Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations Reaffirm Sovereignty with President Nicolás Maduro

Statement from the Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations (ROA)

Reaffirming Our Sovereignty with President Nicolás Maduro

Today, January 10, 2025, President Nicolás Maduro Moros is sworn in as the leader of all Venezuelans.

We denounce the climate of tension deliberately created by racist, Zionist, and fascist elements within the national and international opposition. These forces, acting against the will of the Venezuelan people, have sought to destabilize our nation since July 28, 2024, when President Maduro was democratically reelected in accordance with the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. His victory was legally reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Justice, the same institution tasked with resolving electoral disputes in Venezuela and elsewhere, as recently demonstrated in Mexico.

Since its founding in June 2000, the Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations (ROA) has stood in steadfast support of the Bolivarian Process initiated by Commander Hugo Chávez Frías and continued by President Maduro. We remain unwavering in our commitment to defending Venezuela’s sovereignty.

Today, we confront the geopolitical ambitions of American imperialism, its complicit governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, and certain sectors of Europe. These entities seek to seize our nation’s resources and undermine the most sacred principles of any nation: sovereignty and dignity.

Our Call to Action:

We urge the Afro-Venezuelan people and our sister organizations to resist any attempt to delegitimize our sovereignty. At the same time, we encourage active participation in the Constitutional Reform process, as announced by President Maduro. This reform aims to ensure the inclusion of Afro-descendants for reparative justice, a historic step toward recognizing and addressing centuries of oppression.

We also raise awareness about Zionism, which we identify as a form of 21st-century colonialism, and call for vigilance against its influence.

Our Commitment:

ROA will continue its work across the regions of Caracas, Miranda, Yaracuy, Carabobo, Sucre, Vargas, Zulia, Guárico, Falcón, and Aragua, while maintaining strong ties with Afro-descendant organizations across Latin America and the Caribbean, including in the Dominican Republic, Curaçao, Colombia, the United States, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Cuba.

Together, we stand firm in defense of our sovereignty, justice, and dignity.

ROA - Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations

Articulation of Afro-descendants of Latin America and the Caribbean

El Chorrillo: Living memory and Black resistance 35 Years after the U.S. invasion

The Author, Argelis Wesley, Circa 1989

El Chorrillo: Living memory and Black resistance 35 Years after the U.S. invasion

“December 20, 1989, is a date I will never forget. It was a Tuesday, an ordinary day, until something in the air warned me that the calm was about to shatter. After an appointment with the dentist, I noticed birds flying erratically, making strange noises. I wondered, Why are they so restless? What are they foretelling…?”

Banner photo: Black and white photo of White male soldier frisking a Black man with a line of more Black people fo follow him. (Courtesy afroresistance.org)

Western Powers Have Exposed Human Rights and International Human Rights as a Sham

Western Powers Have Exposed Human Rights and International Human Rights as a Sham

What is Needed is a new framework – a Non-Western, People(s)-Centered Human Rights Framework

For Immediate Release

Media Contact
press@blackallianceforpeace.com
(202) 643-1136

December 10, designated as International Human Rights Day has become a hackney, disingenuous ritual in which the United States and European imperialist powers, the main violators of human rights globally over the last five hundred years, speciously proclaim their commitment to human rights and what they define as “freedom” while simultaneously and continuously subverting democracy, starving, torturing, burning, raping, and imprisoning human beings around the world.

Baraka Obama referred to the United States as an “exceptional nation,” and it is. Exceptional as the nation responsible for engendering more egregious human suffering than any other nation or empire in human history. Yet, leaders of the United States, in their psychotic delusions, believe that the brutal history of U.S. conquest, slavery, subversion, wars, and racist violence visited on its own citizens, and countless peoples world-wide, somehow would not be noticed. But it was noticed, because U.S. policies have harmed so many around the world. So, with quiet bemusement around the world people would listen to the surreal declarations by U.S. politicians on their unwavering commitment to human rights and something they called democracy – until the genocide in Gaza, which lifted the veil and changed everything.

The images of Israeli atrocities, in what could only be honestly described as a savage rampage against humanity, has been justified by U.S. lawmakers with the most execrable, racist language that generated nods of agreement from their vile, racist allies in the government and across all institutions of “America,” finally stripped away any semblance of respectability for the white West, while also revealing the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy that has always been at the core of its civilizational project.

At that moment of degenerate moral convergence, the Western human rights project expired. In its place, quietly but with a fierce determination to transcend the limitations and contradictions of the false universalization of Western human rights, activists and revolutionaries grounded in the Black radical tradition were producing an alternative approach to human rights. A decolonized, and therefore, relevant human rights framework for individuals, collectives, peoples and nations able to envision and work toward a new humanity guided by the highest ethical standards and principles.

