As daily demonstrations in Belarus continue and calls for the resignation of President Alexander Lukashenko grow, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told Newsmax on Thursday he supports the protesters now under siege.
"We still oppose communism, like we always did," said Trumka, who spoke to us at a virtual breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "We think what's going on there isn't fair."
The 4-week-old protests in the capital city of Minsk were recently joined by a wave of strikes and protests calling on Lukashenko to step down after claiming he was re-elected with 80% of the vote.
Nikolai Zimin, leader of the Chemical Workers Union, was released from detention and thus able to receive urgent medical care that he was denied while imprisoned.
Two other union leaders, Maxim Sereda and Vasili Petrkin, were also released recently but, according to the International Trade Union Confederation, "many of those [union members] held have yet to be set free."
"We're working with our brothers and sisters there to bring freedom and free democratic unions to every country, including Belarus," Trumka told us.
The AFL-CIO has a long history of opposition to dictatorship. Its first president, George Meany, was an outspoken anti-communist, and his successor Lane Kirkland was a vigorous opponent of the Reagan administration's support of the contras trying to overthrow the regime of Marxist strongman Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.