Today's Topics:
1. Piotr Riabov is deported by the Belarusian authorities and
banned from entering the country for 10 years By ANA (pt)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Alternative Libertaire - interview, Jordi Martí
Font (Catalan CGT): "This movement can crack the wall of power"
(fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. black rose fed: STOP ROHINGYA GENOCIDE! By BRRN External
Communications-International Relations Comittee (EC-IRC)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. awsm.nz: Indonesian Port Workers Under Attack
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. wsm.ie: Sojourner Truth - AIN'T I A WOMAN? - address to 1851
Women's Convention in Ohio (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Piotr Riabov was released from Baranovichi prison and escorted on a train to Smolensk (
Russian city, near the border with Belarus ) on Monday (16/10), around 9 pm local time .
The Department of Citizenship and Migration of the local police decided to deport Riabov
and prohibit him from entering Belarus for 10 years. ---- It was also reported that at the
station in Baranovichi was arrested local human rights activist Alexander Voyteshika, who
accompanied Riabov. He was probably arrested for filming the cops escorting Riabov. ----
Remembering ---- The Russian philosopher, historian and anarchist Piotr Riabov traveled to
Belarus to speak, but his lecture at Gródno was invaded by police on 9 October. He and the
audience present at the event were arrested and then released. But when he was preparing
to return to Moscow on October 10, he was arrested. Subsequently, on October 11, he was
sentenced to 6 days in prison for "dissemination of extremist material". In protest he
went on hunger strike.
Source: https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpramen.io%2Fru%2F2017%2F10%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ccreuzadema%40hotmail.com%7C03201bdf372d4e17969108d519fe5471%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636443502487203821&sdata=x2bfJns4GZ%2B81XNHd3ngRsAnZp0UESkVBMMLvM6pS1I%3D&reserved=0 petr-rabau-departavany-z- belarusi-na-10-god /
Related Content:
https: // newsartists. noblogs.org/post/2017/10/11/ belarusian-anarchist-russian-
arrested-on-strike-on-hunger /
anarchist-ana news agency
little fingers
of raindrops
massage the earth
Carlos Seabra
------------------------------
Message: 2
Jordi Martí Font is a teacher in Tarragona. Author of numerous works on the libertarian
movement, he militates, as antimilitarist and anarcho-syndicalist, in the CGT.
Independent, he is a member of the CUP (party of the far left Catalan). He answers our
questions about the events that preceded the referendum on self-determination in
Catalonia. ---- Alternative Libertaire: Could you go back to the context of recent years
that led to the referendum of 1 st October in Catalonia ? ---- Jordi Martí Font: In
recent years millions of people have taken to the streets to demand independence, every
September 11th [1]. ---- The expression of an independence movement, linked to the social
left, has existed since the 1970s is after Catalanism, as such, which dates from the late
XIX th century. Nevertheless, this mass expression in favor of independence is relatively
recent. It is a movement, certainly, interclassist. It nevertheless covers a true social
dimension with in-depth proposals, both in the daily life and in the social structure of
Catalonia. It is this social and alternative dimension, and partly anticapitalist, that
makes this movement so massive today with real roots among the popular classes.
Your trade union, the Catalan CGT, is one of the organizations that is at the initiative
of the general strike of October 3rd. What is your assessment of this day of action ?
Jordi Martí Font: The strike was very well followed. It was, in fact, the natural response
of the organizations of the social movement to the repression perpetrated by the Madrid
government the week preceding the referendum.
A repression that took various forms: transfer of 10,000 police officers from the entire
Spanish state to the scene ; detention of officials of the Catalan government ; arbitrary
closure of over 140 pro-independence web pages ; attempted intrusion of police forces into
the premises of the Catalan radical left, the CUP - an abortive attempt by mobilizing the
people who blocked to protect the headquarters of the CUP.
One element also particularly affected public opinion: it was the extreme violence of the
National Police and the Guardia Civil (Gendarmerie) with regard to people of all ages
present in the colleges where voting took place the 1 st of October.
In spite of this brutality, which has caused more than 900 wounded, more than 2 million
inhabitants and inhabitants of Catalonia managed to vote " yes " to the establishment of
a " Catalan Republic ".
The strike is part of this context and was called by the CGT, but also by the independent
trade unions (IAC and COS), branch unions (firemen, farmers, dockworkers) as well as by
many organizations of the libertarian movement (CNT, Solidaridad Obrera, Embat, among others).
