Category: campaigns

The International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation stands in solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil in their battle against the Brazilian Congress’ push to limit the demarcation of indigenous lands and protection of Indigenous Peoples. 

Protests have erupted in Sao Paulo, Brazil amidst the congress’ approving PL 490, a bill seeking to limit the recognition of ancestral lands. If passed into law, this would curtail the right of Indigenous Peoples to take control of their lands, including environmental protection and demarcation of Indigenous lands. With a vote of 283 versus 155, in favor of passing the bill, Indigenous Peoples responded with strong opposition and took the streets to express their dismay. 

President Lula has promised the recognition of Indigenous lands, but is now faced with a largely conservative and right-wing Congress, many of them lobbyists of big agribusiness industries, and pushing for an anti-environment agenda, climate change denialism. 

IPMSDL stands that what the Brazilian congress is doing is a step backwards for the recognition of Indigenous rights, as well as for resolving the environmental crisis we are facing. If the government passes PL 490 into law, it would lead to the unprecedented exploitation and destruction of ancestral lands– all towards favoring the interests of large agribusiness, mining and logging industries, contractors, and corrupt bureaucrats.

At the moment, mining in Indigenous territories is illegal in Brazil, with the passing of PL 490, the possibilities are slowly being opened up for big businesses to profit off ancestral lands. Just last year, US-company Oxycer has expressed interest in mining for gold in Piripkura territory, as of last year the company has already filed five applications to prospect for gold in the area. Also last year, Oxycer made 14 requests to mine on Mura Indigenous land. Tensions have also risen in Mura territory, as another mining company, Potassio de Brasil– a Canadian owned company, seeks to build a potash mine in their land. It goes without saying that Brazilian lawmakers are in fact lackeys of Western-owned businesses that want nothing more but to eat up resources of the world even if it means sacrificing the lives of Indigenous peoples. 

The situation in Brazil just goes to show that despite a progressive President and Indigenous leaders at the government, the relevance of a militant mass movement is necessary towards pushing for our right to self-determination, especially in the face of continuing oppression and when the forces of greed still roam free.

The International IPMSDL is with the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil in every step of the way in their fight to oppose this evil, racist, and outright destructive bill. We believe that such a bill has no place in any society, and should not have been considered to be drafted in the first place. This puts Indigenous lives, culture, and the welfare of the environment in peril.#

Reference:
Beverly Longid,
Global Coordinator, IPMSDL
[email protected]

The International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL) condemns the violence and repression against the Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Nepal in their peaceful protests on the withdrawal of “Koshi” as the province name of their territories. 

During these peaceful protests in March and May, the state’s violent actions caused injuries, arrests, and death to Indigenous Peoples asserting their rights to their customary land and territories. The police opened fire, used teargas, beat on protesters, and shut down electricity and phone networks despite the peaceful conduct of protests. At least 45 people were injured, 1 died, 31 were arrested and eventually released, and a number still faces criminal charges. 

The peaceful protests against naming Province 1 “Koshi” stems from the 2015 Constitution that failed to include provisions to securely respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Article 295.2 of the 2015 Consitutition authorizes two third majority of the provincial legislature to decide on the name of the province that is currently represented by the ruling political parties and caste groups. With the government imposing such steps, it perpetuates the colonial system of violence, conquest and erasure of Indigenous Peoples’ culture, identities, and histories.

As we stand in solidarity, the International IPMSDL is one in rejecting the name “Koshi” and asserting their right to self-determination by upholding their agency to govern, manage and decide on matters of their ancestral lands,  territories, ways of life and tradition. 

We call to immediately stop the repressive attacks on the IP, investigate all the rights violations committed, hold the police and state forces accountable, and swiftly deliver justice to those killed, injured, jailed and criminalized.#

Unity Statement of the Peoples’ Summit Against G7
May 18, 2023 – Kyoto, Japan

The G7 countries (the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) represent the rich and powerful minority over the poor and less powerful majority of the world. It is an institution of global economic and political supremacy.

We, organizers, activists and peace advocates from within and outside the G7 countries are united in our call to fight back against this alliance and the exploitative system it upholds.

Junk G7!
As of 2020, G7 members account for over half of global net wealth (at over $200 trillion). They also make up anywhere from 32% to 46% of global gross domestic product with the US far ahead at $25 trillion last year and the others between $1 and $5 trillion. Yet, their countries only make up 10% of the world’s population (770 million people).

The G7 openly refers to the world’s working people as “human capital,” signifying their view of them as merely tools for further investment. Meanwhile, 100 million are estimated houseless worldwide with 1.6 billion lacking adequate housing while nearly one in three lack access to adequate food. Global inflation peaked at 8% during the Covid-19 pandemic (2.5% higher than the 2008 housing crisis) while the global price of bread has risen 40%. Where is the investment in that?

To stop the theft, to stop the exploitation, we must junk the G7!