“…liberated from the liberal, individual, legalistic, and state-centered apparatus that emerged at the conclusion of World War II as a ‘Western’ human rights regime that became, and continues to be, a conservative weapon for enforcing the geopolitical interests of Western imperialism… rejecting the ideological mystification of a neutral and objective human rights framework, the Project, through educational activities, building transnational cooperative structures and supporting popular struggles, will link oppressed communities, classes and peoples from the Global North and South that are moving toward developing movements committed to national and global anti-capitalist, de-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles for social justice, ecological sustainability, national liberation and authentic self-determination.” (taken from the mission of North-South Project)

The institutional and political systemization of this approach is the mission of BAP’s North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights.

“For those of us fighting from the margins for a new social reality in the U.S. and globally, we declare without apology that it is only through the radical transformation of society based on an alternative set of ethics and social relationships that the full potential of the human rights idea can be realized. For us, the fight for human rights is a life and death struggle with the future of our communities and peoples at stake. It is a fight that we have no other choice but to wage and to win, knowing that we are on the right side of history and in reciprocal solidarity among people around the world who understand that human rights and dignity are not granted but lived.”
(Ajamu Baraka, Project Director)

Therefore, unlike the phony proclamations of the fidelity to human rights led by the nations of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination, let this December 10 th be the day that the people reclaim the idea of human rights and refashion this idea into a theoretical weapon that completes a new dialectic of revolutionary human rights praxis, for the people and centered by the people.

###

African Stream coverage of the Africans In Solidarity With Sahel Revolutions At Niger Conference

During 19-21 November, Pan-Africanists, anti-imperialists, and friends of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) flocked to Niamey, Niger, for the Conference in Solidarity with the Peoples of the Sahel.

The AES is a revolutionary confederation consisting of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, West African countries that have made enormous strides toward ending neo-colonialism in recent years since their people-backed military coups d’état.

The conference, organized by the West Africa Peoples Organization, Pan-Africanism Today and Nigerien civil society organizations, marks a turning point for global solidarity with Africa’s new self-determining bloc. Delegates representing political and workers’ organizations came from Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, the US, India, China and other countries.

From day one, African Stream was on the ground in Niamey to interview Nigerien locals, those involved in organizing the event and foreign delegates. In this video, we hear from people after the event’s opening ceremony.

PART 1 from African Stream

PART 2 from African Stream

DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST UHURU!

Black Alliance for Peace Condemns the Federal Indictments of the Uhuru 3 and Denial of their Fundamental Human Rights to Speech, Association, Information and Political Dissent

 Tampa, Florida — The process of jury selection on September 3rd, 2024, will mark the beginning of the federal trial of Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP); Penny Hess, Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC); and Jesse Nevel, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM), together known as the Uhuru 3.

The Uhuru 3 were indicted by the U.S. government in April 2023 on the absurd charges of being “agents of a foreign government.” — charges very similar to the indictment of W.E.B. Dubois, the internationally known Black scholar and human rights defender. Dubois was eighty-one at the time of his indictment as a supposed agent of the Soviet Union for his anti-nuclear and pro-peace advocacy. Omali Yeshitela is similarly eighty-one with an international standing as a human rights and anti-imperialist fighter for more than 60 years. The African Peoples’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement that he helped to found have been organizing and advocating for African people and colonized peoples for over 50 years. 

Ajamu Baraka, Chair of the Black Alliance for Peace’s (BAP) Coordinating Committee who will be an official observer of the trial states that: 

“It is only in the imagination of white supremacists that African people would need smart white people from Russia to guide our people and movement to oppose the U.S./EU/NATO proxy war against Russia and analyze and comment on all aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Internationalism has always been a core principle of our movement from the Garvey Movement and anti-fascist struggles of Africans in America and in Spain in the form of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, as well as the International Friends of Ethiopia that opposed the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, to our support for the liberation movements in Cuba, Haiti, Africa, Central America, and Vietnam. 

Omali Yeshitela is an outstanding product and an example of that tradition, which, among many other reasons, is why BAP gives its inexorable support to chairman Yeshitela, as well as to Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, who embody the highest example of revolutionary solidarity with African people. Hess and Nevel have stood with us, and we intend to stand with them against the criminal repression that the Uhuru 3 are targets of.”

BAP recognizes that the ridiculous charges leveled at the Uhuru 3 represent a shot across the bow of the radical Black movement. The U.S. understands that if it is successful in containing Black opposition to the increasingly aggressive militarism abroad and repression within the borders of the U.S., the broader movement in the U.S. will be more easily controlled.

BAP and our movement will not be intimated. We recognize that the complete abandonment of constitutional and human rights by the U.S. and other Western states represents an irreversible crisis of legitimacy. We will continue to stand in support of the right to resist as a core human right.

