On the afternoon of July 18 an extremely serious event took place: the online newspaper from the Workers’ Cause Party, DCO (www.causaoperaria.org.br) suffered an attack carried out by hackers, this criminal action end up destroying the website structure and erasing more than 4 thousand articles, which correspond more than four months of work.
This attack deserves all the attention from the leftists because it isn’t an isolated event, but it is an expression of the intense struggle that is taking place at this moment in our country.
This is not an ordinary attack. The DCO and the official page that belongs to the Workers’ Cause Party(PCO) was attacked on several occasions in the past. Unlike, however in other times, where the aggressor’s intention was to do his own advertising, this current attack was with the clear intention of destroying the websites newspaper which didn’t happen because the militants in charge intervened and detained the criminals while they were in action.
As far as we know, this is an unprecedented attack on a left-wing website, at least nationally.
The criminal aggression meant the destruction of the work of almost 500 people who collaborated with the daily newspaper and in addition it was an attack on the rest of the party’s members, since this is one of its official organization.
The four thousand deleted articles correspond to about 100 days and eight thousand hours of dedicated and militant work in writing, photography, reviews, etc. It is also a huge financial loss, given that thousands of hours of work produced by hundreds of people for the diary, which included writing the articles and setting up the website, which recently received a new structure was all for nothing and will have to be completely restored.
Coincidence or not, the criminals invaded the newspaper at a time when it was finishing its reformulation and had the security and the backup unguarded. Even so we are working to recover what was lost.
It is important to point out that our daily newspaper is one of the most important sources of information for the left wingers both in terms of access, with almost one million monthly views and the quantity and diversity of the articles, as well its combative and revolutionary content.
We understand that this criminal act was the work of the fascist right wing or a parastatal action. This method is unmistakably something of the right wing and the repressive apparatus, enemies of freedom of expression and the revolutionary left, which in the times of dictatorship and even in some regimes considered democratic, in Brazil and in the rest of the world they use to sabotage the installations of the newspapers, when there were only printed newspapers. The parallel here can be easily done: it is a digital sabotage.
Since the 2016 coup, there has been a systematic oppression against the left-wing press and social media. The aggressive actions against the leftists have intensified, with attacks on journalists and their organizations, one example of the attacks was during the elections on the page “Women against Bolsonaro” on Facebook, which hackers turned into “Women for Bolsonaro”, an unquestionable action by the extreme right wing.
The attack comes at a time when the PCO is making the greatest effort in the fight for Bolsonaro Out. The Workers’ Cause Party(PCO) has promoted committees to fights against the regime, published hundreds of thousands of materials and called weekly protests all over the country, in a non stop campaign for the removal of the coup-plotting president, and the Workers’ Cause Journal is one of the main voices of this campaign.
The attack also coincides with the launch of the 24-hour Workers’ cause TV(COTV) signal, a demonstration of the growth and strength of our press and the left-wing press in general, which appears as a threat to right-wing politics.
It is also an act of retaliation for the political and even physical clashes that we have had with the extreme right wing: an attempt to intimidate our party, but also the whole left wing. They will not succeed.
This unprecedented act it is characterized by a frontal attack not only on democratic rights in general but particularly on workers democracy of the left, a main characteristics of fascism that is motivated by the ruling class precisely to destroy workers democracy.
The denunciation of this criminal fascist attack becomes fundamental to combat the offense of the extreme right wing in the country and internationally plus to defend both our own and other organizations linked to the workers fight. We therefore ask for solidarity from all sectors of the left; trade union organizations, social movements, parties of the left and also progressive press. We ask them to publicly demonstrate against this criminal attack of fascism which affects all workers and popular organizations.
At this time, a campaign to repudiate this criminal action by the extreme right is fundamental.
The PCO will denounce this act widely and also file a complaint with the police to try to identify the criminals. Knowing the bias of capitalist justice, we will also hire a specialized company to discover the origin of this attack, because we cannot trust the capitalist organizations that belong to the state to resolve this issue. For us, it is essential to get this issue cleared and find the political criminals.
We also ask for everyone’s collaboration so that we can fully restore the losses suffered, as well reorganize and strengthen our newspaper.
PCO www.pco.org.br
JCO weekly newspaper since 1978, 16 pages, 10.000 copies printed + also digital version https://jornalcausaoperaria.com.br
DCO daily online newspaper www.causaoperaria.org.br
COTV here our television daily programme: www.youtube.com/causaoperariatv
COTV 24-hour watch https://youtu.be/BQB_50h81I8
