Archives: Endorsements

The world urgently needs a ceasefire and diplomacy in Ukraine before thousands more are killed and the war widens to include a direct war between the United States and Russia. Alongside the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, CODEPINK is asking you to sign this petition demanding vigorous diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

To build the movement needed to help end the war in Ukraine, we’ll need to reach more people. That’s why we’re raising funds to place this petition as an ad or series of ads in a major newspaper. Please make a contribution towards publishing this petition as an ad campaign in a Capitol Hill newspaper.

The greater the number of signatures submitted and money raised will mean bigger and better ad placements.

Together, we can build the movement needed to end the war in Ukraine.

Sign up here.

To Presidents Biden, Putin and Zelensky:

IT’S TIME TO STOP THE KILLING AND DEVASTATION. CEASEFIRE & PEACE NEGOTIATIONS NOW!

The war in Ukraine has taken tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives, uprooted millions, contaminated land, air and water and worsened the climate crisis.

The longer the war goes on, the greater the danger of spiraling escalation which can lead to a wider war, environmental devastation and nuclear annihilation.

The war diverts billions that could be addressing urgent human needs.

Total military victory cannot be achieved by either Russia or Ukraine. It is time to support the calls by Pope Francis, United Nations Secretary-General Guterres, Presidents Lula de Silva of Brazil, Erdoğan of Turkey, Xi of China, and others for a ceasefire and a negotiated end to this calamitous war.

Stop the killing, agree to a ceasefire and begin negotiations!

As scholars and academics, we are alarmed by recent events in Pakistan. We condemn the state-sanctioned violence, murder and torture of protestors, use of sexual violence against women and men, curbs on media, bans on freedom of assembly and speech, and arbitrary arrests of thousands of political leaders and workers belonging to the main opposition party.

Following the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s elected government in April 2022, the ruling establishment has unleashed a reign of terror in a desperate bid to hold on to power, and deny the people of Pakistan a say in their future. The current government—backed, kept in power, and operated by the military establishment—is refusing to hold elections as mandated by the Constitution and ordered by the Supreme Court. The regime enjoys no popular mandate to rule and is depriving people of their right to vote, while seeking to eliminate the largest opposition party from the political arena.

Meanwhile, the people of Pakistan are facing an unprecedented onslaught on their civil liberties. Most recently, in flagrant violation of international human rights conventions, the military has announced its intention to establish military courts for trying civilians who protest and register their political dissent in the public domain, bypassing due process of law. The government has also attacked the judiciary, and court orders to release political leaders arrested under fabricated charges have been ignored. This is all occurring at a time when people are facing dire living conditions: over the last year, unemployment has spiraled, the currency has lost 55% of its value, and inflation has tripled.

We, the undersigned concerned scholars, write this open letter to express our solidarity with the people of Pakistan, and denounce attempts to impose a brutal and violent tyranny upon the country. The suspension of the rule of law, the use of state terror against the population, and the collapse of constitutional order is only deepening the political, economic, and social crisis in Pakistan.

Therefore we call upon the ruling establishment to:

1. Restore civil rights: It is vital to restore and uphold the fundamental rights and liberties of the people of Pakistan. This includes protecting freedom of expression, assembly, and association, as well as ensuring the right to a fair trial and due process for all individuals. We further contend that audiences within and outside Pakistan have a right to access accurate information about newsworthy events, and demand immediate cessation of state interference with, and curbs on, press freedom.
2. Release all political prisoners: We urge the regime to immediately release all political prisoners who have been detained without just cause or due process. The continued incarceration of individuals including journalists, lawyers, doctors, academics, and other civilians for exercising their constitutional rights violates international law and principles of justice.
3. Cease efforts to use military courts for civilians: Trial of civilians under military courts represents a gross violation of the Constitution and contravenes international law. Legal proceedings must be pursued under the existing judicial system, which must be allowed to function without coercion.
4. Investigate and prosecute officials who have violated and abused citizens: We demand independent and impartial investigations be carried out to hold accountable those responsible for human rights violations. These include murder, torture, and use of sexual violence against political activists, journalists, and innocent civilians. The perpetrators must be brought to justice and victims provided reparations.
5. Respect the democratic process, end military interference in politics, and hold elections immediately: The state should desist from banning or breaking up any political party and engage in introspection on the deep drivers of grievances and the absence of institutionalized mechanisms to channelize these grievances. In a country of 230 million people, with an increasingly young and urban population, there is a legitimate expectation that people should have the right to choose their leaders and government. The military’s continued interference in politics (courts, police, media, and political parties) consistently denies this right and public grievances are more likely to be directed at the Army. To avert imminent chaos, we demand that the ruling establishment must step back from this interference and hold timely, and free and fair elections, with all legitimate political forces allowed to contest.