DC’s 2024 Crime Bill Is More War on the Black Working Class

“The ‘Secure DC’ Omnibus bill is the latest attempt by DC’s local government to impose law and order, while ignoring the root issues that lead to street-level crime and advancing the war against the Black working class…

Crime bills are a national phenomena in the U.S. and are nothing new. They are a means of enforcing punitive policies against the dispossessed and a way to feed the national security industrial complex in response to crises such as homelessness, poverty, and gentrification. We cannot confront this issue of the crime bill with the tunnel vision that confines us locally and keeps us disconnected from other domestically colonized Africans within the U.S. settler state.”

READ MORE.

Eric Adams and the NYPD Repress Dissent

John Chell is Chief of Patrol of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Chell has made news lately because of his threatening social media posts directed at a judge, journalists, and even City Council Members. His language was of such concern that the City Council Speaker requested that the Department of Investigation’s Inspector General conduct an official investigation.

Chell is also a white police officer who shot and killed a Black man in 2008. He shot Ortanzso Bovell in the back, claiming that he did so accidentally. In usual fashion he was never charged with a crime and the case was quickly closed. But a jury in the civil case found his version of events not credible and the city paid $2 million to Bovell’s family. Oddly, Chell ended up investigating the murder of Bovell’s surviving brother in 2022.

Despite being a killer, Chell continued to climb the ladder in successive mayoral administrations and he now has a prominent position in the department which is under the jurisdiction of a Black mayor, Eric Adams. A killer cop is one of Adams’ right hand members of the police top brass… FULL ARTICLE CONT’D

The Crisis of Liberalism

EACH strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for, and the political praxis informed by it carries out this struggle. The objective may be difficult to achieve, more difficult in certain contexts than in others, and this difficulty may act as a hurdle for political praxis; but this does not constitute a crisis for that political philosophy. The sheer difficulty of achieving an objective does not constitute a crisis. A crisis of a political philosophy arises when it has an internal contradiction, when the objective it puts forward is logically in conflict with some other feature in which it believes… FULL ARTICLE CONT’D

Introducing Black Alliance for Peace’s New National Coordinator, Max Rameau

The Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace is happy to introduce BAP’s new National Coordinator Max Rameau. Max will assume responsibilities from Brother Ajamu Baraka, BAP’s Interim Coordinator since January of this year, on April 1st part-time and will assume full-time responsibilities May 1st. Ajamu will continue as BAP’s Coordinating Committee’s Chairperson and the coordinator of BAP’s North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights that will be launched in the Fall. 

Max Rameau is a Haitian born Pan-African theorist, campaign strategist, movement scientist and organizer.

While a student in the Washington, DC area, Max was introduced to Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist thought. After moving to Miami, Florida in 1991, he began organizing around a broad range of human rights issues impacting low-income Black communities, including Immigrant rights (particularly Haitian immigrants), economic justice, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, particularly for ex-felons and police abuse, among others.

As a result of the devastating impacts of gentrification taking root during the housing "boom," in the summer of 2006 Max helped found the organization which eventually became known as Take Back the Land, to address 'Land' issues in the Black community. In October 2006, Take Back the Land seized control of a vacant lot in the Liberty City section of Miami and built the Umoja Village, a full urban shantytown, addressing the issues of land, self-determination and homelessness in the Black community. In October 2007, Take Back the Land initiated a bold campaign that sparked a national movement: "liberating" vacant government owned and foreclosed homes and moving homeless families into them in pursuit of the human right to housing and community control over land.

Max Rameau continues to develop movement theory, working with organizations and movements to develop impactful organizing models and campaigns. Max is an organizer with Pan-African Community Action (PACA) based in Washington D.C. and a member of the Black Alliance for Peace.

FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION: Campaign to Open the National People’s Assembly (ANP) in Guinea Bissau

FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION!

Campaign to Open the National People’s Assembly (ANP) in Guinea Bissau

The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party calls all organizations, movements, individuals, A-APRP members, contacts, friends, allies and supporters to put pressure on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in solidarity with the struggle being waged by the African Party of Independence of Guinea Bissau (PAIGC), and the duly elected PAI Terra Ranka Coalition. The People of Guinea Bissau demand the opening of the National People’s Assembly (ANP)!

We ask each of you to contact the ECOWAS structures listed below by email and by phone, where possible, on 1st, 2nd and 3rd of February 2024. The objective is to put diplomatic pressure on ECOWAS to open the National People’s Assembly (ANP) in Guinea Bissau. Contact as many of those listed below as often as you can.

Our emails and calls to ECOWAS structures on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of February 2024 will synchronize with actions of the PAI Terra Ranka and the PAIGC on the ground, in Guinea Bissau.