After the demonstrations in Barcelona and Madrid on Sunday, October 8, against the process
of independence, but also the threats government of the Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, of
putting under trusteeship of Catalonia, how do you think that the situation will evolve ?
Jordi Martí Font: If the pressure of the street remains, it is obvious that all hopes are
allowed. If, on the other hand, it falls and popular anger is diverted (as was the case in
the past) by the PDCAT, the Liberal right party, from which Carles Puigdemont, the
president of the Catalan government , I am less optimistic.
The liberal nationalist right will then conclude, undoubtedly, an agreement with the
government of Madrid, which will satisfy the Spanish and Catalan elites. I dare hope that
this is the first option that will prevail, as the determination of the people seems
marked by their intransigence. The 1 er October, while the Civil Guard attacked polling
stations, thousands of people have made front with their bodies, applying the principles
of nonviolence.
We were beaten with a truncheon and beat us blind. Women, men, old, children were abused.
But no one has backed away.
In my polling station in Tarragona, before the assault, we warned the people present that
the blows were going to rain. We advised the most vulnerable to step back to protect
themselves. Categorical refusal of the oldest: they wanted to stay there in the front line.
We are convinced that this movement can crack the wall of power. And we will grow until he
yields. This type of situation where one has the feeling that one can change the course of
history, life, happens only once every 100 years. Today it is in Catalonia that this
happens and we will not miss this historic opportunity.
Seen from the outside it may seem strange that libertarians, anti-States like us, can be
neck and neck with people who mobilize for an independent Catalonia. I invite you to set
foot on our land, and you will certainly understand the depth of our struggle. A struggle
marked by the seal of self-organization, streets that live and cry out for their desire
for freedom.
Comments received by Jérémie Berthuin (AL Gard)
[1] On September 11 is National Day of Catalonia, in memory of the fall of Barcelona in
front of the Bourbon army, September 11, 1714, during the War of Spanish Succession .
https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alternativelibertaire.org%2F%3FJordi-Marti-Font-CGT-catalane-Ce-mouvement-peut-fissurer-le-mur-du-pouvoir&data=02%7C01%7Ccreuzadema%40hotmail.com%7C03201bdf372d4e17969108d519fe5471%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636443502487203821&sdata=RSbgPaZsvWDvJm6Dq7WVRgV4VLjFm7so47%2Bw%2FF9hGf4%3D&reserved=0
------------------------------
Message: 3
The Burmese military that effectively rules the Southeast Asian State of Myanmar is
currently engaged in a campaign of intensifying genocide against the country's Rohingya
minority. Of the 1 million Rohingyas who were estimated to have lived in Myanmar's
northwestern Rakhine State before this newest episode of ethnic cleansing, approximately
one thousand have been killed and over a half-million displaced in the past two months.
These Rohingya refugees, many of whom are women and children, have fled the brutal
scorched-earth tactics of the Burmese State for neighboring Bangladesh-although over
100,000 remain internally displaced in Rakhine in perilous conditions. ---- The Rohingyas
of Burma ---- The dispossessed Rohingyas have confronted mass-murder, torture, and sexual
assault and had their homes torched and their crops destroyed. Scores of villages have
been burnt to the ground. In addition, the Burmese military has installed a series of
landmines adjacent to the Naf River that divides Myanmar from Bangladesh, both to harm
those fleeing and to dissuade their return. Why has this happened?
Many observers point to the ethno-religious aspects of this oppressive dynamic. Whereas
the Burmese State is largely controlled by majority ethnic Bamars who are Buddhists, the
Rohingya minority-considered by the State to be "Bengalis," as from the region of Bengal
that spans India and Bangladesh-are mostly Muslim, with a Hindu minority. While Islam and
Buddhism are not mutually hostile to each other, such fault-lines as differing religious
identities have been used in this case to prepare and ultimate rationalize the ongoing
genocide. British colonialism-with its logic of racialization and bordering-prepared the
groundwork for the atrocities unfolding today, as imperialists used Rohingyas during the
war against Japan and even at one point promised them independence, a promise later
revoked. Since its 1962 takeover in the early post-colonial period following Burmese
independence from Britain in 1948, the military has promoted Buddhist nationalism as an
ideal and excluded many of the country's ethnic minorities, none more than the Rohingya.
In 1974, the State identified all Rohingyas as foreigners; in 1982, it formally revoked
their collective citizenship.