      Please sign our letter here

Read below BADIL’s Nakba Statement addressing the multifaceted issues faced by Palestinian refugees and IDPs as a consequence of 75 years of ongoing displacement and fragmentation. Please add your signature.

#Nakba75 #OngoingNakba #ReturnisOurRightandOurWill

For more than 75 years, the Israeli-perpetrated ongoing Nakba has resulted in the protracted forced displacement of 66 percent of the Palestinian people. The ongoing Nakba is maintained by Israel’s colonial apartheid regime’s policies and practices, namely:  land confiscation and denial of use ,  denial of access to natural resources and services ,  annexation ,  suppression of resistance ,  denial of residency ,  segregation, fragmentation and isolation , the imposition of  discriminatory planning  and  permit regime , and  denial of reparations. The Israeli policies and practices that maintain this system and deny the Palestinian people’s rights to return and self-determination go beyond mere human rights violations. Rather, they constitute the Israeli regime’s three main pillars: Palestinian displacement and transfer, colonization and apartheid. These pillars, which are translated into Israeli laws, policies and practices, aim to control the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Palestinians. Correspondingly, the perpetuation of the Nakba – made feasible by the lack of practical measures to hold Israel accountable for its international crimes – reflects the extent of international complicity with the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime in Palestine.

As a result of the ongoing Nakba,  9.17 million Palestinians  have experienced forced displacement and/or transfer, which includes a total of 8.36 million refugees and 812,000 internally displaced persons, constituting the largest and most protracted refugee population in the world. Meanwhile, Palestinian refugees in exile continue to find themselves in an international protection lacuna. Arab countries, for example, deny Palestinian refugees their human rights, including those stipulated in the Arab League Protocol on the Treatment of Palestinian Refugees (Casablanca Protocol, 1965) to which they are signatories. In Syria, the demographic and political weight of  Palestinian refugees has been targeted and weakened during the war and ensuing political strife. In Lebanon, the government treats Palestinian refugees as ‘foreigners’ and  deprives them of their civil, economic and social rights  to the point that a significant percentage suffers  from extreme poverty . These actions are justified under the false pretext of preserving the right of return and Palestinian identity. Depriving Palestinian refugees of their human rights during the period of their refugeehood, however, constitutes a violation of return as it enables the continuation of Israeli policies, and the repeated displacement of Palestinians. At the same time, western states  practice discrimination against Palestinian refugees fleeing armed conflicts in a number of Arab countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Libya.

After 75 years of ongoing Nakba, the international community continues to neglect its  legal and moral responsibilities  towards the Palestinian people, and to  provide support  and immunity to the Israeli regime. Western states have been obstructing the enforcement of international law and accountability mechanisms vis-à-vis the Palestinian people.  This obstruction is exemplified by vetoes of United Nations Security Council Resolutions, the failure to enforce dozens of existing resolutions, undermining ICC investigations, ignoring UNRWA’s  chronic funding crisis , neglecting to provide  effective protection for Palestinian refugees, and the lack of practical measure to hold Israel accountable, such as arms embargoes and sanctions. This lack of action has resulted in an umbrella of political, economic and military impunity for the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime. Moreover, the complicity of Western states is demonstrated in colonial and discriminatory statements made by the presidents of the  USA administration  and the  EU Commission  in congratulating the establishment of the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime.

The United Nations, originally responsible for the illegal partition of Palestine, continues to ignore the necessity of a human rights-based decolonization approach and solution to the core issues of the Israeli colonial apartheid regime. The decolonization approach for Palestine is particularly relevant since the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, the agency mandated to provide international protection, including the right of return according to  UNGA Resolution 194 has been defunct for as many decades as the ongoing Nakba. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA), which is the sole agency responsible for assisting Palestinian refugees, is still regarded as a temporary agency whose budget depends on the voluntary contributions of states, which decreases annually despite the increase in the number of refugees and their growing needs. In the absence of a compulsory funding mechanism, UNRWA is being sabotaged through the imposition of  securitization procedures  and  conditional funding  by Israel and the US, particularly with the recently proposed USA  draft law. This situation has resulted in the drastic reduction of services as Palestinian refugees’ needs continue to rise. Other strategic attacks on UNRWA that call for  transferring its responsibilities  to other agencies and organizations constitute unlawful attempts to alter its mandate – the only way the mandate can be altered is through a UN resolution, which would thereby not only protect UNRWA but also by extension, Palestinian refugees. Such a resolution must necessarily  expand UNRWA’s mandate  to include all Palestinian refugees and provide all the components of international protection (ie, physical, legal, and humanitarian protection).