US Out of Asia Pacific!
2023 host country Japan is the US’s key partner in the Asia-Pacific, similar to Canada in North America and the other G7 members in Western Europe. Japan houses over 130 US military installations, the largest number in the world outside the US, and it is the primary port of the US 7th Fleet, the Navy’s signature force in the Pacific. 375,000 US troops alone are dedicated to the Asia-Pacific region, 50,000 of which are based in Japan.

The 2023 Summit has hinted at building stronger US-Japan military cooperation against China, Russia and North Korea, backed up by all other G7 members. Canada, France and the UK all announced their own versions of the US “Pivot to Asia” in recent months to prepare for this moment. Japan has emerged in the last few years as an offensive military power in the region for the first time since World War 2 and announced over $300 billion in military spending over the next three years. This would raise Japan to the third-largest military spender in the world after the US (by far the largest) and China.

The US has made recent advances in its AUKUS alliance with Australia and the so-called “Washington Declaration” with South Korea that have promised to place US nuclear submarines in both countries. The US held the largest ever Balikatan joint-military exercise in the Philippines this year and promises the largest ever Talisman Sabre and Rim of the Pacific exercises in Australia and Hawai’i next year.

This militarization of the region is paired with the upcoming Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) that would put 40% of the world economy into a stronger free trade orbit of the US while securing the critical mineral resources and digital infrastructure needed to supply the US-led alliances with all the weapons and tech they need to attempt a checkmate of China.

Yet, a rising military, diplomatic and nuclear armed power like China will not be checkmated into submission. This build-up to war in the Pacific promises supreme danger to the people of the world. For a war might begin here, but would spread to every corner of the world.

End the Build up to War!
the G7 is the most geographically widespread nuclear alliance, making their 2023 Summit in Hiroshima, one of only two cities to have ever been attacked by nuclear weapons an affront to the survivors and family of those killed, and to all peace-loving people of the world who have fought nearly a century for a world without nuclear weapons.

Japan has allowed US troops to practice beach-landing operations in its small islands south of Okinawa, closer to the contested island of Taiwan than any US troops have ever been allowed to deploy. Meanwhile, US, South Korean and Japanese exercises on the Korean Peninsula have simulated air invasions of North Korea. The seemingly unending stream of military hardware to Ukraine from NATO, the G7’s premier military alliance, has now included fighter jets and long-range missiles. This has brought the nuclear-armed US and its allies closer to conflict with three other nuclear-armed states than ever before.

The G7 leads this build up to world war. It is not “defensive” as it claims, but deliberate provocation. We must fight back if we are to halt the firing shot of a nuclear conflict.

Peoples’ Fightback Against the G7!
The G7’s actions since its inception prove that the self-serving and imperialist interest of the business class can never be negotiated away. Only a direct, united confrontation with the alliance itself can pave the way for any alternative system.

We must keep using our voices, our bodies and our collective efforts in whatever way possible and refuse to be silent, no matter the risks we must face. This is what this moment of crisis, a crisis created by the G7 powers themselves, calls on each of us to do today and for all days moving forward!

We hereby resolve to:

• Continue mass education campaign on militarism and its connection to imperialist institutions such as the G7, ASEAN, APEC, the WTO, the UN and others
• Support each other’s movements against militarism at the national level and connect it back to US imperialism and the G7 powers by building the International Peoples’ Front as a common campaign platform against imperialist war and fascism today. Link with and win over organizations fighting for sectoral issues to the IPF through our campaigns against militarism.
◦ Support peoples’ economic struggles against G7 neoliberal policies (land struggles, workplace struggles, etc.)
◦ Support the organizing of migrant workers and expose the impacts of war on migrants (i.e. being used as human shields)
◦ Expose and oppose the national chauvinism, racism and discrimination of social minorities and indigenous peoples that follows in the wake of militarist expansion

• End military aid from the G7 and other Global North countries to puppet states in the Indo-Pacific and throughout the Global South, targeting local state collaborators with the G7.
◦ Special focuses on: Korean Peninsula, South China Sea, South Asia particularly Kashmir, Palestine and the Levant

• Resist US military bases and installations in our countries and support these struggles worldwide. Monitor the development of new US and other foreign security agreements and alliances with countries around the world.
◦ Special focus on NATO and Indo-Pacific Alliances (Quad – AUKUS – J-ROK-US – EDCA – Taiwan Relations Act)
◦ Carry out campaign against Africom and G7 imperialism in Africa?

• Carry out a No Nukes campaign against US-led hegemony of nuclear weapons as the primary driver of the nuclear arms race and its connection to the nuclear power industry. Connect with the movement against climate imperialism.