The language of these communications should vary, but the essence is as follows, but do not simply copy and paste, but rather use your own language:

'The doors to Guinea Bissau’s National People's Assembly (ANP) should be opened immediately to allow the democratically elected representatives (Deputies) to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities. We encourage the ECOWAS Permanent Commission to guarantee that the Guinea-Bissau Constitution is respected to avoid unforeseen negative consequences.'

FURTHER INFORMATION FOR ACTION

Link to background information about the situation in Guinea Bissau.

Campagne d’ouverture de l’Assemblée populaire nationale (ANP) en Guinée Bissau

Campanha de Abertura da Assembleia Nacional Popular (ANP) na Guiné Bissau

Banner photo: National Assembly building in Guinea-Bissau, courtesy Wikimedia.

South Africa's Case at ICJ Also Exposes the US and the West

South Africa's Case at ICJ Also Exposes the US and the West

By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist, 17 Jan 2024

South Africa's charge of genocide against Israel proves that this very serious word should be used more often instead of being treated as a rarity. The U.S. and the nations of the west have committed countless genocides and their actions must be labeled as such.

On January 11, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began hearing the Republic of South Africa’s charge of genocide made  against the state of Israel. Israel ratified the Genocide Convention  and as such it is duty bound to uphold its precepts. The definition of genocide is not hard to find nor is it difficult to understand.

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

1. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

2. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

3. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

4. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Cutting off water and electricity, bombing hospitals, and withholding food and medical aid all clearly fall within this definition. Not only has Israel publicly committed these acts, but its officials openly and publicly brag about having done so, and make South Africa’s case easy to prove.

But if there is another point which is made obvious by this definition and that is that the United States has and is committing genocide domestically and internationally. Of course Black people played the biggest role in making this case beginning in 1951 when the Civil Rights Congress published the pamphlet, “We Charge Genocide ,” and documented the case against the U.S. government. The charges are still valid as Black people have been the group primarily victimized by mass incarceration and all the other impacts of racial capitalism, from denial of housing rights to decent medical care.

If Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the United States did the same and assisted others in Libya and Syria and Somalia and Yemen and Haiti. This long list of criminality is one of the reasons that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other officials call South Africa’s charge against Israel “meritless.” If they acknowledge Israel’s genocide it would not only expose U.S. culpability but they would have to acknowledge their own misdeeds as well.

The term genocide must not be thought of as having some sort of high bar that can only be used in rare circumstances. On the contrary, it should be used much more often so that U.S. guilt can be exposed. The U.S. practice of imposing economic coercive measures, commonly known as sanctions, prevent the people of Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and 30 other countries, from securing their basic needs of food and medical care. Economic coercive measures are a war crime by definition as they impose collective punishment  on civilians.

The Republic of South Africa has done the world a great service, not only because it is revealing the seriousness of Israel’s crimes, but because it also reveals how these crimes have been normalized around the world. Of course U.S. allies like Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom join in denying South Africa’s claim. First they do as they’re told because they are reliable and good little vassal states, but they have joined in U.S. crimes and they also have their own histories of genocide.

The first genocide of the 20th century took place in Namibia, then a German colony, from 1904 to 1908, when thousands of the Herero people were murdered as they attempted to free themselves from imperial rule. The sun never set on the British empire because of its brutality committed as recently as the 1950s in Kenya’s revolutionary struggle when mass killings and concentration camps were used to put down the rebellion. The systematic destruction of records  which documented these atrocities is proof of Britain’s guilt in committing genocide.

The attention brought to the ICJ case in the Hague is an opportunity to lift the veil of secrecy and complicity and make the world aware that normalized practices are in fact genocidal. Every war and intervention ranging from regime change in Haiti to the full scale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were committed with the intent to destroy national groups. The response should not be to stop using the word genocide, but instead to make its usage more common. Doing otherwise allows the guilty to act with impunity.

South Africa has created a crisis for the world and should be applauded for doing so. Now millions of people know how genocide is defined and know that their nations are guilty of the practice. There is now less fear about naming names and a greater willingness to speak truthfully about what is accepted far too often. The nations of the Collective West as they call themselves, have written history and exculpated themselves despite being perpetrators for centuries. Israeli officials are genocidaires but they are not alone. All of those who aid and abet must be called to account too.

————————————————— 

The article was first published in Black Agenda Report.

Margaret Kimberley is Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report, the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents, and on the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace.

