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agricultural workers and peasants

UNDROP Alive and Kicking: Zainal Arafin Fuad - SPI - Indonesia

UNDROP Alive and Kicking: Ramona Dominiciou - Ecoruralis - Romania

UNDROP Alive and Kicking: Jessie MacInnis – NFU – Canada

UNDROP Alive and Kicking: David Otieno - Kenyan Peasants League - Kenya

UNDROP Alive and Kicking: Pramesh Pokharel - All Nepal Peasant's Federation - Nepal

UNDROP Alive and Kicking: Alberto Silva - Uniterre – Switzerland

Hugo Blanco: A man who loved humanity and Mother Earth

By staff - La Via Campesina, June 30, 2023

Latin America sows a great soul, who defended the rights of the peasantry, indigenous peoples and Mother Earth, founded the National Agrarian Confederation (CNA) and made the long-awaited Agrarian Reform in Peru a reality.

(Bagnonet, June 26, 2023) La Vía Campesina recognizes the enormous political, social and humanist legacy of our comrade Hugo Blanco, a Peruvian and internationalist, who died yesterday in Sweden. His militancy and commitment marked the organization of peasant farmers for agrarian reform in the 20th century, not only in Peru, but also throughout Latin America.

Hugo participated in the fight for the first agrarian reform in Peru, organizing peasants and indigenous people in the early 1960s in the semi-tropical zone of the department of Cusco, more specifically in the province called La Convención and in the district of Lares to the south of the country, where coffee, tea and cocoa are grown. He denounced the exploitation and slave labor experienced by the peasantry, who were forced to work free in days of up to more than 12 hours a day, including women and children.

He was sentenced by the Peruvian justice to the death penalty, which he managed to avoid due to a strong international campaign of solidarity, but he spent nearly 7 years in prison and had to live several years in exile as well. “When I entered the room to be judged, and saw my comrades after three years in prison, I yelled: Earth or Death! That was our slogan. They responded: We will win!” He commented in an interview conducted in 2018, and added, “some said that it was Hugo Blanco’s agrarian reform, but it was not Hugo Blanco’s agrarian reform, because when it happened I was already in prison, it was the peasantry in struggle as a whole that conquered the land.”

Throughout his militancy, Hugo understood that the struggle and the need for the organization was even broader, not only against the latifundio, but against neoliberalism, capitalism and transnationals. So he became a tireless defender and staunch critic of extractivism and the depredation of Mother Earth. He accompanied marches, walks, crossed and toured the entire country defending the rights and dignity of the peoples of the countryside and cities.

“In the past, the struggle was to have land, work and farm. Now that neoliberalism acts and fiercely attacks nature, our fight has changed to the defense of mother earth, of pacha mama, that is the fundamental fight of now. Before I fought to socialize the land, today I have to fight for the maintenance of the human species” he commented.

For La Vía Campesina, Hugo Blanco is today a native seed, with an enormous potential for life, which inspired and will continue to inspire many generations in Peru and in the world. His legacy and commitment will endure in the struggle, in the organization and in the collective memory, because ideas do not die, like seeds multiply, grow and bear fruit.

“There are men that fight one day and are good. There are others that fight for a year and are better. Some fight for many years and are very good. But there are those who fight all their lives: those are the essentials» Bertolt Brecht

La Via Campesina and ECVC express their dismay at the authoritarian drift in France

By staff - La Via Campesina, June 28, 2023

Bagnolet | 28 June 2023: Instead of finding real answers to the environmental, social and democratic crises, the French government is choosing to imprison activists and ban movements critical of the extractivist agro-industrial model.