• Take action around the specific peak dates:
◦ Support the fight against the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings happening in the US 2023 and Peru 2024
◦ Join forces against the 2024 Rim of the Pacific joint military exercises

Joint statement of world anti-imperialist struggles

The nuclear war maneuvers of aggressive US forces are pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of war. The US-South Koreas Freedom Shield military drill and Warrior Shield field training exercise (FTX) are rehearsing for a nuclear war against the DPRK, aiming to “conquer Pyongyang” and to “remove the leadership of North Korea”.

During these exercises, the USA has assembled an array of invasion forces, including strategic nuclear bombers and a nuclear aircraft carrier, on the Korean peninsula, allowing the Yun Seok-yeol warmonger clique to stage the largest-ever invasion drills against North Corea, transforming our country into a nuclear powder keg.

The USA’s willingness to wage aggressive war is demonstrated by its deepening of the ‘new cold war’. The USA has strengthened the US-Japan-south Korea trilateral military ‘alliance’ by subjugating the pro-US Yun Seok-yeol warmonger clique to the forces of Japanese militarism.

The joint military exercises held this month followed on from March’s ‘Sea Dragon’, a US-centred multinational joint military exercise aimed at North Korea, China, and Russia that was conducted in the western Pacific near Guam.

The USA is preparing South Korea and Taiwan as battlegrounds for nuclear war in East Asia, while preparing Japan to be its primary regional base. It is mobilizing its proxies in South Korea and Taiwan to carry out war exercises against the DPRK and China and to create ethnic tensions while strengthening the forces of Japanese militarism.

The people united can never be defeated. As the confrontation between the anti-imperialist bloc and the aggressive imperialist forces comes to a climax, the primary focus for the people of the world must be to oppose US-led imperialism.

The historical experience of World War 2, which ended with the defeat of the fascist forces, shows that only the united power of the people of the world can repel the imperialist aggressors who are waging World War 3. The victory of the peoples of the world, who have embarked on the majestic struggle under the banner of anti-US and anti-imperialism, is just and inevitable.

The South Korean people, who are one axis of the world’s struggle against US imperialism, will rise up in the anti-US, anti-Japanese, and anti-Yun Seok-yeol struggle to strike a decisive blow against the imperialist aggressors, overthrow the pro-US government of Yun Seok-yeol, and bring about a new day of national independence and world peace.

Statement of the ILPS on the 27^th Conference of Parties (COP27) of the UNFCCC

As the 27^th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or COP27 takes place this November in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, we call on mass organizations and people’s movements to resolutely oppose imperialism as the root cause of the ongoing climate catastrophe.

Imperialism has permanently scarred the planet in its unending expansion and encroachment. Ecosystems, particularly in the colonies and neo-colonies, have been carved out for the sake of capital hyper-accumulation in the imperialist core. Multinational companies — especially fossil fuel giants — have raked in trillions in profits over decades, at the expense of countries, communities, and peoples around the world. The massive scale of ecological disturbance and disbalance under imperialism along with ceaseless, fossil-fueled overproduction has caused the perfect storm of global warming, climate change, and ecological collapse we experience today.

US imperialism in particular has been instrumental in the destruction of the Earth and its peoples. The United States takes the top spot in terms of cumulative carbon emissions, the result of decades of colonial exploitation and warmongering. Its military, with its annual budget amounting to billions of US dollars, is recognized as the single largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons (e.g., oil, plastics, and related products) in the world today. It hardly needs to be mentioned that the US military is also responsible for terrorizing and decimating civilian populations around the world in its mandate of securing geopolitical control of resources for US empire.

Conferences like the COP have failed dismally in addressing the climate crisis, even just in terms of the straightforward demand of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, they have been a reliable platform for world leaders to greenwash imperialism, allowing them to mask land grabs and human rights violations in environmentally-friendly rhetoric. They use the COPs as platforms to make bold but empty promises without actually making significant emissions cuts, and dangle these in lieu of just reparations for past, present and future loss and damages that they are causing. Patterns of extraction and displacement still continue, especially in neo-colonies and client states. The crisis, as it stands, has not been addressed.

It is also no small irony that this year’s COP is held in Egypt. US-backed militarism under the el-Sisi regime continues to persecute political opposition — including environmental advocates — as evident in the detention of tens of thousands of political prisoners in the country. This situation reflects the plight of anti-systemic movements across the globe that are the primary targets of US military intervention.

In the face of this disaster of biospheric proportions, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle continues to link together forces mobilizing against imperialism and all its social and ecological implications. As the climate crisis continues despite decades of UN conferences, it is clear that the only lasting solution to our predicament is to put an end to the imperialist world order. Climate and environmental movements must therefore throw their support behind movements of basic masses and most seriously affected peoples around the world who are carrying out this task, and ultimately work towards forwarding a viable alternative to the status quo — that is, a socialist alternative that actively attends to the ecological concerns of our time.

Long Live International Solidarity!

End climate imperialism to attain climate justice!

Imperialist polluters must pay!

Climate Justice now!