taken by turbulence (ideas for a movement)
‘Food riots’ in response to huge food price hikes have hit numerous countries around the world this year. George Caffentzis explores the current food crisis, its causes and implications.
Food prices are rising so much and so fast that millions are now on the verge of starvation. Between May 2007 and May 2008, corn prices increased by 46%, wheat prices by 80%, and soybeans by 72%; while rice increased by 75% in 2008 over its average 2007 price.
People in many cities throughout the world have responded to the explosion of staple food prices in the last few months by demanding that their national governments reduce them immediately. From Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Cairo, Egypt, the demonstrations often turned into riots, shutting down these cities for days. Millions are now calculating that unless they obstruct the ‘normal’ circuit of capitalist reproduction by taking to the streets they will face starvation.
Indeed, the scenes from these places are no less dramatic in the suffering and anguish they suggest than those coming from Burma after the cyclone. The price hikes themselves have taken on the character of a natural disaster. They are treated by many commentators as a sort of ‘perfect storm,’ to use the deceptive jargon of our day. According to Steve Hamm, a Business Week journalist, a multiplicity of unrelated factors from the drought in Australia, to the “richer diets” in China and India, to “the soaring cost of oil” and “the increased use of corn for ethanol” have come together to make food unaffordable for a substantial part of the world’s population.
This explanation, however, is far from convincing. It does not explain why these millions of people are exposed to international markets and hence at risk from the ‘perfect storm’. The apparently unrelated factors listed by Hamm would not lead to widespread starvation if people were not dependent on world grain markets in a way that they were not a few decades ago.
In reality, the latest grain price hikes are the last act in a long process that started in the mid-1980s with the implementation in much of the world of the World Bank’s and IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), whose first task was to privatise agricultural lands and totally commodify food production and distribution.
If we look at the policies that governments across the world, but especially in the South, were forced to adopt in the name of the ‘debt crisis’ or ‘economic development’ we see that each of the recommended policies was geared to raise people’s dependence on the world market for access to food:
• government subsidies for agricultural inputs (from fertilisers to seeds) were eliminated, as were price control and marketing boards;
• land privatisation was instituted with drives to titling and registration;
• large amounts of acreage were removed from local food production and devoted to mining, oil extraction, or the production non-edible or export crops;
• most important, violating a long tradition, the World Bank and IMF insisted that governments in the South dismantle their food reserves and put them on the market, arguing they were no longer needed in a global economy.
Not surprisingly, countries that in the past had always been self-sufficient as far as food production was concerned were by the end of the millennium net food importers. A good example of this dynamic is the case of Mexico and corn. Millions of corn-growing peasant farmers have been driven from their ejidos(inalienable land held in common or by families) over the last decade due to their inability to compete with US corn exported to Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a model neoliberal trade treaty. As a result, Mexicans are now dependent on corn imports from the US for the provision of their basic staple food at a moment when corn prices are soaring.
Once this history is understood, no one can see the price hikes as in any way caused by a surprising conjuncture of unrelated factors. For the crucial question to be posed both logically and politically is: Why is it that billions of people are now dependent on an international grain market that literally condemns them to death? For if they were not so dependent, then the storm in the international grain exchanges, however perfect, would have passed by without hurting many. Far from being natural, this dependence has been constructed step-by-step, policy-by-policy despite a long series of oppositional demonstrations, general strikes, and rebellions throughout the world, and the criticism of anti-globalisation scholars.
Capitalist planners’ obstinate attachment to this strategy is not hard to decipher, for it is at the heart of the neoliberal agenda that strives to:
• establish international capital’s ever tighter control of all natural resources, especially staple food stocks, which constitute a formidable weapon, already used throughout history to impose discipline over recalcitrant workers and reward compliant governments;
• eliminate populations not considered productive;
• reduce the real wage everywhere.
In sum, these price hikes are the dénouement of a long war on the people of the planet to eliminate the most elementary right: the right to eat to live.
This is not a new strategy discovered by geniuses like Larry Summers on H Street in Washington. In fact, as the novelist Sol Yurick writes in his forthcoming autobiography, Revenge, the biblical Joseph was the archetype for the IMF/World Bank officials of today. Joseph, as financial advisor to the Pharaoh, recognised a cycle of seven “good years” and seven “lean years.” He cornered the market by hoarding the grain in the good years and was able to use the stored grain in the lean years both to sell at an exorbitant price and to buy the peasants’ land cheaply in the face of their imminent starvation. What is important to note about this story is that Joseph and the Pharaoh were not ‘middlemen’ interested in the money they made in selling the hoarded grain; they were using their control of grain to enslave Egyptian workers and to appropriate their land.