On 21 June, the French government announced the dissolution of the movement Les Soulèvements de la Terre, which campaigns against land and water grabbing and the destruction of ecosystems. That same week, dozens of activists were arrested by the anti-terrorist police, on the pretext that they had taken part in demonstrations against mega-basins, extractivist industries or agro-industry and its pollution. On June 28th, two peasant trade unionists from the Confédération Paysanne, Nicolas Girod and Benoît Jaunet, along with Julien LeGuet, spokesperson for the collective Bassines non merci, were arrested by the police for their involvement in organizing these collective gatherings as representatives of their respective organizations. They were released later in the day but received court summonses for the month of September. Such acts of repression against legitimate protests are unacceptable and unjust, creating a negative precedent and seeking to intimidate all defenders of fundamental rights. In this context it seems that the FNSEA, a French farmers’ union, has also been calling for the dissolution of La Confédération Paysanne.

We, La Via Campesina and European Coordination Via Campesina, stand together with our member organisation in France, La Confédération Paysanne. We firmly reject these threats and will act decisively in Europe and around the world to ensure that La Confédération Paysanne and its members can continue to defend peasant agriculture and its workers.

We express our support for Les Soulèvements de la Terre (the Uprisings of the Earth ). These tens of thousands of young people mobilising to ensure land and water are shared fairly, which is an expression of the acute sense of responsibility that young people have in the face of social inequalities and the destruction of ecosystems.

We call on the French Government to cease its violations of human rights, and in particular of the rights recognised in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Rural Workers (UNDROP), such as freedom of thought, opinion and expression, freedom of association and the right to participation.

We call on our member organisations and allied organisations to mobilise in support of the
Confédération Paysanne and social movements in France, in particular by sending letters to French embassies and the French government and by organising rallies in front of French embassies.

France: Confederation Paysanne and CETIM echo UN Expert group’s concern about criminalization of social movements by the French State.

By staff - La Via Campesina, June 17, 2023

UN EXPERTS’ COMMUNIQUE: Will the rights of trade unions and social and environmental movements be respected by the French government?

On 15 June 2023, seven independent experts from the United Nations expressed their concerni at allegations of excessive use of force during the recent demonstrations against pension reform and mega-water basin projects in France.

“Lack of restraint in the use of force against members of civil society who are peacefully demanding their participation in decision-making processes concerning their future, access to natural resources, protection of human rights, dignity and equality, would not only be anti-democratic, but deeply worrying for the rule of law”, the experts said.

The Confédération Paysanne and CETIM welcome this position and call on the French government to heed these warnings. The concerns expressed are in line with those we voiced in our submission to the UN experts on the occasion of the International Day of Peasant Struggles (17 April). Indeed, mega-basin projects are being carried out at the expense of the right to water of all peasants in the territories because they reinforce the problem of drought and the increasing scarcity of access to water. Peasant organizations and other sectors of civil society have mobilized to question these projects and demand respect for human and environmental rights, suffering unprecedented repression.

This communique from the UN experts has a very particular resonance, given that mobilizations are continuing around water and land issues in many areas, and at a time when the criminalization and repression of these mobilizations and of trade unions and social and environmental movements are still the order of the day.

Human rights issues, and more specifically the rights to water, food, freedom of expression and demonstration, cannot be scorned and repressed in this way. We cannot accept the threats to dissolve the Soulèvements de la Terre movement. In view of the above, we urge the French authorities to honour their international human rights commitments, as recalled by the UN experts.

The Confédération Paysanne is continuing its trade union action to obtain a moratorium on mega-basin projects and for the establishment of a dialogue on the management and sharing of water in France, a sine qua non for the respect of human rights.

It’s Danger Season and Workers Need Heat Safety Protections Now; UPS Knows It

By Alicia Race - Union of Concerned Scientists, June 15, 2023

What would be the largest single-employer strike in US history may soon be avoided if UPS and the Teamsters union reach an agreement on adding life-saving cooling equipment in more than 90,000 fleet vehicles. UPS is the largest employer here in Louisville, Kentucky, so a strike would have serious implications for the metro region as well as on the entire US economy. UPS workers are asking for protection just as Danger Season has started and the summer is predicted to be hotter than usual. While the cooling equipment is one piece of the worker negotiations, it’s a crucial piece–worker heat protections save lives and are worth fighting like hell for.

My dad often works outdoors in extreme temperatures, so I feel for every single worker and family whose lives have been or could be devastated by preventable heat illness or fatalities.

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