[E-rundbrief] Info 1611 - International Day of Peasants Struggles 2017
Matthias Reichl
info at begegnungszentrum.at
Mo Apr 17 17:52:30 CEST 2017
E-Rundbrief - Info 1611 - La Via Campesina: This April 17th 2017 – We
defend the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas.
Focus on the Global South: Special Edition on the International Day of
Peasants' Struggles 2017.
Bad Ischl, 17.4.2017
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
www.begegnungszentrum.at
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This April 17th 2017 – We defend the rights of peasants and other
people working in rural areas
La Via Campesina
Press Release
https://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/17-april--day-of-peasants-struggle-mainmenu-33/2280-this-april-17th-we-defend-the-rights-of-peasants-and-other-people-working-in-rural-areas
(Harare, April 17, 2017) Today La Via Campesina, the international
peasant movement, commemorates the International Day of Peasants'
Struggle[1] with a focus on strengthening, protecting and recognizing
the human rights of peasants. The initiative towards a United Nations
(UN) Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in
Rural Areas is one of the ways to legitimatize our struggles to build
and reinforce food sovereignty where by our social, cultural, economic
and political values are fully respected and upheld. We believe that
in championing the rights of peasants and other people working in
rural areas, humanity also wins.
Hundreds of millions of peasants are forced to live and lead
undignified lives as their basic rights are increasingly very
vulnerable as a result of capitalist and neoliberal logic of profit
maximisation. Our rights to land, water, seeds, biodiversity, decent
income are continuously being compromised, denied, violated and
usurped. We, the Peasants, despite producing the bulk of the food
consumed globally, continue to face criminalisation and discrimination.
We, the peasants, women, youth, men, and indigenous peoples, however,
continue to build our struggles globally to defend our rights against
corporate interests, persecution and violence against peasants and
other people working in rural areas. We struggle for a genuine
agrarian reform and a better protection of rights to land against
land-grabbing; we continue to conserve, use, and exchange our seeds -
denouncing laws and interests that seek to prohibit such practises; we
promote agroecology, traditional practices and knowledge to combat
climate change; we continue the struggle to end corporate control of
our food and reject free trade agreements; and we keep on building
gender equality and move forward for the rights of peasant women,
youth, migrants and other people working in rural areas.
Next month in May, the 4th session of UN Open Ended Intergovernmental
Working Group will be held to finalize the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. Our
collective struggles will pressure governments and other parties to
support and commit to a strong UN declaration. We believe that the UN
declaration will be crucial to solve malnutrition, hunger, poverty,
and climate crisis.
Join us today by organising demonstrations, public debates and
discussions, film screenings, farmers' markets, festivals, lobbying
governments, or any other solidarity actions. We are calling to all
people's movements, women, youth, indigenous, fisher folk, migrants,
workers, environmentalists, to support this movement. Share your
actions by sending to lvcweb at viacampesina.org so that we can capture
and circulate them on our MAP of actions.
[1] On April 17th 1996, in the Amazonian state of Pará, at Eldorado
dos Carajás, the state military police massacred peasants organized in
the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), killing 19 individuals
and injuring 69. That day, 1500 women and men organized in the MST
occupied and blocked the BR-150 highway in Eldorado dos Carajás, with
the aim of bringing pressure to bear on the State and Federal
governments to implement agrarian reform. State authorities, the
police, the army and powerful local landowners were involved in the
planning and executing of the massacre.
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Special Edition on the International Day of Peasants' Struggles
Focus on Global South
http://mailchi.mp/95f30685d9e5/special-edition-on-the-international-day-of-peasants-struggles?e=5df8263f6a
To mark the International Day of Peasants’ Struggles, Focus on the
Global South releases this special edition that puts together articles
on issues that small farmers and peasants continue to face. These
pieces also highlight the different forms of resistance that farmers
and peasants put up amidst these challenges.
Mary Ann Manahan of Focus-Philippines remembers the hard work of her
grandfather, a small farmer who eked out a living from his small farm
of coffee and fruit, and died with hardly anything to pass on to his
family but his small plot and his pride for being a farmer. Ms Manahan
would realize the bigger context of her grandfather’s hardships as she
grows up, studies, and becomes involved in the agrarian reform
struggle in the Philippines.
Niabdulghafar Tohming from Focus-Thailand tells the story of
communities in forest lands who have been harassed, criminalized, and
dispossessed because of the military government’s Forestry Plan.
Similarly, in India, tenanted farmers are under attack via state-led
repression, with many of those affected getting imprisoned under false
charges, but they pledge to forge ahead with their resistance.
Raphael Baladad’s (Focus-Philippines) reflections on youth power gives
us something to be hopeful about, in the midst of the decades-long
struggle of Filipino peasants. Peasant leaders have grown “tired and
weary, and literally old,” but the involvement of students and youth
in their struggle are seen as means to not only re-energize the
peasant movement but the youth’s as well.
Annalie Gepulani, Focus intern, writes her impressions of the farming
community in Bataan, Philippines, she visited.
Afsar Jafri covers a peasant mobilization in New Delhi to commemorate
this day.
--
Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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