What is to be done to prevent a repetition of this ancient tale? Across the world people are rioting in desperation, as they often did in response to the introduction of SAPs. The pace of these riots and rebellions will increase, since for most people the affordability of food is a question of life and death. These uprisings might bring some restraint in the grain markets and cause governments to bend the neoliberal rules by providing more subsidies.
However, a reversal of the trend towards increasing dependence of people on the world grain market for accessing their staple food will require the strengthening of the already existing long-term international movement of both farmers and city dwellers committed to restoring land to the people producing food for their localities. The hunger generated by the food price hikes on the world market, which was meant to breed docility, will give this movement a tremendous impetus.
George Caffentzis is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective and co-editor of Midnight Oil: Work Energy War 1973-1992 and Auroras of the Zapatistas: Local and Global Struggles in the Fourth World War.
Πέμπτη 11 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008
Τετάρτη 10 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008
new translation wiki of the PGA Europe
A new wiki created the last days , following the decisions of the PGA gathering in Alexandroupolis. The wiki would be a useful tool to coordinate the various translations of the PGA documents . If you want to have a look please visit http://maxi.tx.hu/pga
Παρασκευή 29 Αυγούστου 2008
Τρίτη 5 Αυγούστου 2008
Δευτέρα 28 Ιουλίου 2008
call for workshops and discussions on precarity topic PGA conference 2008
Prewhat?
========
"Precarious literally means unsure, uncertain, difficult,
delicate. As a political term it refers to living and working
conditions without any guarantees: for example the precarious
residential status of migrants and refugees, or the precariousness
of everyday life for single mothers. [...] Precariat, an allusion to
proletariat, meanwhile is used as a combative self-description in
order to emphasise the subjective and utopian moments of
precarisation." -- Frassanito Network. "Precarious, Precarisation,
Precariat?" In: Seymour, Benedict (ed.). Mute Volume II. #0:
Precarious Reader. London: Mute Publishing Ltd, 2005.
Topics
======
Our intention is to drop in questions, and generate a debate, rather
than a clear opinion about what is precarity and why are we using this
expression. We are not affiliated with the Euromayday network either.
- Why is Precarity?
Developing and discussing precarity as an analysis of contemporary
capitalism and the role of work through a cross-cutting issue.
Historically, precarity has been the rule rather than the
exception. It doesn't grasp all factors involved, but perhaps it
can be used as a strategic focus term for political work in the
present situation. However, for that we have to be aware of what
it means for different people in different places in geopolitical
space and on the social hierarchy. How can the multiplicity of
realities and the unity of political thrust converge?
- State of the Euromayday
What is the Euromayday network and where is it going? Focusing on
outreach to peripherial groups and strenghtening activity between
Euromayday parades. Possibilities for action, collaboration and
cooperation.
- Talking about Flexicurity
How to move beyond reformism? Precarity movement is simply
reformist if it just has 'demands' for the European Union or the
national governments! What is the vision and practice of
flexicurity? Precarity movement is simply conservative and
backward looking if it seeks a return to the wellfare state!
But what is the alternative vision and the best practices that
guide us towards a good life?
Background
==========
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precarity
- Euromayday.org
- Mute Magazine Precarious Reader issue
- Republicart Precariat issue
- Chainworders.org
- Franco "Bifo" Berardi: Art and Immaterial Labour at the Radical
Philosophy Conference London
- Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of
Human Feeling. London: University of California Press, 1983.
- Precarious Bourdieu, Pierre. Job insecurity is everywhere now. In: Firing
back: against the tyranny of the market 2. London & New York:
Verso, 2003.
- Boltanski, Luc & Chiapello, Eve. The new spirit of
capitalism. London & New York: Verso Books, 2005.