The historic and current international response to Palestine is one that is based in a conflict resolution paradigm and a humanitarian approach. The ‘conflict’ in Palestine is perceived to be between two equal parties with equally valid claims requiring a ‘balanced’ response. Both the paradigm and the approach are erroneous as they fail to take into consideration Israel’s violent colonial origins and have, as such, grievously obscured the root causes and ignored Israel’s domination and oppression of the Palestinian people. The reality, however, is that Palestinians are confronted with two Israeli forms of domination – colonization and apartheid – which deny the  Palestinian people’s inalienable rights to return and self-determination. As such, the right to resist foreign domination and oppression as a means of liberation and in pursuit of the rights of self-determination and return is an irrefutable fact in the case of Palestine.

The only approach and solution to the ongoing Nakba is a comprehensive rights-based decolonization framework. This approach must tackle the root causes of the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime and fulfill the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, specifically the rights of self-determination and return. To decolonize Palestine in a way that will achieve a lasting and just peace means uprooting and dismantling the pillars of the Israeli regime: forced displacement and transfer, colonization, and apartheid.

•  Return is our right and our will
•  One people, one destiny, and return is certain
• Ensuring a stable and adequate budget for UNRWA without political conditions is an obligatory international responsibility
• Granting refugees their human rights in host countries supports their right to return to their original homesSign up here.

Make the super-rich pay their fair share.

American billionaires are 33% richer than they were at the start of the pandemic, all while inequality has worsened and inflation has soared. Billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos pay a “true tax rate” of just 3% or less while working people around the globe pay far more.

Enough is enough. It’s time for the ultra-rich to pay their fair share of taxes.

Just a modest tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s richest individuals could bring in $1.7 trillion in a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.

Sign your name and demand that President Biden, Congress, and world leaders address the inequality crisis globally and here at home by making multi-millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes.

 

Message to President Biden and Members of Congress:
The richest 1 percent globally have captured nearly two-thirds of all new wealth since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population. Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day while crushing inflation outpaces the wages of 1.7 billion workers.

Decades of tax cuts for the richest and corporations have fueled inequality, with the poorest people in many countries paying higher tax rates than billionaires. Oxfam is demanding wide-ranging increases in taxation of the super-rich, and we call on President Biden, Congress, and world governments to tax the extraordinary wealth of multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Increased taxes on the wealthiest individuals could lift people out of poverty, address the climate crisis, fund childcare, and create well-paying jobs.

We urge you to join Oxfam’s global community and make the ultra-rich pay their fair share of taxes.

Endorse here: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/take-action/action-alert-tax-the-rich/

END ALL WARFARE – NO SANCTIONS

 

The SanctionsKill Campaign is a broad coalition of social justice, solidarity, and peace forces focused on exposing the devastating impact of US sanctions on civilian populations globally.

Sanctions are not a substitute for war

The current regime of sanctions against Russia is not a substitute for war, but a form of warfare. Sanctions kill many thousands just as bombs do. Sanctions create hyperinflation, artificial famines, social upheavals, and health crises that punish civilian populations. As US President Biden said, the sanctions are intended “to inflict further pain.”

Sanctions are collective punishment and illegal under international law.

Nor are the sanctions by the US and its allies against Russia a deterrent to war. They will not reduce hostilities, but are an escalation of the current conflict.

Sanctions consolidate US dominance in Europe

Sanctions are being used to consolidate US dominance in the region, even though it is counter to the material interests of the European Union (EU) and the UK to cut economic ties with Moscow.

The growth in EU trade with Russia and China threatens the domination of US corporate power in Europe. The EU is the biggest investor in Russia. While the US is the largest exporter of methane gas, the EU purchases substantial gas from Russia at much lower prices, and also oil and wheat.

With the EU and especially Germany unwilling to impose sanctions, which would break all relations with Russia, Biden threatened the US allies that the only alternative to going along with the US would be nuclear war. The US president said: “You have two options. Start a Third World War…Or two, make sure that the country that acts so contrary to international law ends up paying a price.” Biden said the US “goal from the very beginning” was to keep NATO and the EU “on the same page.”

Using the dominant role of the dollar in the world economy, Washington has unilaterally imposed over 5,500 sanctions on Russia, making it the most sanctioned target of US aggressive policies.