Over 800 Organizations Globally Sign On To Letter Urging International Support For South Africa’s Genocide Case Against the State of Israel

*****FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*****

Over 800 Organizations Globally Sign On To Letter Urging International Support For South Africa’s Genocide Case Against the State of Israel

New Coalition Calls for Global Mobilization As Hearing Before the World Court Begins on January 11

CONTACTS:

Adrienne Pine, Popular Resistance, 202-652-5601, adrienne@quotha.net

Lamis Deek, Palestine Assembly for Liberation,  212-226-3999, Deek@DeekDictorAdi.com

Genie Silver, WILPF US, 610-283-1376, rhsilver@comcast.net

United States - The newly-formed International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine (ICSGP) issued a sign-on letter* on January 3, 2024 that garnered over 800 organizational endorsements from around the world in less than one week. In addition to the initiating organizations noted here, signing organizations represent broad social movements, including World March of Women and the International People’s Assembly, Palestinian-led and Palestinian solidarity movements such as Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and the Palestinian NGO Network, as well as human rights and legal groups, unions, and religious organizations of all faiths.

“It is important for La Via Campesina to support the South African initiative. What is happening in Palestine is an atrocity. In particular, the use of starvation as a weapon of war is part of a strategy of genocide that we need to denounce. The expulsion of farmers and land grabs in Gaza as well as the West Bank, is also part of a strategy of ethnic cleansing,” said Morgan Ody of the Confédération paysanne (France) and General Coordinator of La Vía Campesina International. “La Via Campesina calls upon the governments of the world, and in particular progressive governments and those in the Global South, to do everything in their power to stop Israel’s apartheid and colonization. Those governments have the responsibility to coordinate their efforts in order to ensure a future for Palestine and for all Palestinian people, and to make sure that those responsible for Israel’s crimes against humanity are held accountable.”

The coalition letter urges all signing organizations to press their “governments to immediately file a Declaration of Intervention in support of the South African case against Israel at the International Court of Justice to stop the killing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” So far, Malaysia and Turkiye, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which represents 57 member countries on four continents, have publicly supported South Africa’s case. Jordan reports that it intends to take the more legally substantive step of submitting a Declaration of Intervention. Members of ICGSP are working closely with a number of other countries that are in the process of doing the same.

“The South African filing before the ICJ marks a critical juncture which tests the global will to salvage the laws and systems which were designed to safeguard not merely human rights; but to preserve humanity itself,” emphasizes Lamis Deek, co-founder of The Global Legal Alliance for Palestine and the PAL Commission on War Crimes. “Genocide is the highest crime and none has been so publicly documented as the Israeli Genocide in Palestine. The sincerity of states' commitment to the principles of the Geneva and Genocide Conventions is now under heavy scrutiny. The very least states can do is to submit Declarations of Intervention as a small part of fulfilling their obligations under Article 1 of the Genocide Convention, to assure their people—and humanity—that they have lost neither their moral compass nor abdicated their obligations under international law.

The sign-on letter states:

“Many countries have rightly expressed their horror at the State of Israel's genocidal actions, war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed against Palestinians. Israeli Occupying Forces have bombed hospitals, residences, United Nations refugee centers, schools, places of worship and escape routes, killing and injuring tens of thousands of Palestinians since October 7, 2023. More than half of the dead are women and children. Israeli leaders have made brazenly genocidal statements openly declaring their intention to permanently and completely displace Palestinians from their own land.”

Despite the clear evidence of genocidal actions being committed daily by Israeli Occupying Forces, the State of Israel is actively soliciting nations to deny its atrocities and denounce South Africa’s case. At this moment, the United States, a major backer of the Israeli State that has vetoed three resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the United Nations Security Council, stands alone in denying that Israel is committing genocide.

Edith Ballantyne, former Secretary General and International President of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, warns, “I write from my personal experience over ten decades, spanning two world wars and living through fascism, with the absolute conviction that the basis of the conflict must be solved in a legal, political and non-violent way as the only means to achieve permanent peace desperately needed by the world’s peoples and for the survival of our planet.” She adds, “Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom was involved in the Middle East conflict since the 1920s when it recognized that what was happening in Palestine was destined to be catastrophic. The genocidal war the government of Israel is waging in the Occupied Palestinian Territories against the Palestinian People must be stopped. I urge all to challenge their governments to live up to the principles of the UN Charter and international law, including human rights and humanitarian law.”

The International Court of Justice, also called the World Court, will hear South Africa’s case against the Israeli State on January 11 and 12, 2024. The ICSGP is calling on endorsing organizations to join actions of support at The Hague during the hearing and to hold local rallies and vigils, including expressions of gratitude and solidarity at South African embassies, this week. Details about the hearing and where to watch it are here: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240103-pre-01-00-en.pdf

*The full text of the letter and an updated list of signers can be found here: https://bit.ly/Genocide_Convention_Letter

The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine is currently building global support for this effort by circulating a sign-on letter, which already has over 800 endorsing organizations. The letter can be read and endorsed here.

International Coalition of Human Rights and Antiwar Organizations forms to Demand End to Genocide in Palestine

****FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE****

International Coalition of Human Rights and Antiwar Organizations forms to Demand End to Genocide in Palestine

Social Movements Call on Nations to Support the South African Petition to the World Court on Israeli Genocide with Declarations of Intervention.