- Gorz, André. Les Métamorphoses du travail. Paris:
Gallimard-Jeunesse, 1999.
maxigas@anargeek.net, Militant Research Group Budapest
========
"Precarious literally means unsure, uncertain, difficult,
delicate. As a political term it refers to living and working
conditions without any guarantees: for example the precarious
residential status of migrants and refugees, or the precariousness
of everyday life for single mothers. [...] Precariat, an allusion to
proletariat, meanwhile is used as a combative self-description in
order to emphasise the subjective and utopian moments of
precarisation." -- Frassanito Network. "Precarious, Precarisation,
Precariat?" In: Seymour, Benedict (ed.). Mute Volume II. #0:
Precarious Reader. London: Mute Publishing Ltd, 2005.
Topics
======
Our intention is to drop in questions, and generate a debate, rather
than a clear opinion about what is precarity and why are we using this
expression. We are not affiliated with the Euromayday network either.
- Why is Precarity?
Developing and discussing precarity as an analysis of contemporary
capitalism and the role of work through a cross-cutting issue.
Historically, precarity has been the rule rather than the
exception. It doesn't grasp all factors involved, but perhaps it
can be used as a strategic focus term for political work in the
present situation. However, for that we have to be aware of what
it means for different people in different places in geopolitical
space and on the social hierarchy. How can the multiplicity of
realities and the unity of political thrust converge?
- State of the Euromayday
What is the Euromayday network and where is it going? Focusing on
outreach to peripherial groups and strenghtening activity between
Euromayday parades. Possibilities for action, collaboration and
cooperation.
- Talking about Flexicurity
How to move beyond reformism? Precarity movement is simply
reformist if it just has 'demands' for the European Union or the
national governments! What is the vision and practice of
flexicurity? Precarity movement is simply conservative and
backward looking if it seeks a return to the wellfare state!
But what is the alternative vision and the best practices that
guide us towards a good life?
Background
==========
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precarity
- Euromayday.org
- Mute Magazine Precarious Reader issue
- Republicart Precariat issue
- Chainworders.org
- Franco "Bifo" Berardi: Art and Immaterial Labour at the Radical
Philosophy Conference London
- Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of
Human Feeling. London: University of California Press, 1983.
- Precarious Bourdieu, Pierre. Job insecurity is everywhere now. In: Firing
back: against the tyranny of the market 2. London & New York:
Verso, 2003.
- Boltanski, Luc & Chiapello, Eve. The new spirit of
capitalism. London & New York: Verso Books, 2005.
- Gorz, André. Les Métamorphoses du travail. Paris:
Gallimard-Jeunesse, 1999.
maxigas@anargeek.net, Militant Research Group Budapest
Δευτέρα 21 Ιουλίου 2008
new book addresses PGA
One of the chapters deals with structure and process in the European PGA network based on my work with the Movement for Global Resistance (MRG) in Barcelona in 2001-2002. I hope this might be relevant to current debates.
Here's a description:
Networking Futures provides an ethnographic account of the cultural practice and politics of transnational networking among anti-corporate globalization activists based in Barcelona with a particular focus on the links between digital technologies, new forms of organization, and emerging political imaginaries. It also explores network organizing, performative protest, and violence during mass direct actions.
For more information or to order the book, see below and/or go to:
www.networkingfutures.com
The book can also be ordered from www.dukeupress.edu or www.amazon.com.
Blurb from the Publisher:
Since the first worldwide protests inspired by Peoples’ Global Action (PGA)— including the mobilization against the November 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle—anti–corporate globalization activists have staged direct action protests against multilateral institutions in cities such as Prague, Barcelona, Genoa, and Cancun. Barcelona is a critical node, as Catalan activists have played key roles in the more radical PGA network and the broader World Social Forum process.
In 2001 and 2002, the anthropologist Jeffrey S. Juris participated in the
Barcelona-based Movement for Global Resistance, one of the most influential anti–corporate globalization networks in Europe. Juris took part in hundreds of meetings, gatherings, protests, and online discussions. Those experiences form the basis of Networking Futures, an innovative ethnography of transnational activist networking within the movements against corporate globalization. In an account full of activist voices and on-the-ground detail, he explains how activists are not only responding to growing poverty, inequality, and environmental devastation but also building social laboratories for the production of alternative values, discourses, and practices.
Praise for the Book:
“Networking Futures is one of the very first books to map in detail the multiple networks that are challenging corporate globalization. Taking as a point of departure an exemplary case—the Catalan anti–globalization movements of the past decade—Jeffrey S. Juris moves on to chronicle the collective struggles to construct not only an alternative vision of possible worlds but the means to bring them about.
