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Asian
Peasant Leaders Slam U.S. War in Iraq,
Poisons of Mass Destruction
Peasant
and fisherfolk leaders from Asia last week converged in Quezon City, Philippines
to denounce the current U.S. war on Iraq. They also assailed U.S. chemical
corporations that manufacture and export “poisons of mass destruction”
particularly in the Asian market that they dominate.
By
Gerry Albert Corpuz
Bulatlat.com
A twin-bill Asian conference hosted by Filipino activists in Quezon City,
Philippines last week slammed the U.S. war on Iraq and vowed to intensify the
fight against the U.S. war of aggression and imperialist globalization across
the globe.
Representatives of peasant movements from the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand and India first gathered at the Asian Peasant
Conference (APC) from March 29 to 31 to denounce U.S. war of aggression in Iraq
and imperialist globalization of Third World economies and agriculture.
Later, APC delegates joined other participants from Iran, Germany, South Korea,
China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Japan, Canada and the United States in the
first Congress of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN-AP) from
April 1 to 4 to affirm global solidarity against U.S. unjust war in Iraq and its
transnational takeover of Asian agriculture for super profits.
Around 140 participants from 17 countries in Asia and the Pacific representing
peasant movements, fisherfolk organizations, women activist groups,
environmentalists, technologists and pesticide activist associations attended
the first PAN-AP Congress which headlined the theme “Land and Food Without
Poisons, People's Rights and People's Empowerment.”
Rafael Mariano, chair of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP-Peasant Movement
of the Philippines), said the APC gathered more 50 representatives from Asian
countries to consolidate the gains of peasant's struggle in the region,
strengthen solidarity among peasant movements and intensify the struggle against
WTO, imperialist globalization and U.S. unilateralism and borderless war of
aggression.
"Asia is a region where millions of peasants have been struggling against
all forms of exploitation,” Mariano said. “There is compelling evidence that
the U.S. is principally responsible and acted as primed actor for the widespread
landlessness, hunger and death among millions of Asian peasants."
Wars of aggression
"Today,
aside from the destruction brought about by imperialist globalization, the U.S.
is promoting the business of wars of aggression to rev up an economy in
recession," Mariano told Bulatlat.com.
The KMP leader said most of the estimated 847 million poor people in Asian
countries are in South Asia where agriculture remains backward and inefficient
characterized by increasing joblessness, indebtedness, landlessness and
life-long bondage.
He said the world is now closer to the prospect of global war because of
policies emanating from World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United States’
unjust wars and pre-emptive strikes on countries deemed by the Washington
government as threats to U.S. campaign for global domination.
"The
militarization and the war against terrorism is brought about by U.S.’ strong
desire to expand and gain control over the world's cultural, economic and
intellectual resources," Mariano said.
Mariano added: "The stupid and senseless war being waged by the Pentagon
gang in Washington D.C is an epitome of destruction and a showcase to the
international community of what the U.S. intends to do with other nations
hostile to U.S. corporate, military and political interests in order to look for
solutions facing the world capitalist system and the U.S. in particular whose
economy is heavily battered by the crisis of overproduction and surplus
capital," he said.
Old age colonialization tactic
Malaysia’s Dr. Irene Fernandez, chair of PAN-AP, warned the Bush
administration that peasant movements and their advocates across Asia and the
Pacific are watching every step the U.S. is taking in response to reports the
foreign delegates from the recently concluded Asian Peasant Conference and the
first PAN-AP congress were closely monitored by Philippine authorities.
Fernandez, founder and director of Tenaganita, a women workers' organizations in
Malaysia is currently out on bail after being charged under the Printing and
Publication Act of 1984 for a report highlighting the abuses on migrant workers
detained in Malaysian camps.
"U.S.’ dastardly action of waging war on Iraq should be vehemently
condemned. The U.S., the UK and their cronies' action is a crime against
humanity. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate war that is causing destruction
of lives, property and environment," Fernandez asserted.