Contacts:

Adrienne Pine 202-652-5601, adrienne@quotha.net

Ajamu Baraka  201-292-4591, ajamubaraka2@gmail.com

Suzanne Adely  773-510-7446, suzanne.adely@gmail.com

Lamis Deek  212-226-3999, lamisjamalesq@yahoo.com

United States - On December 30, the newly-formed International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine convened around the urgent need for nations to invoke the Genocide Convention as a way to end the State of Israel’s devastating bombing campaign and additional war crimes being committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. That effort advanced on December 29 when South Africa submitted a well-documented case against Israel to the International Court of Justice.

The Coalition—which includes Progressive International, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Black Alliance for Peace, Popular Resistance, CODEPINK, the National Lawyers Guild and numerous other groups—strongly supports the call issued on January 2 by the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Coordinating Committee (PAACC) urging governments to support South Africa’s complaint with Declarations of Intervention, which can be filed before or after the hearing, scheduled to take place on January 11 and 12, 2024.

Declarations of Intervention in support of South Africa’s invocation of the Genocide Convention against Israel will increase the likelihood that a positive finding of the crime of genocide will be enforced by the United Nations such that actions will be taken to end all acts of genocide and those who are responsible for the acts will be held accountable.

“It's imperative that more states follow South Africa's historic leadership demanding Israel is held accountable under international law,” said Suzanne Adely, president of the National Lawyers Guild and member of the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She added, “One clear and immediate way to do that is to file Declarations of Intervention supporting South Africa's filing in the ICJ under the Genocide Convention. The increasing global isolation of Israel and the US and their European allies is an indicator that this is a key moment for popular movements to move their governments in the direction of taking these steps and being on the right side of history.” Adely led an international delegation to Cairo last November to demand the opening of Rafah border crossing.

Ajamu Baraka, chair of the coordinating committee of the Black Alliance for Peace, which has repeatedly condemned Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign in occupied Palestine, stated, “The action by the South African government is a courageous attempt to do no less than salvage the credibility of the international mechanisms that were meant to protect human rights and international law. The South African petition is a reminder that it is a legal and moral imperative for states and international civil society to oppose impunity. Genocide has been identified as one of the most egregious international crimes. If the Israeli state and its backers are allowed to escape justice and international condemnation, it will strip the current international system of justice of any legitimacy.”

Lamis Deek, a Palestinian attorney based in New York, whose firm convened the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation's Commission on War Crimes Justice, Reparations, and Return and co-launched the Global Legal Alliance for Palestine, added that "This is the rare case where collective social pressure urging governments to support the South African case can be a sharp turning point for Palestine. Through the ICJ, South Africa is poised to strike a decisive blow against this brutal genocide and torture campaign led by Israel in coordination with the United States. We need more states to file supporting interventions-  and we need the court to feel the watchful eye of the masses so as to withstand what will be extreme US political pressure on the Court.   International Humanitarian Laws and institutions are meant to be, and must be seen as, tools for the people, not distant abstractions. People can- and should-  play a strategic and powerful role by integrating this advocacy into their solidarity work, not only until their governments file supporting interventions but until the ICJ delivers justice."

The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine urges human rights, labor, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and other groups to increase public pressure by mobilizing to demand that their respective countries immediately submit Declarations of Intervention to the International Court of Justice. No matter how the World Court decides South Africa’s case, the coalition is committed to ending the genocide in Palestine and will continue to take action to make this the reality.

The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine is currently building global support for this effort by circulating a sign-on letter, which already has over 100 endorsing organizations. The letter can be read and endorsed here.

The A-APRP Condemns the Attack on the PAIGC and the PAI Terra Ranka Coalition

The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) and the African Party of Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) are one!

“When the PAIGC and its PAI Terra Ranka Coalition democratically won the absolute majority on 4 June 2023, we sent our message of congratulations after the official results were published. We also congratulated the inauguration of the PAI Terra Ranka Coalition government and the election of brother and comrade Domingos “DSP” Simões Pereira as the President of the National People’s Assembly (ANP), the second figure in the state of Guinea-Bissau.”

READ MORE FULL STATEMENT: The Cause of Violence and Imprisonment on 30 November – 1 December 2023…

Banner photo: Man walking on a dirt road by a sign that says ““La Guinee – Bissau, veut et merite la paix” (English “Guinee - Bissau, wants and deserves peace". (courtey africanliberty.org).

U.S. Peace Council Calls for No Fly Zone over Gaza

U.S. Peace Council Statement: End the Israeli-US Attack on the Palestinians of Gaza!