Military "Clearance Operations"
Over the past half-century, the State has systematically starved, enslaved, and massacred
the Rohingya people. In response, between the 1970s and August 2017, an estimated 1
million Rohingyas fled Burma/Myanmar, with 168,000 refugees crossing State borders between
2012 and August 2017. In violation of international law, Rohingya refugees have been
forcibly repatriated to Rakhine several times over the past 40 years. This time, however,
the ethnic cleansing appears to be meant to be final.
In his report on an October 2017 meeting with the U.S. ambassador, General Min Aung
Hlaing, the Burmese commander accused of ordering the ongoing atrocities, falsifies
history by claiming that the Rohingyas are "not native" but rather foreigners who were
introduced to the country by British imperialism. Such a self-serving account overlooks
the historical presence of Muslims in Rakhine since at least the fifteenth century and
conveniently erases the cosmopolitan past in which Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists
coexisted without war. Ominously, Aung Hlaing has publicly declared that the ongoing
"clearance operations" are meant to resolve "unfinished business" from Burma's
independence. For her part, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, the former political
prisoner and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, is entirely complicit in these
crimes, given her guarding of silence on the current crisis and her past rejection of the
idea that the State's military campaigns in Rakhine constitute ethnic cleansing.
The "Last Asian Frontier" to Capital
Yet however much responsibility for the Rohingya genocide rests with the Burmese military
and ruling class, capitalist and imperialist elements play important roles in the
oppression of the Rohingyas as well. The power of the Burmese State and military has grown
hand-in-hand with the expanding extraction of its fossil-fuel resources and the
accelerating opening-up of trade and investment in recent years. Having been relatively
unknown to global capitalism, Burma/Myanmar is sometimes considered the "last Asian
frontier" for capitalist models of plantation agriculture, deforestation, mega-mining, and
the super-exploitation of labor.
Over the past two decades, the State has dispossessed millions of Buddhist peasants of
their land to make way for corporate-extractivist projects, and before the current crisis
erupted, the State had already awarded a million hectares in Rakhine for "corporate
development" schemes. In northern Rakhine, moreover, the State has plans to establish a
"special economic zone" with Chinese investors to construct oil and gas pipelines to the
tune of $10 billion. When one considers that all burnt land in Burma reverts to State
property, the meaning of its military's "clearing operations" against the Rohingyas
becomes clearer. The ferocity of the State's response to the coordinated guerrilla attacks
by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 40 Burmese police stations and a military
base in Rakhine on August 25, which provoked the current wave of mass-displacement, shows
that the ARSA attack is only a pretext for the State to implement its broadly genocidal
designs.
Courtesy Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera
International Complicity in Genocide
Since 1990, China, Russia, Israel, and former Yugoslavian countries have been Burma's
major arms suppliers, while the UK provides training to the Burmese military. In fact, in
September 2017, the Israeli State argued before the High Court of Justice that ethics have
no place in business or international relations, and that no restrictions should be placed
on Israeli arms sales to Burmese security forces. Although the U.S. and the European Union
currently observe an embargo on trade in weapons with the country, recent meetings between
EU leaders and General Min Aung Hlain suggest that this embargo may well be lifted soon in
the interests of profitability.
Moreover, recently at the United Nations, the Trump Regime cynically used accusations of
war crimes against the Rohingyas as leverage against the State's allies, China and Russia.
While it is clear that Trump has no actual interest in the Rohingyas as human beings, it
bears noting that the Obama administration helped legitimize Suu Kyi and the military
junta she serves by suspending sanctions against Burma following her party's electoral
victory in 2015. Of course, overcoming the "barrier" that such sanctions had represented
to the expansion of capital serves U.S. imperialist interests as well.
In closing, we condemn the State Terror that has targeted Rohingyas for four decades,
leading to the current genocidal catastrophe, and we express our solidarity with those
displaced both internally in Burma/Myanmar and as refugees in Bangladesh. We denounce all
imperialist and capitalist support for the Burmese junta, whether provided by the U.S.,
Israel, Russia, or China. We take inspiration from the mutual aid provided by Bangladeshis
to the Rohingya refugees, even as that country confronts mass-inundation and disappearance
due to rising sea levels that result from capital-induced climate change. We look forward
to the potential unification of peasantry and working class across ethnic lines against
the Burmese State, and we demand justice.
Never again! Stop Rohingya genocide!
