[APWSLMembers 681] Re: Fw: Solidarity Message

[Anton Marcus]

Working Women Organization




Appeal







We Want Peace


“This year, March 8th, the International Women’s Day takes place in a world 
where the flames of war are raising all over the world:

We have heard the statements threatening the Chavez government of 
Venezuela, of war, because it does not accept the orders of imperialism.

We have all seen the terrible pictures of Palestinian women and children 
running under the fire of missiles and bombs provided by US imperialism and 
fired by the armed forces of the Israeli state.

Those terrible scenes are the same as those of people of Afghanistan whose 
villages have been burnt and reduced to rubble by the US air force because 
they were charged with “hiding terrorists”.

Military occupation of Afghanistan has now been going on for 6 years and it 
only brings along with it never-ending destruction and war. That war is now 
spreading into Pakistan.

To spread the fame of war, imperialism is attempting to break up our 
countries to sow the seeds of hatred and fear between people who want to 
live together in peace and making use of language, religion and gender. We, 
the women are those who suffer first and most from the situation created by 
imperialism and which is prevailing in all our countries.

On the occasion of the 8th of March, it is time to launch an Appeal of 
Women against War for Peace, for peaceful and friendly relations between 
all the peoples and the nations of our area. We want peace.

“It is a woman’s appeal, because women have always stood in the first line 
of the struggle against wars.

  “We women are the first victims of so-called “ethnic cleansing’ of 
massacres under cover of religion.

“We women are opposed to wars, to the waste of human lives sacrificed to 
imperialist greed: these lives are those of their sons and daughters, of 
their fathers, their brothers and their husbands.

Let’s unite because we want peace, we want to live peacefully, to live in 
conditions where our children are fed and can be educated, in conditions 
where we are no longer facing violence and harm on a daily basis because we 
are women.

“We women know that the domestic civil repression is intrinsically linked 
to the violence of war.

We are aware that the situation of women in our countries exists in the 
larger context of the global history of our continent, of colonisation and 
its consequences: partition, displacement, forced migrations and 
expulsions, all elements which imperialism uses today.

And we know that wars can only worsen that situation.

We need peace, we know it can be safeguarded only by the united action of 
all the people of our sub-continent.

That is why we are resisting against the moves of imperialism to gain 
strategic influence in our area to control our natural resources, not the 
least of which is oil.

That is why we fight against the plans of the IMF and the World Bank which 
aggravate the poverty and misery in each of our countries and create the 
conditions which allow war, conflicts and barbarism to develop. In fact, 
terror roams the world in many guises and is perpetrated under various 
banners, but the root of evil, of war and misery is imperialist domination, 
a system ready to crush millions of lives for the sake of profit.

As working class activists from all the sub-continent stated at the end of 
the Mumbai conference for a “brotherly alliance of the people and the 
organisations of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, for 
peace and unity of the people.”:

“War, occupation, military presence are used to aggravate in each and every 
country the conditions of the working class, to attack its rights, to 
intensify its exploitation.

Workers of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, have the same interests.(
)

Imperialism today is everywhere fostering conflicts on so-called ethnic or 
religious basis. But in the class struggle, the workers are united. Those 
who have organised the partition, to weaken the people at the time of 
independence, today intend to aggravate chaos and division.”

That holds true for women. Women are in the first line of the victims of 
that system.

We call upon women in India, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka, in 
Nepal, irrespective of their creed, of their language, of their 
geographical location to unite, to say together: we want peace, we want 
democracy, we want equality.

We can be at the vanguard of the struggle of the people of our 
sub-continent so that instead of wars, conflicts, we build together a 
friendly and peaceful alliance of all the oppressed and exploited who share 
the same interests.

We, women, will continue to fight in defence of our rights.

We calls upon all women militants of the world to act jointly with men 
inside trade unions, to resist the capitalist globalisation, the 
imperialist wars and the destruction of the environment and to demand trade 
union and democratic freedoms.

We women, on the occasion of March 8th 2008, International Women’s Day, we 
state our determination to fight against war, against all attempts to 
divide us, on the basis of “ethnicity”, religion or language. We stand 
against war for the unity of our people, for democracy and for equal rights.


Rubina Jamil,


Working Women Organisation


I wish to endorse the appeal
“South Asian Women Against War, for Peace, for Unity of all the People of 
our Sub-continent, for Democracy, for Equality of Rights.


Name:            Nirosha Priyadarshine__________________________ 
Organization Name:_Free Tread Zones & general Services Employees 
Union____________________________________

Address:__No. 141 Ananda Rajakurana Mwatha Colombo 10 Sri Lanka 
________________________________________________________________________________

Town, Country:_Colombo Sri Lanka 
_____________________________________Email:__ftzunion at wow.lk_______________________________

Tel:_94114617711   ________________________________Cell 
Phone:_________________________Fax:_94114617711 _____________
(to be sent to March 4th, 2008)
WWO 93 A Nawab Town, Raiwind Road, Lahore, Pakistan
Tel: 5311319-5313906 Fax: 92-42-5314365 Email: 
<mailto:rubinawwo at nexlinx.net.pk>rubinawwo at nexlinx.net.pk

















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