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This
is the call from the liaison group in Evian which
shall bring together scores of thousands of activists
from all over Euorpe to discuss how we can achieve
a better and fairer world for all our peoples across
the globe. Activists shall meet and hold demonstrations
and counter conferences against wars and the neo liberal
politics pushed and implemented by the G8 and their
ilk. Many from Ireland North and South whom have been
in Genoa right through to Florence will again mobilise
with citizens from across Euorpe to discuss and move
forward the movement which seen it mobilise the huge
coordinated international days of action against the
recent Imperialist war and now occupation of Iraq.
Demonstration
against the G-8!
The
G-8, which unites the world's seven richest countries
in addition to Russia, will hold its next summit in
France, at the town of Evian, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
of June. Created in 1975 to informally discuss financial
and economic question, this club of predominantly
rich and dominant states reflects the development
of a globalisation founded on the pursuit of profit
and conformed to the narrow interests of multinational
corporations. The recommendations of the G-8 are put
into practice by international institutions such as
the IMF and the World Bank; these few countries are
also the major shareholders of the World Trade Organisation.
The
G-8, in effect, asserts its function as a kind of
world government, a role for which the world's people
never asked of it. The G-8 thus illegitimately imposes
its will upon the world's order. The G-8 prescribes
neo-liberal policies that accelerate the concentration
of wealth, attack workers' rights, jeopardise employment,
lower living conditions for the vast majority of the
population, disrespect cultural differences, and harm
the environment. While G-8 member countries refuse
to seriously engage themselves in the fight against
accounting fraud, money laundering, and off-shore
havens, the G-8, under the auspices of the fight against
terrorism, attempts to justify war, militarism, and
repression. The G-8 claims to combat world poverty,
but its proposals for debt relief for poor countries
have proven totally insufficient and are tied to unacceptable
conditions. Furthermore, IMF policies continue to
drive countries, like Argentina, into bankruptcy,
market liberalisation under the aegis of the WTO each
day proves itself more and more unfavourable to the
countries of the southern hemisphere, and financial
contributions to help in the struggle against AIDS,
malaria, and other maladies are light years behind
what is needed and what has been promised. G-8 member
countries, finally, have taken no serious measures
to protect the environment. In the past fifteen years,
movements against the G-8 have multiplied. In Europe,
demonstrations against the G-8 took place in 1989
in Paris, 1996 in Lyon, 1998 in Birmingham, and 1999
in Cologne. Tens of thousands of demonstrators have
called for the cancellation of debt of poor countries,
and in 2001 hundreds of thousands of people protested
in Genoa in spite of the police repression that provoked
the death of Carlo Giuliani.
This
year, we are responsible for mobilizing ourselves
in mass against the G-8 using a broad-based approach
uniting citizens and activists from the local to the
global level. Whether we be group or political party
activists, union members, NGO workers, or, most importantly,
simple citizens, we will be in the street united by
our common demands, but respecting our differences,
because our diversity is our strength. We will mobilize
ourselves, together, for peace, against all wars or
military interventions, notably in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, in the Ivory Coast, in Colombia or Chechnya,
and against a western intervention in Iraq.
We
will denounce the illegitimacy of the G-8 and we will
demand that governments take immediate measures against
the fall in living standards, against all forms of
discrimination, especially those which affect women
and homosexuals, against all inequality, and for the
right to work and receive income, for a redistribution
of wealth, for a total cancellation of third world
debt, for the enforcement of every person's right
to travel and live where he wishes as well as the
access for all to the common goods of all humanity:
water, the sea, the land, food, housing, education,
culture, information, and access to health care and
medication.
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