YBH Youth continuing its international activities

A delegation of YBH Youth (Patriotic Unity Movement Youth) participated in the IUSY Mediterranean Committee Meeting that took place on the 22-25 March 2001 in Athens. With a membership of 135 socialist, social democrat and labor youth organizations from 100 countries, IUSY (International Union of Socialist Youth) is an international youth organization. ( www.iusy.org)

Murat Kanatli, General Secretary of YBH Youth in his statement said that the events that took place on the night of 21st March, showed the tragic situation of democracy in the northern part of Cyprus. Kanatli said that he was taken into police custody arbitrarily on that night and a simple legal procedure took more than four and a half hours showed that this was a deliberate attack. Kanatli said that such attacks will not be able to stop their struggle, that they informed the international public opinion of such arbitrary anti-democratic behavior and IUSY members were in solidarity with them.

He summarized the meeting, saying that IUSY member youth organizations from the Mediterranean region held workshops; speeches were made by IUSY General Secretary and vice presidents, PASOK General Secretary and PASOK International Relations Secretary. They also had a quick tour of the Greek Parliament. On the 24th of March, representatives of IUSY member youth organisations read their national reports. At the request of IUSY, YBH Youth gave a report on the situation in north Cyprus. In the report, YBH Youth stressed that the Cyprus problem is being used as a hostage by Turkey in the proces of EU membership negotiations and that during the recent period, tension is being increased due to this. Restrictions imposed on bi-communal activities, attacks on democratic and progressive persons were stressed and the arbitrary police custody taking place before this meeting was explained to the representatives of youth organisations. In the YBH Youth report stressed that international solidarity in the resolution of these problems was a necessity and asked IUSY to take action immediately especially for bi-communal activities.

Concept of “equality” was discussed in the next phase of the meeting as the main theme of the agenda of IUSY. Though invited as a guest YBH Youth participated without any restrictions in the discussions and workshops and expressed its opinions, contributing to the process.

It was decided that further meetings will take place in other regions and all proposals from this meeting will be taken up by the decision making bodies of IUSY in their meeting at the end of September.

On the last day of the regional meeting, activities of IUSY Mediterranean Committee was evaluated, future programmes made and draft resolutions were taken up. YBH Youth again expressed its opinions about the draft resolution on the Cyprus problem and tried to make improvements to the text.

In the panel held on Sunday, Minister of Defense and Vice President of the EP Socialist Group Akis Cohoatzapoulos and SEEYC Coordinator Agamemnon Tatsis spoke about the strategic position of the Mediterranean. Finally, Lisa Pelin, General Secretary of IUSY and Rosa Vrettou, Secretary of Foreign Relations of PASOK evaluated the meeting.

During the meeting, a special issue in English of “Yurtsever Genclik” (Patriotic Youth) containing news and decisions of the YBH Youth Conference, as well as statements about bi-communal activities and bi-communal joint declarations was given to the Minister of Defense and Vice President of the PES Akis Cohoatzapoulos, as well as to the participants of the meeting.

YBH Youth representatives had the chance to get direct information from Palestinian and Israeli representatives about the process in the Middle East, as well as hearing from the representative of Morocco about the Sahara problem. YBH Youth representatives had the chance to express their opinions to all representatives, as well as the media of Greece and had very useful bilateral contacts.

YBH Youth Representatives, also met SIP and EMEP Youth representatives in Istanbul on the 26th of March and evaluated the Athens meeting, as well as the recent developments. SIP and EMEP Youth representatives expressed their opinions about recent developments n Turkey and after these meetings, YBH Youth representatives returned to Cyprus on Monday night.