P. Chennaiah, general secretary of Andhra Pradesh Vyavasaya Union in India,
denounced governments working as brokers for economic exploitation in the name
of war and the age-old colonialization tactic. “We can't trust them to work
for the people. Our trust is in the people, especially people in agriculture who
are victims of development adopted by WTO financed by TNCs," he said.
Nepal peasant leader Prem Prasad Dangal of the All-Nepal Peasant Association (ANPA)
likewise assailed the Bush administration for bombing the Iraqi people with
weapons of mass destruction. At the rally outside the U.S. embassy spearheaded
by KMP and delegates to APC and PAN-AP in Manila, Dangal chided the U.S. for its
mass slaughter of Iraqi people.
"Stop the killing. Stop this US madness for Iraqis' blood and oil," he
said. The Nepalese peasant leader said he decided to join the Filipino peasants'
rally against the coalition of the willing's war of aggression in Iraq at the
U.S. Embassy because it was a just cause and people should reject all forms of
unjust war.
For her part, PAN-AP Executive Director Sarojeni Rengam, who first attended the
APC before joining her other colleagues in the PAN-AP congress said, "While
war is taking place in Iraq, there is a silent war of mass destruction working
against the people through globalization perpetrated by big capitalist countries
and victimizing over 2 billion poor farmers worldwide."
Poisons of mass destructions
Aside from opposing U.S. obsession to imperialist war and massive production of
weapons of mass destruction, the 140 delegates to the PAN-AP congress lambasted
the U.S. chemical giants engaged in production of "poisons of mass
destruction” including pesticides and genetically modified organisms.
"When we fight against poison, we fight against oppression," said Dr.
Romy Quijano of PAN-Philippines. The UP-Manila based professor, peasant and
human rights activist cited the case of Kamukhaan Village in Digos City, Davao
del Sur to prove the harmful effects of pesticide to people's health and
productivity.
According to PAN-AP, pesticides poison around 25 million agricultural workers
every year. It said, the chronic effects of pesticide are particularly alarming
as new studies link certain pesticides to cancer, lowered fertility, endocrine
disruption and to the suppression of the immune systems.
Between 1997 and 1998, more than 500 farmers committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh,
India and more cases were reported in recent years. The shift from food crops to
commercial ones such as cottons and chilies forced farmers to heavy borrowings
to buy high yielding varieties of seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Indian farmer groups also lamented that advances in farm technology no longer
reflect the aspiration and common interests of the farmers. They said scientific
innovation and advancement have been uprooting farmers from their lands and
productive role in society. They said 32 percent of India's total agricultural
lands are now under cross-breed and genetic-engineer production types
threatening to send millions of agricultural workers and peasants out of their
workplaces and farmlands.
The massive spraying of the fields with pesticides created ecological crisis,
killing off pests' natural enemies and making them to become resistant to the
chemicals, the PAN-AP reports said.
"Repeated
crops failure and increasing costs of pesticides and other inputs as results of
heavy spraying of chemicals forced farmers to a cycle of debt and unable to bear
the consequences, farmers committed suicide and left the burden of debts to
their wives and families," it said.
Resistance against TNCs
Aside from taking a strong anti-U.S. war position, delegates warned that
resistance against pesticides, genetic engineering and corporate agriculture
would escalate from peasant movements in Asian region.
"The pesticide industry is dominated by U.S. and European TNCs that are
feeling the consequences of the persistent global crisis of capitalism and are
dreading its final meltdown. This drives them to increasing monopolization of
the agrochemical business," said KMP's Mariano.
Mariano said that agrochemical TNCs took advantage of the globalization drive of
the 1990s to strengthen TNCs’ hold on Third World economies in order to
extract whatever surplus they can lay their hands on.
He said Third World countries account for 99 percent of deaths from pesticides
even though it uses only 20 percent of pesticides produced globally. Bulatlat.com
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