“Below economic oligarchs”, proposed against discrimination of women and communities at work

Working in Kosovo today, although in inhumane conditions, is racial privilege, since in our country being a woman, a person LGBTI+, of any other race or of special needs, you are not even inappropriate to be considered a worker.

So said in the protest under a call from “Liri, Equality, Solidarity”, organised by the International Workers' Anti-capitalist Treaty for Thinking and Religious Action, on the occasion of May 1st International Workers' Day.

“Below economic oligarchs”, paid subx2> Women's work holds the state”, “Puna in Kosovo seriously damages health”, were some of the banners that were holding protesters in their hands. The protest began from the “Zahir Pajaziti” Square to continue with the Ministry of Labour and Social Management, as far as the Government of Kosovo.

One of the members of the Council for Thoughts and Religious Action has said protest is a political position because workers are the ones who keep Kosovo alive.

It has indicated that two decades of workers are burdened by corporate oppression and institutional annihilation.

From female workers doing all the social reproduction jobs that have been unjustly left in their unpaid hands, to the work done in factories, mines, margins, shopping malls, call cents and schools, all of our economic-political structures are maintained. However, the goods produced by them/they are abundantly enjoyed by only 1 percent of society, capitalists who grew up more every day to strip them of their work... This capitalist system governed by a neoliberal mindiness, which shatters man, is ever degrading their labor. In addition to the constant robbery of work, this system is always alone and more workers, leaving it without hope in the misery caused by the system itself. ...Being a woman, the person LGBI+, of some other race, with special needs, you're inappropriate even to be considered a worker, that's because this system we find in is the patriarchal-capital system, is the system of violence, of division, of disciplining the majority in favor of the minority. This system cannot be serviced with any neoliberal intervention, dominated post-war policies in Kosovo, which only aim to buy the silence of workers at all”, she said.

Another protester of this organisation has said that the economic and political system in Kosovo is racist and discriminated against. He added that class and racial oppression, are products of a capitalist system, and that many workers are being harassed and killed at work.

Working in Kosovo today, though in subhuman conditions, is racial privilege. We are in a neo-liberal economy which is deeply unjust organised to communities of specific identity. To be Roma, Egyptian or Ashkali in Kosovo, with automatism you are deprived of the right to work, or even when employed, you are accommodated in more deignive and worse paid jobs. This because this economic and political system in which we live is deeply racist, discriminated against and humiliated. Capitalism, which we are reporting today, leaves most of us poor, exhausted, stolen, broken, and lonely. Today's worker works long hours, systematically oppressed, harassed and then killed at work”, the protester said.

The protest was joined by 15-year-old Esra Syla, who, although not born in Kosovo, accused the former head of institutions of degrading Kosovo's state.

She has expressed that even though her age is not yet to protest, such protests have had to take place much earlier.

The “assessments all of you here today, and I also assess the unspoiled work of the workers, but this protest is needed to organise a long time ago. We should not judge our prime minister, Albin Kurti for not his job, why, because the blame lies with those who have been ahead of the state as Hashim Thaci and Isa Mustafa, the blame is on them and not on us, they established the state to this point, they exhausted the state”, she said.

Protesters added they would continue to protest until the design of a political and economic organisation, where workers are free of any form of oppression. /kp/