ILPS vows struggle against imperialist war and plunder

From Manila and Montreal, Tamil Nadu and Taiwan, New York and New South Wales, 265 delegates came to Hong Kong June 18-20 for the Third International Assembly of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle. The ILPS was founded in 2002, when the Bush regime was launching its so-called “war on terror.”

Wahu Kaara of the Kenya Debt-Relief Network.

The delegates were domestic workers and doctors, farmers and factory workers, Kenyan debt-relief activists, Dalit women from South India, Australian building trades unionists, Turkish and Kurdish migrant workers from Europe. All told, they represented 165 mass organizations from 30 countries.

The largest number came from the Philippines where many groups are in struggle against the U.S.-backed regime of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. They included the May First Labor Movement (KMU), Philippine Peasant Movement, Federation of Peasant Women, Alliance of Health Workers, National Union of People’s Lawyers, League of Filipino Students, Suara Bansang Moro representing Muslim people of Mindanao, and the Cordillera People’s Alliance comprising Indigenous people from northern Luzon resisting the devastation of their mountains by transnational mining firms. They are united in Bayan, the New Patriotic Alliance.

The second-largest participation came from Hong Kong itself, most of them migrant domestic workers from the Philippines and Indonesia and migrant rights activists.

Groups from the United States included Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Mexicano/Chicano organization Maiz, International Action Center, Chelsea Uniting Against the War from Massachusetts, North Carolina Labor Against the War and Video Collision Course from the Bay Area.

The theme of the assembly was, “Strengthen the peoples’ struggle, unite to build a new world against imperialist aggression, state terrorism, plunder and social destruction!” A major theme of discussion was the world capitalist economic crisis and the need for global unity of workers and oppressed people to fight its effects.

The assembly was opened by Philippine revolutionary leader Jose Maria Sison, who chairs the ILPS. Sison, who was imprisoned for 14 years by the Marcos dictatorship, is in exile in the Netherlands. Unable to be present physically, he was able to attend and speak via telescreen.

The conference was saddened by the loss of two members of the ILPS International Coordinating Committee. Philippine labor leader and congressperson Crispin Beltran—known as Ka Bel—died in May in a tragic accident. Dr. Ahmad Maslamani of the Union of People’s Health Committees in Palestine passed away in January. Ka Bel’s words were present, however; his prepared speech, “Neoliberalism and Labor,” was read by KMU chair Elmer Labog.

Political repression laid its hand across the assembly. The keynote speech of the conference was to have been given by revolutionary poet Varavara Rao, but the Indian government denied him permission to travel. His speech was read by ICC member G.N. Saibaba of the Revolutionary Democratic Front of India.

Other speakers at the opening plenary included Wahu Kaara of the Kenya Debt-Relief Network, Dr. Irene Fernandez of the Malaysian women’s rights organization Tenaganita, Prof. Haluk Gerger of Turkey and Manolis Arrkolakis of the Committee Against Military Bases in Greece. Fernandez faces a year in prison for “publishing false news.” Gerger has been imprisoned for defending the rights of Kurdish people in Turkey.

Workshops focused on 18 concerns, including war, labor, national oppression, women’s oppression, lesbian, gay, bi and transgender oppression, Indigenous struggles, migration, medical care, youth, education and the environment.

The workshops formulated resolutions in solidarity with the resistance of oppressed people from Iraq to Indonesia, from Palestine to the Philippines, including people of color inside the United States. The assembly also voted to launch a campaign against forced displacement, from Nandigram, India, to New Orleans, La.

The general declaration of the assembly, adopted by the final plenary, said, “Today, the world monopoly capitalist system is caught up in one of its biggest crises since the Great Depression. This is principally due to the unraveling of the imperialist policies of ‘neoliberal globalization’ and ‘global war on terror.’ The U.S., which is the core of the system, is afflicted by a grave economic and financial crisis and is generating waves of economic and social ruin in all imperialist countries, in the largest so-called emerging markets, and worse than ever before in the general ruin of semi-colonies and dependent countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

“At the base of this global crisis is the crisis of overproduction in the real economy. New technology has raised higher the social character of production but has also increased the private monopoly character of appropriation. ‘Neoliberal globalization’ has accelerated the concentration and centralization of capital in the U.S. and a handful of monopoly capitalist countries through the denationalization of the economies of the less-developed countries, liberalization of investments and trade, privatization of public assets and deregulation at the expense of the social rights of working people, women, children and the environment.”

It pointed out that while “3 billion people ... struggle to survive on $2 or less a day ... 750 million people are without jobs worldwide” and “nearly a billion people are undernourished, most of whom are in Asia, Africa and Latin America but also including some tens of millions in the industrialized countries ... the richest 2 percent of adults worldwide own more than half of global wealth, while the poorest 50 percent own barely 1 percent.”

It said, “In the face of the intensified exploitation and oppression by the imperialists and their reactionary puppets, the people have intensified their resistance.” It pointed to strikes and protests in the U.S. and Europe, peoples’ resistance and wars of national liberation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon, and revolutionary movements in Nepal, India, Turkey, Colombia and the Philippines.

It concluded, “The daily worsening conditions of oppression and exploitation require the ILPS to intensify its efforts to arouse, organize and mobilize the people in their millions in building a new and better world of greater freedom, development, social justice and global peace.”

The assembly opened and closed with the singing of the ILPS hymn. It was followed by a lively cultural night at which delegates performed songs and dances from many countries.