October 30, 2023

Wave upon wave of Israeli aircraft and missiles have been battering the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. This violence — the most brutal for decades — has already expended more firepower than the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and has already taken more lives of civilians in a week than have died in Ukraine. It is as if the Israeli government — backed fully by the United States — wants to turn Gaza into a ruin so as to remove the Palestinians in another act of ethnic cleansing, mimicking the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948.

The United States government vetoed UN resolutions to allow for a humanitarian ceasefire; the US president has joined the Israelis in an information war about the numbers of war dead; the US military has moved a massive naval strike group into the Eastern Mediterranean; and the US defense establishment — in contravention of the Leahy Law (1999) that proscribes arming militaries that are committing gross human rights violations — has sent military aid to Israel.

Both the Israeli and the US governments have violated humanitarian law, and the government of Israel has committed both war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.

We call upon the government of Brazil, which holds the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, to table either an emergency resolution or to release a president’s statement calling for a ‘no-fly zone’ over Gaza. The Egyptian air force, billeted nearby at Abu Suweir Air Base, can enforce a ‘no-fly zone’ to prevent continued bombing of Gaza and allow the UN and other aid agencies to bring humanitarian relief to the beleaguered Palestinians.

The U.S. Peace Council calls upon all people to stand up against this violent crime against humanity. Join the November 4th national mobilizations against this genocide by Israel, and against the US role in this war.

Banner photo: ….

USPC Statement: Israel, and US, Bear Full Responsibility for the Ongoing Bloodshed!

Israel, and US, Bear Full Responsibility for the Ongoing Bloodshed!

This is the Inevitable Result of 75 Years of Illegal Occupation and Brutal Violation of Palestinians’ Human Rights

“We are in a state of war.... The enemy will pay a price like they have never known before,” declared Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, immediately after the beginning of the Hamas forces’ military operation against Israel.

Netanyahu’s words conceal a fundamental historical fact: Israel has been in a state of war against the people of Palestine, whom he now blatantly calls “the enemy,” for the past 75 years. The “enemy” he is referring to are the Palestinian people, who have been enduring 75 years of violent occupation, bombings, mass arrests and imprisonment, torture, assassinations, and exile at the hands of the Israeli State, just because they would refuse to submit to the illegal occupation of their land and the blatant violation of their fundamental human rights by the Israeli occupation forces.

More deceiving is the claim that this was a “surprise” attack by the Palestinians. But looking back at the shameful history of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people in the past seven decades, and its recent offending actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, no rational mind would be “surprised” by the Palestinian reaction.

The historically inevitable bloodshed that has started, and has already taken too many lives, is the Israeli States’ own doing. The State of Israel has no other party to blame for this human catastrophe than itself.

However, this is not where the blame stops. The government of the United States is equally — if not more — responsible for the current tragedy. Decades of unconditional support for the Israeli State’s violations of international law and human rights, tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military aid to Israel with eyes closed to the atrocities and terrorism committed by Israeli military and settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories, and persistent blocking of every effort by the international community to call Israel into account for its illegal actions, all have contributed to this horrendous situation.

We call upon the international community to take every necessary collective action to stop this bloodshed based upon the globally recognized international law and the United Nations Charter.

This bloodshed will not be the last until the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is ended and the human rights of the Palestinian people are recognized and fully realized.

U.S. Peace Council

October 8, 2023

Banner photo: A building being bombed in Hamas-Israel war. (courtesy uspeacecouncil.org)

Revolution in Sahel? Military Coups in Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger

As the U.S. and France move to interfere in the Sahel region of West Africa, Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mali have spoken up to defend their sovereign rights and declare their determination to be free from western hegemony.

Revolution in Sahel? Military Coups in Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger

On July 26, 2023 in a military coup d’etat, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) ousted Niger president Mohamed Bazoum and took control of the country. This followed recent coups in Burkina Faso, Guinea-Conakry, Mali, and Chad. These countries are bound together by the Sahel, a semi-arid region on the edge of the Sahara desert that stretches from the Atlantic ocean in the west and to the Red Sea in the east. The Sahel region suffers from a number of complex factors resulting from French political and economic domination designed to exploit the region’s vast natural and human resources, while subordinating the region’s sovereignty to France. The U.S. and European powers have collaborated to promote an imperialist agenda. Consider the NATO led invasion of Libya, which led to the murder and overthrow of Pan-Africanist leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Libya then became a breeding ground for Western armed terrorist groups that destabilize the region. Because of these ongoing conflicts instigated and perpetuated by Western imperialist powers, life in the Sahel has been, and remains, hellish….

READ FULL PAPER ON aaprp-intl.org

Banner photo: Crowds express support for the new Nigerien government. "France must go. Long live Niger." (Courtesy AFP via Getty Images)

Kawsachun News | ‘Zone of Peace’ Campaign Launched

Kawsachun News | ‘Zone of Peace’ Campaign Launched

The Black Alliance for Peace, along with other organizations, today launched a new campaign to make the Americas a ‘Zone of Peace’, free from imperialism and foreign intervention. The campaign follows a call from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), in 2014, declaring the region a Zone of Peace.

