Communiqué of the Executive Committee Meeting of the WPC
Brasilia, 18-20 May, 2006
The Executive Committee of the World Peace Council concluded its meeting on 19th and 20th May 2006 in Brasilia, for the first time after decades in South America.
The day before the EC meeting, an International Seminar hosted by CEBRAPAZ, took place at the House of Representatives of Brazil, in which dozens of Brazilian MPs and 20 foreign guests from 13 countries analyzed the world situation and the need to strengthen the struggle for peace against, war, occupation and imperialist domination.
After a very fruitful and rich discussion upon the agenda of the EC and about the main tendencies in the current world situation, having taken into account the growing peace movement and its actions all over the world and the new threats and dangers to world peace and security, the EC reached and publishes the following statement:
The meeting of the WPC Executive Committee in Brazil, in Latin America, truly constitutes a special moment in the history of our organization, taking place as it is during a period when great contradictions are intersecting in this region in the most telling way.
On the one hand imperialist aggressiveness is accelerating and intensifying, creating serious threats on our planet. At the same time, however, the peoples΄movements for peace are growing massively all over the world against it.
The WPC is welcoming today the developments taking place on this continent, we could thus say that the heart of progressive mankind, and therefore the heart of the peace movement, the WPC, beats in Latin America- in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Bolivia, where their peoples, defying imperialist intimidation, are finding and blazing new paths to the peoples’ benefit. Likewise in Brazil where the government is defending world peace and the Latin American integration. The WPC reiterates its demands for the lifting of the US blockade against Cuba and for the release of the five Cuban political prisoners from the US prisons.
This is being proved also by the growing peoples’ movement in the whole Latin America witnessed as well during the massive demonstrations at the summit of the peoples of America in Mar de Plata/Argentine(November 2005) and the World Social Forum in Caracas/Venezuela(January 2006).
The attention of the world humanity is these days focused on Iran, which we cannot examine in isolation from general developments. To a great degree it is linked to the overall imperialist policy, first and foremost by the USA, which is trying in many ways to impose global domination, to control the wealth – producing resources of the planet and to subjugate any country or people that put up resistance.
These very days we are reminded to some extent of the situation prior to the war against Iraq. A propaganda campaign has been launched to familiarize public opinion with the issue and to justify a new war. The immediate and essential task of the peace movements, the peoples’ movements and naturally the WPC, is to mobilize the peoples to denounce pre-emptive war policy and thus to stop a new war, deeply linked with the demand for immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The WPC is witnessing in this regard that the mobilisations of the anti-war movement can result in pressure to the governments
Today it becomes even more eminent to denounce and fight back the nuclear blackmail and threats of the US administration, which could end in a total disaster with unending consequences. The WPC considers it to be a provocation by the USA, which, along with its main allies, is the biggest nuclear threat to mankind, to present itself as being the protector of humanity from the nuclear danger. The WPC reiterates its demands for the abolition of all nuclear weapons, and the stop of creation of new ones. The WPC rejects and condemns the pre-emptive war doctrine of the US administration in this context.
The USA is trying to abuse the United Nations as an instrument for legitimating their plans and domination. However it faces difficulties and contradictions. In cases where the USA cannot impose its will on the UN, “willing allies” appear, good for any violation of International law and UN principles. The WPC is underlining the urgency to fight back the plans to incorporate NATO into the UN system, thus effort at the same time to wash the biggest war machinery (NATO) clean from all its crimes and interventions.
WPC will promote a campaign to rally broader forces around the struggle against war-for a world order of peace and justice based on the founding charter of the UN.
At the same time we are witnessing a further militarization of the EU, whereas its major forces are competing with other Imperialist forces for the control of markets and resources around the world. In total discordance with the will of the peoples in Europe, the reactionary content of the “EU-constitution” is being applied step by step in all spheres of life, despite the “NO” in the French and Dutch Referenda.
WPC will strengthen the cooperation with other social and peoples’ movements against the neoliberal policies. Over the past year widespread privatizations and the deregulation of services have been promoted with growing urgency and pressure in order that conditions might be created for the multinational corporations to engage in yet greater plundering of social wealth. Common actions and initiatives for the cuts in military budgets are becoming more and more important as a common ground for peace and other social movements.
Likewise the USA and its allies are challenging even the will of peoples expressed in elections or referenda. The WPC denounces by principle all interventions such as in Palestine, Belarus, Cyprus and Zimbabwe and the prohibition of elected state leaders and officials to travel abroad.
Africa is the target of new economic and political interference and exploitation by old and neo-colonial rulers, aiming in the further plundering of its resources and at the same time ground for distribution of new markets. The WPC denounces the imperialist imposition of economic sanctions on countries which do not comply with the wish of the powerful, with the pretext of lack of democracy, violation “human rights” and underlines the sovereign rights of each people for self-determination. In this context we demand the lifting of the economic sanctions by the USA and the EU against the Zimbabwean people and for its right to determine its own future.
The WPC views also with concern the deteriorating situation in Sudan and expresses its support for a sustainable solution of peace, without any foreign military intervention.
The WPC congratulates Angola for the achievement of peace and calls upon all to support the consolidation and reconstruction of Angola.
The WPC supports the peaceful and independent reunification of the Korean peninsula and expresses its solidarity with the Korean people in their fight against the military presence of US troops on their soil. The WPC firmly opposes the acceleration of the integration of Japan in the military plans of the US strategy and the reinforcement of the US bases in Japan.
The Executive Committee expresses its profound solidarity with the Palestinian people, in its ongoing suffering from the western backed and tolerated Israeli occupation. We reaffirm our support to the only possible solution of the conflict with the establishment of an independent State of Palestine in the borders of June 1967 and with East Jerusalem as its capital. We demand the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops and the release of all political prisoners.
The WPC is committing itself to strengthen even more the coordinated efforts for the removal of all Foreign military bases, which constitute a violation of the sovereignty of the countries where located and a daily threat to the respective region and peoples. We denounce furthermore the common military exercises of the USA in various parts of the world.
Despite the negative tendencies and contradictions, the WPC is expressing its strong will and optimism that the situation described above, is not a one-way street. As much everyday, the peoples’ conscience is growing, along with the understanding that this can not be the future of mankind, there will be more and more prospect to create a peaceful and just world without war, nuclear weapons and imperialist domination. The peoples’ struggles in each and every country with the coordination on regional and International level can and will open new roads, for peace and the benefit of the vast majority of humanity. The WPC will contribute to its best level to this.