Networking Futures is a compelling portrait of the spirit of innovation that lies behind an array of progressive mobilizations, from anarchist movements and street protests to the World Social Forum. Based on a well-developed notion of collaborative ethnography, it is also a wonderful example of engaged scholarship: a much-needed alternative to academic work as usual.”
-Arturo Escobar, author of Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes
“Jeffrey S. Juris gives us an illuminating model for how to study networks from below using the tools of ethnography. And in the process he reveals the extraordinary power (as well as the challenges) of network organizing for social movements today.”
-Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire and Multitude
“Networking Futures is a terrific, deeply informed ethnographic account of the origins and activities of the anti–corporate globalization movement. Jeffrey S. Juris’s identity is as much that of an activist who happens to be doing first-rate anthropology as vice versa, and there is much for anthropologists to reflect on in the way that this work is set up and narrated through these dual identities.”
-George E. Marcus, co-author of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary
About the Author:
Jeffrey S. Juris is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University. He is a co-author of Global Democracy and the World Social Forums and has published numerous articles in both scholarly journals and activist research forums. He also serves on the Editorial Board of Resistance Studies Magazine and has taken part in numerous direct action-oriented groups and networks, including the Movement for Global Resistance in
Barcelona. His new fieldwork explores the relationship between grassroots media activism and autonomy in Mexico City.
Here's a description:
Networking Futures provides an ethnographic account of the cultural practice and politics of transnational networking among anti-corporate globalization activists based in Barcelona with a particular focus on the links between digital technologies, new forms of organization, and emerging political imaginaries. It also explores network organizing, performative protest, and violence during mass direct actions.
For more information or to order the book, see below and/or go to:
www.networkingfutures.com
The book can also be ordered from www.dukeupress.edu or www.amazon.com.
Blurb from the Publisher:
Since the first worldwide protests inspired by Peoples’ Global Action (PGA)— including the mobilization against the November 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle—anti–corporate globalization activists have staged direct action protests against multilateral institutions in cities such as Prague, Barcelona, Genoa, and Cancun. Barcelona is a critical node, as Catalan activists have played key roles in the more radical PGA network and the broader World Social Forum process.
In 2001 and 2002, the anthropologist Jeffrey S. Juris participated in the
Barcelona-based Movement for Global Resistance, one of the most influential anti–corporate globalization networks in Europe. Juris took part in hundreds of meetings, gatherings, protests, and online discussions. Those experiences form the basis of Networking Futures, an innovative ethnography of transnational activist networking within the movements against corporate globalization. In an account full of activist voices and on-the-ground detail, he explains how activists are not only responding to growing poverty, inequality, and environmental devastation but also building social laboratories for the production of alternative values, discourses, and practices.
Praise for the Book:
“Networking Futures is one of the very first books to map in detail the multiple networks that are challenging corporate globalization. Taking as a point of departure an exemplary case—the Catalan anti–globalization movements of the past decade—Jeffrey S. Juris moves on to chronicle the collective struggles to construct not only an alternative vision of possible worlds but the means to bring them about.
Networking Futures is a compelling portrait of the spirit of innovation that lies behind an array of progressive mobilizations, from anarchist movements and street protests to the World Social Forum. Based on a well-developed notion of collaborative ethnography, it is also a wonderful example of engaged scholarship: a much-needed alternative to academic work as usual.”
-Arturo Escobar, author of Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes
“Jeffrey S. Juris gives us an illuminating model for how to study networks from below using the tools of ethnography. And in the process he reveals the extraordinary power (as well as the challenges) of network organizing for social movements today.”
-Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire and Multitude
“Networking Futures is a terrific, deeply informed ethnographic account of the origins and activities of the anti–corporate globalization movement. Jeffrey S. Juris’s identity is as much that of an activist who happens to be doing first-rate anthropology as vice versa, and there is much for anthropologists to reflect on in the way that this work is set up and narrated through these dual identities.”
-George E. Marcus, co-author of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary
About the Author:
Jeffrey S. Juris is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University. He is a co-author of Global Democracy and the World Social Forums and has published numerous articles in both scholarly journals and activist research forums. He also serves on the Editorial Board of Resistance Studies Magazine and has taken part in numerous direct action-oriented groups and networks, including the Movement for Global Resistance in
Barcelona. His new fieldwork explores the relationship between grassroots media activism and autonomy in Mexico City.