For more information:
Message to the world from Nasima Khatun, a Rohingya (Al Jazeera, 17 Sept. 2017)
Message to the world from Noor Kajol, a Rohingya (Al Jazeera, 15 Sept. 2017)
Message to the world from Begum Jaan, a Rohingya (Al Jazeera, 12 Sept. 2017)
UN: Rohingya in Bangladesh need ‘massive' assistance (Al Jazeera, 24 Sept. 2017)
Al Jazeera releases virtual reality project on Rohingya (Al Jazeera, 28 Sept. 2017)
‘No pictures, no words can explain Rohingya plight' (Al Jazeera, 16 Oct. 2017)
https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblackrosefed.org%2Fstop-rohingya-genocide-2%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ccreuzadema%40hotmail.com%7C03201bdf372d4e17969108d519fe5471%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636443502487203821&sdata=wrgylfXJGFdjIrh3HmW3mRBf%2FnNcCvxkbRwHgO66ERU%3D&reserved=0
------------------------------
Message: 4
The port management company ICTSI (International Container Services Inc) is one of the top
five major maritime terminal operators in the world. As such the company makes huge annual
profits. At the moment ICTSI is attacking the wages and conditions of workers on the
waterfront in Jakarta, Indonesia. ---- The Port of Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta is the
largest container port in Indonesia, with half the total flow of goods in and out of the
country going through the port. Workers at the ICTSI terminal there are paid as little as
15% of the equivalent wages for workers at other container terminals in Indonesia. This
low pay means workers are forced to accept dangerously long shifts, just to earn a living
wage. Some have had to work 300 hours in overtime a month as part of this. These extreme
working hours put lives at risk .They have experienced threats, illegal underpayments,
illegal outsourcing of labour and attempts at union busting. As an example of the latter,
in March 2017 workers were called by the company. They were told to resign from their
union, or their contracts would not be renewed. Of the eight workers who refused to
resign, only three have had their contracts extended, whereas all those who resigned kept
their jobs.
The workers are not passively accepting the situation. There have been massive rallies and
strike action at the port by both truckers and port workers since 2016 and support has
been forthcoming from maritime workers in Australia in particular.
AWSM extends its solidarity to our fellow workers in Indonesia. We call upon workers and
their organisations to promote awareness of this issue as widely as possible and take
whatever actions of support they are able to, wherever they may be.
NOTES
For further information visit: https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.labourstart.org&data=02%7C01%7Ccreuzadema%40hotmail.com%7C03201bdf372d4e17969108d519fe5471%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636443502487203821&sdata=%2Bx68u2Im6ebI76Jk3xIEPp4LRIsIPZDU43bOHEH5%2Bg4%3D&reserved=0
https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.awsm.nz%2F2017%2F10%2F19%2Findonesian-port-workers-under-attack%2F&data=02%7C01%7Ccreuzadema%40hotmail.com%7C03201bdf372d4e17969108d519fe5471%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636443502487203821&sdata=FC6pwKm%2FiAg96DoRmO4rwQwM7kGjD1WlWs9o7NY8uW0%3D&reserved=0
------------------------------
Message: 5
This is the address given by Sojourner Truth to the US Womens Convention in Akron, Ohio
most often known as Ain't I A Woman. Sojourner was born into slavery in New York state
and after gaining her freedom through escape in 1826 she became an anti-slavery organiser
and speaker as well as a womens rights activist. The brief speech which linked her race &
gender can be considered a very early example of what is now called Intersectionality.
This Womens Convention was one of a number held in Ohio in this period demanding rights
for women producing a 'Declaration of Rights and Sentiments' signed by 100 women. ----
"Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I
think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about
rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over
ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or
over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my
arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And
ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and
bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most
all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard
me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it?[member of audience
whispers, "intellect"]That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or
negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be
mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men,
'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come
from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all
alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up
again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
Subject: Intersectionality
Topics: Gender, Migration / racism
Geography: International
Source: Library
Type: Analysis
Author: Sojourner Truth
https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsm.ie%2Fc%2Fsojourner-truth-aint-i-woman-address-1851-ohio&data=02%7C01%7Ccreuzadema%40hotmail.com%7C03201bdf372d4e17969108d519fe5471%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636443502487203821&sdata=IxLQFZ92kEmaF0%2Bgz2gWf4St%2FZuK3M9kqzw8yhwvErg%3D&reserved=0
------------------------------
Home »
» Anarchic update news all over the world - 23.10.2017