^Call to Action on @PRALER_News for Popular Student Assemblies^
To the people of Peru
Today, we extend a fraternal and combative greeting to the masses in Peru that are rising up against the civil-military dictatorship of illegitimate president, Dina Boluarte, who assumed the Presidency after Pedro Castillo was removed from office and imprisoned on the 7th December 2022, backed by the Peruvian oligarchy, the majority conservative congress, the courts, the military and police forces, mainstream media, transnational corporations, the National Confederation of Private Business Institutions (CONFIEP) and Western Imperialist forces like the U.S. Government.
We emphatically condemn the assassinations of our over 60 siblings in Peru who have been brutally murdered by the Peruvian elite and this military dictatorship, as they exercised their legal right to protest, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly that are enshrined under international law.
We express our full support for the Peruvian people, as they defend their peoples’ rights to self-determination, sovereignty and true democratic process that has been stripped from the majority of Indigenous, Andean, Amazon, worker and peasant peoples since the foundation of the Peruvian state 200 years ago. A state that, from its conception, was anti-indigenous and excluded the Peruvian masses, maintained a white-supremacist and classist system, in order to ensure that the territory would continue being subordinate to the interests of global capitalism and imperialism, for its continued plunder, extraction and political, social and cultural subjugation. It is for this reason that we back the popular push for a constituent assembly to draft a popular plurinational constitution in affront to the current neoliberal 1993 constitution imposed under dictator Fujimori. This would enshrine indigenous nations like the Quichua Nation, Aymara Nation, Awajun Nation, the Wampis Nation and the Shipibo-Konibo Xetebo Nation amongst others, in decision making processes and protect Peoples and Mother Earth rights.
We also see what is happening in Peru, as a symptom of the lack of sovereignty that our people have continentally, and thus the need for inter-communal action learning and dialogue between communities of resistance internationally and continentally in order to build up effective communities for self-defence that are capable of defending our rights to self-determination. Until there is an interconnected power-base our struggles will remain isolated and be picked off as we have seen in Bolivia and now as we see in Peru, and true revolutionary advancements, like the expropriation of the oligarchy, will be met with unmeasurable reactionary violence. We can learn from examples like the Pan-Afrikan movement that are pushing for continental unification with a plurinational internationalist framework, which has been conceptualised as Maatubuntumaan in Ubuntudunia.
Finally, we celebrate the necessary Planet Repairs stance that students and educational institutions have taken up to democratise and socialise education, acknowledging their role in serving the people, such as the National University of Engineering (UNI) in Lima and the General Assembly of the University of San Marcos that took over the university campus on the 18 January 2023. Both of these committed to provide refuge to communities that had mobilised to Lima from indigenous and rural communities across the country, to carry out their legal and democratic right to protest. These delegations and communities arrived to Lima on the 118th anniversary of the colonial foundation of the city, in perfect harmony with the ancestral fight to liberate the territory for the self-determination of our peoples, exemplified in Tupac Amaru II’s historic legacy of liberation. As José María Arguedas said “to the immense town of the Sires we have arrived and we are shaking things up”.
We strongly condemn the violent decision by director, Jeri Ramon, of the University of San Marcos, who betrayed the educational role of the institution and the physical integrity of the students, as she called on police forces to militarise the campus. We condemn the violence with which the National Police of Peru (PNP) intervened with tanks and armed forces in the campus on 21 January 2023, where they brutalised and assaulted students, graduates and protesters who were peacefully sheltering at the university campus and arbitrarily detained nearly 200 students, graduates and protesters. They also broke the University’s legal right to autonomy that is a Constitutional Right in Peru. This is a clear echo of the fascist violence of 21 May 1991 where Fujimori’s forces entered the institution and turned it into a military base in the context of grave human rights violations and the forced disappearance of students.
We see similarities between this criminality and that which has been perpetrated against the students of the Rural Normal Schools belonging to the Socialist Federation of Peasant Students of Mexico (FECSM) such as Ayotzinapa, Mactumactzá, Tiripetío and Teteles. And that perpetrated by Adam Habib at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, who had students shot at on campus for calling for free decolonial education; he now works at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The Ghana Educational Service (GES) is another culprit as it recently used scare tactics to silence and expel school children from the Chiana Senior High School in Ghana for exercising their right to demonstration. Instead of education training young people to be Global citizens capable of defending their indigenous, peoples' and Mother Earth rights, young people are being targeted and expelled from institutions and threatened with repression.