Πέμπτη 10 Ιουλίου 2008
12 JULY/G8: International call for solidarity actions against G8 repressions
International call for solidarity actions against G8 repressions
http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4617/index.php
public domain This work is in the public domain.
Free Arrests! Protest against police state & capitalist summit!
Take simultaneous actions on Saturday 12th July.
watch a video record:
rootless.org/noG8/Declare_Independence.m4v
3 of our friends unjustly arrested at the demonstration against G8
summit on 5th July. One of the arrested is actually an indymedia
activist who is organizing sound actions and a member of G8 Media
Network which is organized by non-profit and non-govermental various
grassroots media. The exerciser of overwhelming violence was the police.
For instance, they stopped the track forcely, broke the window with
policeman’s club etc, and dragged out the driver while hanging him. This
situation was exposed as Japanese police brutality again, reported by
independent media.
While most of Japanese media coverage focusing around the summit, one of
homeless activists in Osaka had quietly, unfairly arrested on 4th.
Alleged that his mobile phone ownership and user was different in name.
Even though his group from Osaka had been planned to come and join the
poverty & labour unit of couter G8 Action Network but they cannot in
order to resucue him just after the liberation of another one who was
also arrested by tiny bureaucratic mistake last month. All of them are
unreasonably trivial things. Suppression of dissent, obviously.
We denounce suppression to the sound demonstration and homeless
activists by the police, and demand immediate releasing of all. On 12th
July, simultaneous protest actions will be taken 3pm in Sapporo, Tokyo,
Osaka, etc. against police capitalism. Call for international
solidarity! Take actions simultaneously! Protest against unjust arrests,
police violence and capitalist summit.
July5th Relief Association for Sapporo Sound Demonstration
in solidarity with indymedia japan.
j5solidarity (at) riseup.net
j5solidarity.blog116.fc2.com/
tv.g8medianetwork.org/
japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4602/
japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4604/
Related
* http://j5solidarity.blog116.fc2.com/
* http://tv.g8medianetwork.org/?q=ja/node/301
News :: G8 Summit, FTA
Final statement by international activists
public domainThis work is in the public domain.
[Media G8way]
Press Release July 9th 2008
* Hundreds join Ainu march
* International Activists Call for Support for Japanese Prisoners
* Final statement by international activists
Today, in the concluding event of ten days of G8 protests, hundreds of
activists from three protest camps marched in a demonstration organized
by the Ainu, a disenfranchised indigenous population of Hokkaido, the
island where the G8 summit is being held. The march was surrounded by
several rows of police the entire time. Protesters were holding signs in
English and Japanese saying "No G8", and "Japan is a police state".
"The Japanese government's policies towards the Ainu are symbolic of the
G8's policies of dominance and oppression throughout the world", said
Japanese organizers.
"At some point, my friend and I, frustrated with the police, went across
the street where there was a sign welcoming participants to the G8
summit. We started breaking and tearing it," says Jone, a US activist.
"Police held us and tried to arrest us, but other demonstrators came to
help and manged to take us away from the police."
At 16:00, the following statement, made by international activists from
Toyoura camp, was made public in a press conference:
„Three of our friends were arrested on July 5th and have been in state
custody
for four days. The Japanese criminal justice system allows for inhumane
treatment of prisoners. Those detained can be held for 23 days without
prosecution, and their families harassed. Furthermore, the Japanese
legal system imposes collective punishment; organizers can be punished
for activities that others did. Within jail, prisoners` physical
movements are greatly restricted: they must ask permission to lie down,
sit up, etc. In many other countries, this treatment would be considered
torture.
The only way for the eight heads of state to maintain their undemocratic
and unaccountable control over the world`s six billion people is through
force. The oppressive policies of the Japanese state clearly illustrate
this.
We call on people around the world to show solidarity with the three
anti-G8 Japanese prisoners. Demonstrate in front of your Japanese
embassies. Help fund legal suppport for the prisoners. Come next year to
protest the G8 in Italy, to make sure oppression does not silence our
voices“.
--
Media G8way is an international press service for individuals, groups,
networks and (dis)organizations who understand themselves to be part of
an independent radical left/@ movement against the G8. Media G8way does
not claim responsibility for the content of the statements it
distributes on behalf of the groups or individuals who use its service.