US sanctions dragging the whole world into the conflict

Unfortunately, Russia is not the only victim of these unilateral coercive measures. Over 40 countries, comprising a third of humanity, are so targeted by the US. These include Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Third countries trading with targets of US sanctions also face heavy fines. This deadly form of economic warfare destroys regional development.

Further, the US is compelling other countries to execute these extreme economic penalties. We note, with grave concern, that these sanctions imposed on Russia are dragging the whole world into a conflict which has a high potential of spiraling out of control.

The United Nations did not approve the US-instigated sanctions. Many countries now refuse to join with the US/EU sanctions imposed on Russia. To date India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and other countries with smaller economies have refused to comply with the US measures. In fact, almost all of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, and most of Asia reject the sanctions.

Sanctions are a crime against humanity

Such sanctions would damage these countries’ own trade relations. Supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressures from the US-led sanctions are already disproportionately impacting poor and working people globally due to shortages and higher prices for food, fuel, and basic commodities. Especially impacted are people in the developing world.

As over 60 years of US sanctions against the Cuban Revolution prove, sanctions meant to achieve the regime change the US wants to impose have, in fact, resulted in raining misery upon the targeted people. These sanctions serve as a cautionary lesson to any nation that wishes to exercise its sovereignty under the globally inflicted Pax Americana. It is a crime against humanity.

Ending the Ukraine War

This devastating war started with the US-orchestrated coup in 2014 coup, overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Although Ukraine is not a formal NATO member, the US has since dumped mountains of lethal arms and deployed US military “advisors” into Ukraine.

Ukraine is a pawn in Washington’s strategy against Russia. Since the coup, Ukraine has been reduced to the poorest country in Europe with the highest rate of migration. Kiev’s continuing aggression against its eastern provinces and mass privatizations of socially owned property have furthered the economic ruin.

Sanctions Kill Campaign calls on all sides to end hostilities and for the US to employ diplomacy; not weapons, sanctions and war!

Click here to endorse.

Over 1,000 scholars, artists and intellectuals from more than 45 countries have signed the following declaration calling for the dismantling of the apartheid regime set up on the territory of historic Palestine and the establishment of a democratic constitutional arrangement that grants all its inhabitants equal rights and duties. The signatories include many distinguished figures, including the Nobel Peace Prize laureates Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Mairead Maguire, the Nobel Chemistry Laureate George Smith, academics with legal expertise Monique Chemillier-Gendreau, John Dugard and Richard Falk, scholars Étienne Balibar, Hagit Borer, Ivar Ekeland, Suad Joseph, Edgar Morin, Jacques Rancière, Roshdi Rashed and Gayatri Spivak, health researcher Sir Iain Chalmers, composer Brian Eno, musician Roger Waters, author Ahdaf Soueif, economist and former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN Sir Richard Jolly, former Vice President European Parliament Luisa Morgantini, South African politician and veteran anti-apartheid leader Ronnie Kasrils and Canadian peace activist and former national leader of the Green Party of Canada Joan Russow.

Whereas :

1- Israel has subjected the Palestinian people for 73 years to an ongoing catastrophe, known as the Nakba, a process that included massive displacement, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity ;

2- Israel has established an apartheid regime on the entire territory of historic Palestine and directed toward the whole of the deliberately fragmented Palestinian people ; Israel itself no longer seeks to hide its apartheid character, claiming Jewish supremacy and exclusive Jewish rights of self-determination in all of historic Palestine through the adoption in 2018 by the Knesset of a new Basic Law ;

3-The apartheid character of Israel has been confirmed and exhaustively documented by widely respected human rights organizations, Adalah, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and in the UN ESCWA academic study that stresses the importance of defining Israeli apartheid as extending to people rather than limited to space, [“Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” UN ESCWA, 2017] ;

4- Israel periodically unleashes massive violence with devastating impacts on Palestinian civilian society, particularly against the population of Gaza, which endures widespread devastation, collective trauma, and many deaths and casualties, aggravated by being kept under an inhuman and unlawful blockade for over 14 years, and throughout the humanitarian emergency brought about by the COVID pandemic ;

5- Western powers have facilitated and even subsidized for more than seven decades this Israeli system of colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid, and continue to do so diplomatically, economically, and even militarily.