Internationally students and popular educational institutions should celebrate the heroes that are advancing our peoples education and condemn the criminals that try to impede it. It is for this reason that we hold up the brave students of the University of San Marcos, who liberated their campus in service of the people and the construction of a new popular democratic Peru, as exemplar students. We call on student bodies and educational institutions everywhere to do the same. Globally universities are being privatised and their campuses militarised in order to isolate students and academics from the masses, this must be stopped.
We also subscribe ourselves to the demands of students from the Professional School for Anthropology at the National University of Toribio Rodriguez de Mendoza in the Amazon, that necessarily call for an integral education that recognises our peoples’ histories and knowledges, and that is committed to advancing practical solutions to the crises we are experiencing today with the recognition of the active role educational institutions need to play in social change but also in producing knowledge, in line with communities, for the construction of a new social fabric towards true intercultural, participatory democratic processes. This is a necessary demand that should be brought forward by students, educators and educational institutions everywhere.
Globally reactionary violence is increasing, corrupt mis-leaders remain in power and our Mother Earth is under attack. But from Peru, to Mexico, to Colombia, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Mali and Palestine we are seeing our people rise up pushing forward new peoples plans for liberation. We must organise to isolate these corrupt governments and to stop the violation of the Constitutional and democratic rights of the people.
Siblings in Peru, we stand with you. Every drop of blood spilled is felt as if it were our own. We will never forgive nor forget.
We join the calls for Dina Boluarte to be removed from office, freedom for Pedro Castillo, for a referendum for a Popular Plurinational Constituent Assembly and the Resignation of the Board of Directors of Congress!
¡Hasta que la dignidad se haga costumbre!
¡Nunca más un mundo sin los pueblos!
Sincerely,
Planet Repairs Action Learning Educational Revolution (PRALER)
Majority World Internationalist Solidarity Coordinating Council of Communities of Resistance (MWISCCCOR)
26 January 2023
Collectives, Networks, Unions and Organisations that Endorse the Statement:
ABLODEDUNOVISIHA Gbetowo Global Union for Pan-Afrikan Community Regeneration (ABLODEDUNOVISIHA-GGUPACOR) (Ablodeduko, West Afrika)
ADZEWAGBETO Pan-Afrikan Women's Liberation Union (ADZEWAGBETO-PAWLU) (Ablodeduko, West Afrika)
Anticonquista
Aya Afrikan Learning Community (UK)
Bolivia Plurinacional CH (Switzerland)
Colectivo La Voz del Anáhuac Adherentes a la Sexta (Mexico)
Demilitarize University of Nottingham (UK)
Extinction Rebellion UBUNTUNOVISI Pan-Afrikan Affinity Bridge Network of Communities of Resistance (XR-UBUNTUNOVISI) (UK)
Frente por la Autodeterminación Che Guevara (Mexico)
Global Majority Vs. Campaign (UK)
Global Justice Forum (GJF) (UK)
Grassroots Women's Internationalist Solidarity Action Network (GWISAN) (Kolkata, India)
Grassroots South-North Internationalist Forum (GRASSNIF) (Accra, Ghana)
MAATUBUNTUBUSUAFO Pan-Afrikan Grassroots Network of Communities of Resistance (MAATUBUNTUBUSUAFO-PAGNOCOR) (Ablodeduko, West Afrika)
NEHANDANOVIWO Grassroots All-Afrikan Women's Internationalist Solidarity Sisterhood (NEHANDANOVIWO-GAAWISS)(Accra, Ghana)
Organización Revolución Milenials (Bolivia)
Planet Repairs Youth Positive Action Campaign (PRYPAC) (Delhi, India)
Racial Justice Network (UK)
Red Wiphalas / Wiphalas Network
Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores Académicos de la UNAM (Mexico)
Somos Semillas Institución de Educación Popular (UK)
Staff Student Solidarity Network (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) (UK)
Stroud in Internationalist Solidarity, Together for Earth Repair (SISTER) (UK)
Student Action for Global Justice Internationalist Solidarity (SAGJIS) (Delhi, India)
The Radical Youth Space for Educations (RYSE) (UK)
UMOJAFRIKA Youth and Student Movement for Afrikan Unity (UMOJAFRIKA-YASMAU) (Accra, Ghana)
University of Nottingham Left Society (UK)
University of Nottingham Solidarity Group (UK)
University of London, School of Oriental African Studies (SOAS) Detainee Support (UK)
University of London, School of Oriental African Studies (SOAS) Justice 4 Workers Campaign (UK)
University of London, School of Oriental African Studies (SOAS) Palestine Society (UK)
University of London, School of Oriental African Studies (SOAS) Solidarity (UK)
University of Warwick Anti-Racism Society (UK)
University of Warwick Action for Palestine Society (UK)
Vidya Safari Moksha (VSM) (Kolkata, India)
XR Youth Cambridge (UK)
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