See
* www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/MediaG8way_Hokkaido
* www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/MediaG8way_Heiligendamm
http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4617/index.php
public domain This work is in the public domain.
Free Arrests! Protest against police state & capitalist summit!
Take simultaneous actions on Saturday 12th July.
watch a video record:
rootless.org/noG8/Declare_Independence.m4v
3 of our friends unjustly arrested at the demonstration against G8
summit on 5th July. One of the arrested is actually an indymedia
activist who is organizing sound actions and a member of G8 Media
Network which is organized by non-profit and non-govermental various
grassroots media. The exerciser of overwhelming violence was the police.
For instance, they stopped the track forcely, broke the window with
policeman’s club etc, and dragged out the driver while hanging him. This
situation was exposed as Japanese police brutality again, reported by
independent media.
While most of Japanese media coverage focusing around the summit, one of
homeless activists in Osaka had quietly, unfairly arrested on 4th.
Alleged that his mobile phone ownership and user was different in name.
Even though his group from Osaka had been planned to come and join the
poverty & labour unit of couter G8 Action Network but they cannot in
order to resucue him just after the liberation of another one who was
also arrested by tiny bureaucratic mistake last month. All of them are
unreasonably trivial things. Suppression of dissent, obviously.
We denounce suppression to the sound demonstration and homeless
activists by the police, and demand immediate releasing of all. On 12th
July, simultaneous protest actions will be taken 3pm in Sapporo, Tokyo,
Osaka, etc. against police capitalism. Call for international
solidarity! Take actions simultaneously! Protest against unjust arrests,
police violence and capitalist summit.
July5th Relief Association for Sapporo Sound Demonstration
in solidarity with indymedia japan.
j5solidarity (at) riseup.net
j5solidarity.blog116.fc2.com/
tv.g8medianetwork.org/
japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4602/
japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/4604/
Related
* http://j5solidarity.blog116.fc2.com/
* http://tv.g8medianetwork.org/?q=ja/node/301
News :: G8 Summit, FTA
Final statement by international activists
public domainThis work is in the public domain.
[Media G8way]
Press Release July 9th 2008
* Hundreds join Ainu march
* International Activists Call for Support for Japanese Prisoners
* Final statement by international activists
Today, in the concluding event of ten days of G8 protests, hundreds of
activists from three protest camps marched in a demonstration organized
by the Ainu, a disenfranchised indigenous population of Hokkaido, the
island where the G8 summit is being held. The march was surrounded by
several rows of police the entire time. Protesters were holding signs in
English and Japanese saying "No G8", and "Japan is a police state".
"The Japanese government's policies towards the Ainu are symbolic of the
G8's policies of dominance and oppression throughout the world", said
Japanese organizers.
"At some point, my friend and I, frustrated with the police, went across
the street where there was a sign welcoming participants to the G8
summit. We started breaking and tearing it," says Jone, a US activist.
"Police held us and tried to arrest us, but other demonstrators came to
help and manged to take us away from the police."
At 16:00, the following statement, made by international activists from
Toyoura camp, was made public in a press conference:
„Three of our friends were arrested on July 5th and have been in state
custody
for four days. The Japanese criminal justice system allows for inhumane
treatment of prisoners. Those detained can be held for 23 days without
prosecution, and their families harassed. Furthermore, the Japanese
legal system imposes collective punishment; organizers can be punished
for activities that others did. Within jail, prisoners` physical
movements are greatly restricted: they must ask permission to lie down,
sit up, etc. In many other countries, this treatment would be considered
torture.
The only way for the eight heads of state to maintain their undemocratic
and unaccountable control over the world`s six billion people is through
force. The oppressive policies of the Japanese state clearly illustrate
this.
We call on people around the world to show solidarity with the three
anti-G8 Japanese prisoners. Demonstrate in front of your Japanese
embassies. Help fund legal suppport for the prisoners. Come next year to
protest the G8 in Italy, to make sure oppression does not silence our
voices“.
--
Media G8way is an international press service for individuals, groups,
networks and (dis)organizations who understand themselves to be part of
an independent radical left/@ movement against the G8. Media G8way does
not claim responsibility for the content of the statements it
distributes on behalf of the groups or individuals who use its service.
See
* www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/MediaG8way_Hokkaido
* www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/MediaG8way_Heiligendamm
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