Considering :

i- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights which stipulates in its first article that ’all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ And taking account that the inalienable right of self-determination is common Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Political Rights, and as such, a legal and ethical entitlement of all peoples.

ii- The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid which stipulates in Article I that ’apartheid is a crime against humanity and that inhuman acts resulting from the policies and practices of apartheid and similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination, as defined in article II of the Convention, are crimes violating the principles of international law, in particular the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and constituting a serious threat to international peace and security.’ The States Parties to this Convention undertake in accordance with Article IV :
_ “(a) To adopt any legislative or other measures necessary to suppress as well as to prevent any encouragement of the crime of apartheid and similar segregationist policies or their manifestations and to punish persons guilty of that crime ;
_ “(b) To adopt legislative, judicial and administrative measures to prosecute, bring to trial and punish in accordance with their jurisdiction persons responsible for, or accused of, the acts defined in article II of the present Convention, whether or not such persons reside in the territory of the State in which the acts are committed or are nationals of that State or of some other State or are stateless persons.”

The endorsers of this document :

A- Declare their categorical rejection of the apartheid regime set up on the territory of historic Palestine and imposed on the Palestinian people as a whole, including refugees and exiles wherever they might be in the world.

B- Call for the immediate dismantling of this apartheid regime and the establishment of a democratic constitutional arrangement that grants and implements on all the inhabitants of this land equal rights and duties, regardless of their racial, ethnic, and religious identities, or gender preferences, and which respects and enforces international law and human conventions, and in particular gives priority to the long deferred right of return of Palestinian refugees expelled from their towns and villages during the creation of the State of Israel, and subsequently.

C- Urge their governments to cease immediately their complicity with Israel’s apartheid regime, to join in the effort to call for the dismantling of apartheid structures and their replacement by an egalitarian democratic governance that treats everyone subject to its authority in accordance with their rights and with full respect for their humanity, and to make this transition in a manner sensitive to the right of self-determination enjoyed by both peoples presently inhabiting historic Palestine.

D- Call for the establishment of a National Commission of Peace, Reconciliation, and Accountability to accompany the transition from apartheid Israel to a governing process sensitive to human rights and democratic principles and practices. In the interim, until such a process is underway, issue a call for the International Criminal Court to launch a formal investigation of Israeli political leaders and security personnel guilty of perpetuating the crime of apartheid.

* Academics, artists and intellectuals can endorse this declaration by completing this form.

* Endorsed by 1,028 academics, artists and intellectuals on July 26, 2021

The U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba is an enduring international symbol of injustice and torture, and it continues to cause profound harm to the 40 men who remain imprisoned. New reports show that President Biden is currently reviewing policies with the goal of closing the prison — we must make sure that he moves quickly to end indefinite detention without charge or trial and close Guantánamo once and for all.

The prison, designed to indefinitely detain Muslims, is a critical fixture of the post-9/11 “War on Terror” that has predominantly criminalized, surveilled, incarcerated, and tortured Muslims, U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike, with little legal recourse. While Guantánamo is part of the US’ carceral state, its existence in the War on Terror symbolizes a place beyond the law where the US government has extended the boundaries of what is considered acceptable treatment of Muslims in addition to other marginalized communities. Moreover, Guantánamo has exported its harsh conditions to domestic prisons such as Communication Management Units, located in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion Illinois.

Since 2002, the U.S. has imprisoned nearly 800 Muslim men and boys. Today, 40 men remain. Most have never been charged with a crime, and none have had access to a fair trial. Many were tortured by the U.S., and all have suffered from the physical and psychological effects of indefinite detention for over a decade. A number of men have even been approved for transfer by the government, yet political delays have kept them languishing behind bars.

With the 20th anniversary of the global “War on Terror” approaching, ending indefinite detention and closing the prison is a necessary step towards justice, accountability, and reconciliation.

Guantánamo is just one the U.S. government’s more contemporary pursuits in egregious human rights violations in a long history of abuses against Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities within the US and abroad. The prison is part of the decades-long legacy of mass incarceration and U.S. militarism, and more recently, the connections with the mass immigration detention and deportation apparatus have also become clear. Calls for its closure must be part of our collective demands to expose the U.S.’s racist history and contemporary practices in policing and mass incarceration, and demand investment instead in community healing and other needs.

President Biden has said he intends to close Guantánamo. Now he must take action towards that goal. The Biden administration should release the dozens of men who have never been charged with a crime to their home or third countries and resolve the remaining cases by bringing them to federal court for trial or negotiating their transfer to foreign countries to serve sentences. The U.S. must ensure that no one is transferred to countries where they are in danger of persecution and torture.

Add your name: Urge the Biden administration to close Guantánamo prison and end indefinite detention once and for all.

Sign here.