untruthful and racist campaign.
Mario and his brother were members of SZM (Socialist Youth Union), the youth organisation of KSM (Slovakian Communist Party). They left it (according to words of Edo Bango because of "its reformism") and established a marginal and small group Proletarian Communist Youth, which is not very well known; in an interview with an ORA-S member Edo Bango described it as a group, whose political background is based on sympathies towards "a radical ultra-left, from maoism, trotskyism to pro-workers anarchism." (sic!)
Supporting campaign for Mario is lead by Czech trotskyist groups SAB (Socialist Alternative - Future), SOP (Socialist Workers Organisation), SocSol (Socialist Solidarity) and KSM (Communist Youth Union). ORA-S also decided to support Mario.
Due to this PA-AKOP, the Slovakian section of IWA, criticises ORAS in its statement of June 20th. They write about a one year old article, in which Mario sided with stalinism and they describe him as "a leading authoritarian leader" in Slovakia, who does not deserve a support of anti-authoritarian communists. They describe ORA-S, because of our support for Mario, as questionable anarchists with pro-racist position.
When we learned about Mario Bango's case, we tried to see all aspects of this case. We were also aware that neither Mario nor his brother are libertarian socialists.
However, we were also very well aware, that a revolutionary anarchist movement in Slovakia (regretably as well as in the Czech Republic) has unfortunately been and still is too weak and within working class absolutely unimpressive, so we can not consider it, like some sectarian judges, to be a "aggravating factor", that young Romany workers, who wanted to fight against capitalism, did not become anarchists and instead joined an authoritarian group, which has not got anything in common with a struggle for liberation of our class. (Edo Bango told to an ORA-S member, that when he and his brother became interested in "class politics", they thought that anarchism is punk movement, which is not interested in workers.)
In an atmosphere of a crude racist campaign, which almost no-one challenged (similarly as PA-AKOP), we did not want to remain silent. The State and capitalist media were untruthfuly describing Romany brothers as thieves, who were stealing on the bus, while the neonazi was on the contrary described as "a perfect citizen and student". While one of Slovakian MPs sparkpluged a minute of silence for the killed nazi, media were full of anti-Romany attacks, a judge described both brothers as "gipsy motherfuckers" and under a threat of intimidation the Bango family had to move from Bratislava. In this situation PA-AKOP decided to stand cynically aside and gleefully and contentedly smile to the fact, that "one fascist is dead and the second is behind prison bars". Faced with chronic efforts of capital to use racism as a thing, which can very effectively divide working class, we consider it to be a short-sighted and dangerous position, which does not do any good to encouraging class consciousness of the oppressed. We know very well how devastating effects the injections of racism measured out by the rulling class have for proletarian consciousness and unity.
To emphasize our distance from trotskyist groups we did not join Mario Bango Defence Committee, which was formed by SAB, SOP, SocSol and KSM and we decided to lead our own campaign outside of them.
ORAS, contrary to trotskyists of various shades, seeks to create libertarian communism, stateless and classless society and ideas, which we stand for, are opposed to conceptions of statist "socialists", which lead towards state capitalism.
Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists - Solidarita (ORA-S),
Czech Republic
oras_intsec@another.com