[van-announce] March 12: Reports from Global Intifada

[No One is Illegal-Vancouver]

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REPORTBACKS FROM THE GLOBAL INTIFADA
Imperial crusades and resistance in Nepal, Mexico, Palestine and BC

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Saturday March 12 @ 3-6 pm
SFU Harbour Center
Room 1425
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* Abi Ghimire: Forum for People's Democracy in Nepal
* Billie Pierre and Wolverine: Indigenous Delegation to Mexico with Miriam
Hernandez, Mexican Political activist
* Khaled Barakat: Palestinian activist
* Dustin Johnson: Indigenous Student Society UBC


For more information 778-552-2099
Event supported by Native Youth Movement, No One is Illegal, South Asian
Network for Secularism and Democracy, Sociology and Anthropology Student
Union SFU.


IMPERIAL CRUSADES
..

IN NEPAL
..  In the Feb.1 royal coup by King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah of
Nepal, the purported rationale given was the inability of the Deuba
government to end the nine-year insurgency by the Communist Party of
Nepal-Maoist, who are fighting against social and economic IMF/WB-dictated
policies of neoliberalism, and the failure to organize parliamentary
elections. In an attempt to defeat the CPMN, more than 12,000 U.S. M-16s,
5,000 Belgium FLN sub-machine guns, and some 20,000 rifles from India have
filled the arsenals of the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) since 2001.
Organizations in Nepal have called for massive actions across the country
and around the world on March 14 to demand the withdrawal of the 1st
February Royal Proclamation, an immediate lifting of state of emergency,
removal of all unconstitutional restrictions on fundamental rights, and
release of all political prisoners to establish a democratic government of
Peoples' Representatives.


IN MEXICO
.  A new kind of US-backed coup d’etat is in the works to strip
Mexico City’s activist governor Andrés Manuel López Obrador of his right
to run for president in the July 2006 elections. In a Zapatista
communiqué: “In today’s Mexico, all the politicians
 without regard to the
color of the rhetoric that they spout will count with the stubborn
distrust of we, the Zapatistas, with our skepticism and incredulity

However
 we cannot endorse with our silence the dirty legal tricks with
which they are trying to stop the person who heads the Mexico City
government from presenting himself in 2006 as a presidential candidate
 It
would be, putting it in clearer terms, a ‘soft’ coup d’etat.” Also, in
2005, a report by the Human Rights Center in Chiapas documents the Policy
of genocide in the armed conflict in Chiapas, and a youth movement was
also launched in 2005, declaring its independence from all political
parties, vowing to organize horizontally and autonomously in every corner
of the Mexican Republic.


IN PALESTINE
.   The Palestinian elections, together with the Iraqi
elections that also took place in January, were hailed as a big victory
for democracy, with hardly any mention of the fact that in both places,
these were elections under occupation. The Sharm-el - Sheikh summit of
Sharon and Abbas is hailed in the Western media as the opening of a new
era. But the new peace plans are no more real than the previous ones, and
on the ground, the Palestinians are losing more of their land and are
being pushed into smaller and smaller prison enclaves, surrounded by the
new wall that Sharon's government keeps constructing. On the day of the
Sharm-el- Sheikh summit Israeli sources announced that even the illegal
outposts that Israel has committed to evacuate long ago will not be
evacuated until "after implementation of the disengagement from the Gaza
Strip".


IN BC

 With the onslaught of the Olympics, indigenous lands around BC are
being recolonized through mega-development projects and corporate deals.
Such mega-infrastructure projects, such as ski resorts and other sport
tourism projects, have resulted in the economic, environmental, and
physical displacement of indigenous communities. With industries like
fishing and logging in crisis, the games are being positioned as a 17-day
globally televised commercial for BC's new economy: winter tourism.  Last
year, the Forest Act of BC was amended in order to grant corporations
longer tenure to land and the means to transfer land between companies
without a community consultation process.




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