Ajamu Baraka, National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace said in his opening remarks at the press conference launching this campaign: “We recognize that we’re not going to be able to transform ourselves and transform the politics of the region unless we have a massive, region-wide popular movement”.

The organization is also celebrating its sixth anniversary today, having been founded on the anniversary of MLK’s assassination.

READ MORE ON KAWSACHUN NEWS.

Banner photo: Panelist at the launch event held at the Asociación Cubana de las Naciones Unidas (ACNU, Cuban Association of the United Nations) in Havana. (Courtesy BAP delegation member.)

Resumen Latinoamericano | New Campaign to Reinvigorate the Establishment of Zone of Peace in Our Americas

Resumen Latinoamericano | New Campaign to Reinvigorate the Establishment of Zone of Peace in Our Americas

By Bill Hackwell on April 4, 2023

Today in a press conference in Washington DC the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) along with key allies launched a popular collective campaign to promote the urgent need to establish a Zone of Peace in Our Americas. The press conference coincided with similar events that took place in Havana, Cuba; and Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

The “Zone of Peace” concept emerged from the January 29, 2014, meeting of the heads of state and governments of the Community of

Washington DC

Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), all of which declared Latin America and the Caribbean should be seen and respected as a “Zone of Peace.” The BAP effort is geared towards activating the popular movement element to bolster the support to those states for its implementation across the region.

Ajamu Baraka, chairperson of the coordinating committee of BAP explained that the deliberate decision to launch the campaign on April 4 was to coincide with the founding of Black Alliance for Peace on April  4, 2018 and to connect it to  the lifelong dedication to peace of Martin Luther King who was assassinated on this day in 1968. “Today we make this declaration to the world to counter the US’s commitment to militarism. We have the majority of people on our side, but we need a vision that we are more than what we are today, we need to build capacity.”

Havana Cuba

Jemima Pierre, from the  BAP co ordinating committee explained how the US wants to continue their Monroe Doctrine  mandate by invading Haiti and through the US military’s Southern Command they want to extend militarism throughout Latin American.

Also speaking was the editor of Black Agenda Report Margaret Kimberly and Nina Macapiniac from Bayan – USA who warned of the US military expansion in the Pacific with the announcement by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration in February his approval of an expansion of the U.S. military presence in the country to four additional Philippine military bases from the five existing sites.

Initial Core Demands of the Zone of Peace in the Americas are:

1.  Dismantle SOUTHCOM. Shut down the 76 U.S. military bases in the region

2. End U.S./NATO military exercises. Close foreign military bases, installations and enclaves, as well as withdraw foreign occupation troops

3. Disband U.S.-sponsored state terrorist training facilities. Shutter the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHINSEC)—formerly the School of the Americas—in Fort Benning, Georgia, United States, and terminate U.S.—as well as foreign—training of police forces

4. Oppose military intervention into Haiti. Support the people(s)-centered movement for democracy and self-determination

5. Return Guantánamo to Cuba. The United States must give back to the Cuban people and their government the territory it illegally occupies

6. Sanctions are war. End illegal sanctions and blockades of regional states, including all economic warfare and lawfare, and recognize their sovereignty

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – US

For more information on the campaign go to:

communications@blackallianceforpeace.com

(202) 643-1136

Banner photo: Screenshot zoom video of panelist at the launch press conference in Washington DC at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Murder of Tyre Nichols Proves Policing is An Outgrowth of Colonialism

Institute for Public Accuracy News Release

Community Control Over Police

February 1, 2023

February is Black History Month. Many have been startled that Black officers were involved in the killing of Tyre Nichols. But some analysts have been warning that the issue is the structure and nature of police forces, not simply their ethnic composition.

MAX RAMEAU, afrimax@niainteractive.com

Rameau works with Pan-African Community Action and has been an advocate of community control over police.

See the piece “Community Control of Public Safety: Building a Transitional Program for Power” at Black Agenda Report, which quotes Rameau.

He argues that the purpose of much policing is an outgrowth of colonialism and is set up to protect a system of massive inequality rather than protecting human life.

He said today: “Some Black cops wear dashikis and celebrate Martin Luther King Day. So why do they arrest and brutalize Black people? Because that is their job. They work for a system that exploits Black people. Because Black people do not like being exploited, they must be oppressed in order to facilitate the exploitation. The job of the police is to oppress Black communities in order to facilitate their exploitation. That is the job of ALL police: the white and Black ones; the mean ones and the nice ones.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

February 1, 2023

Institute for Public Accuracy

980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045

accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org

@accuracy * ipaccuracy