Message of solidarity to the People’s Global Camp
in Bali, Indonesia, December 2-6, 2013
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), convey to all the organizations, groups, and individuals participating in the People’s Global Camp (PGC) in Bali, Indonesia our warmest greetings of solidarity in your resistance against neoliberal globalization and imperialist plunder.
We congratulate the Indonesian Peoples Alliance (IPA) for having successfully organized the PGC in close cooperation with an International Coordinating Committee, of which the ILPS is a member. We are highly appreciative of the IPA for having moved forward as a broad campaign platform since January to facilitate and coordinate the various people’s responses to the renewed offensive of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and to the imperialist policy of neoliberal globalization in general.
We are elated that the struggle against the WTO and imperialist plunder has served to strengthen the IPA as a broad alliance of grassroots organizations and movements of workers, peasants, women, youth and students, migrant workers, indigenous peoples, professionals, environmental and other advocacy groups coming from the provinces, islands and various ethno-linguistic communities. We support your calls to uphold people’s sovereignty, make trade serve the people, end trade liberalization, attain mutual benefit in international trade, reject new unequal agreements and junk WTO.
We are pleased with having cooperated with the IPA and extended various forms of assistance within our capability. It is a duty for all of us to exert our best in building the unity of the people’s organizations and movements against the WTO, particularly its Ninth Ministerial Meeting. We are all seriously concerned that this meeting is aimed at pushing further the neoliberal offensive of the imperialist powers led by the United States and European Union. New trade-related deals are being crafted to reinforce previous agreements to further open and subject to plunder the national economies and patrimonies of Third World countries.
The US-led WTO and the imperialist G-8 at the core of G-20 are trying in vain to deceive the people that the way out of the current global economic crisis is to abide by the neoliberal framework of trade and investments and to further expand and enforce it through the so-called Bali Package, which covers facilitation of unequal trade, LDC issues and agriculture. This package is also linked to so-called post-Bali issues, like the International Technology Agreement and Trade in Services Agreement. The neoliberal framework continues to aggravate the crisis it has caused in the first place.
The imperialist powers are making a futile attempt to delude the third world countries that the way out of the crisis and underdevelopment is to follow Indonesia as a model for supposedly graduating to middle-income status and being on the way to joining Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS). In fact, Indonesia is an example of a country that remains semicolonial and semifeudal, agrarian and underdeveloped, so because of the wanton imperialist plunder of its natural resources and the overload of imported manufactures.
It is laudable that the People’s Global Camp has arisen as an instrument of the people of the world for counteracting the imperialist propaganda and rejecting the WTO and its so-called Bali Package of deals. The PGC can fully serve as a democratic venue for collective learning, analysis and action against the neoliberal economic policy and against the WTO. It is designed to encourage all participants to conduct their self-organized activities and to converge in plenary sessions where they can forge common goals and define the alternative to the pseudo-development model propagated by the imperialist powers.
The multifaceted crisis of the world capitalist system continues to deepen and worsen. The imperialist promoters of neoliberal globalization are misrepresenting as solutions the furtherance and aggravation of the same old policies and mechanisms that in the first place generated the multiple crises (economic and financial, social, energy, food and climate).
The monopoly banks and firms are bailed out with public money and continue to enjoy tax cuts, gilded contracts, subsidies and guarantees, while the workers and other people suffer high rates unemployment, labor flexibilization, wage and benefit cuts, rising costs of living, indirect taxes in basic commodities and the unceasing rounds of austerity measures which reduce public employment, social benefits and social services in education, health and housing. The conditions of mass unemployment, poverty and gross inequality are worsening.
We welcome the PGC plenaries on such broad concerns as the multiple crises (socio-economic, energy, food and climate) and the neoliberal offensive; militarism and wars of aggression; the Indonesian peoples’ struggles; and people’s resistance around the world, and the thematic and sectoral workshops or conferences. We are confident that all participating groups, including ILPS member-organizations, will contribute to the success of these plenaries and workshops.
We look forward to the PGC calling for system change. We must demand the end of the unjust system that generates crisis and uses it to further exploit and oppress the people, plunder the environment, impose unfair and unequal trade agreements and deepen the neocolonial relationship of the imperialist countries and the underdeveloped countries and thereby further accelerate the accumulation and concentration of wealth in the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie at the expense of the working people and the underdeveloped countries.
We must aim for genuine, all-round and well-balanced development in which the people are the agents of change and are the beneficiaries. We must overcome imperialist and class exploitation and all accumulated and current social, economic, political, cultural and environmental injustices. We must oppose and stop the few from monopolizing productive assets and using these to further enrich themselves by exploiting and oppressing the working people.
Justice requires that all forms of class exploitation and discrimination are ended. In the relation of countries, the imperialist powers must be stopped from imposing economic, financial, trade, social, political and security policies to keep the majority of countries grossly exploited, impoverished and underdeveloped.
We are hopeful that the Global People’s Parade at the start, the Solidarity Night, and the Global People’s Assembly and Global March will enhance the unity and militancy of all PGC participants. We wish fervently that the PGC continues with the militant tradition of people’s resistance during WTO ministerials in the form of street mass actions, as in Cancun, Seattle and Hong Kong.
We have called on all member-organizations of the ILPS to participate in the Global Day of Action against WTO and neoliberal trade, by conducting simultaneous in-country actions and demonstrations on December 6.
May the PGC resonate to inspire the people of the third world to fight for their national sovereignty, national patrimony and development against the accumulated and new impositions of the imperialist powers through the WTO and other multilateral agencies. As the crisis of the world capitalist system worsens, the anti-imperialist movement of the people will grow stronger.
We take this opportunity to express admiration for the fast growing anti-imperialist and democratic movement of the Indonesian people. We are ever hopeful that the 250 million Indonesian people will rise as a bulwark of national independence, democracy, social justice and development. We thank the Indonesian People’s Alliance for hosting the People’s Global Camp in opposition to the WTO and imperialist plunder.###
