Statement in Support of Palestinian Decolonial Struggle

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25 October 2023

We, Yes to Life No to Mining (YLNM), and the other undersigned participants of the Second Thematic Social Forum on Mining and Extractivism, express our unconditional solidarity with the people of Palestine. While YLNM gathered here in Semarang, Indonesia, to share, learn and strategise around the Right to Say No to mining extractivism over the past 3 days, we have witnessed catastrophic violence unfold in Palestine.

Two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have endured nearly two weeks of relentless Israeli bombardment, including the bombing of schools, health facilities, mosques, and residential buildings, killing entire generations of families. Israel has cut off much-needed electricity, water, food, medical supplies, and fuel to Gaza as it tightens the blockade it began 16 years ago. In the West Bank, including Jerusalem, Palestinians continue to be oppressed by the Israeli military and police, including the use of live ammunition if they resist.

Israel commits these atrocities with the full support, funding, and military aid from a number of governments, notably those of our Global North participants: the United States, United Kingdom and European countries.

In recent years, the same governments have also taken strides to secure access to what they call critical minerals, which are not only deemed necessary for a corporate energy transition but also are vital for the production of military technology used to suppress peoples across the world. At the same time, carbon emissions from these militaries surpass those of many countries and contribute massively to the climate crisis that a new wave of green extractivism is pretending to solve.

The genocidal apartheid regime that Israel has imposed on Palestine is no different from the invasion and colonization of our territories all over the world and throughout history. We intimately understand how the imperial war machine operates as one arm of the world order that turns our lands and waters into resources to steal for the enrichment of the powerful few. Answering the call of Palestinian trade unions to end all forms of complicity with Israeli crimes, most urgently halting the arms trade with Israel, we declare:

We stand in solidarity with Palestine in their struggle for decolonization and self-determination and condemn Israeli occupation and genocide of the Palestinian people. We reject state, corporate and colonial violence and oppression, reject increased militarization globally, and reject our lands and labor being used to violently suppress and dispossess others across the world. We work to reclaim our lands and our labor as we build another world where many worlds fit, where we will continuously say yes to life and yes to liberation.

Yes to life, No to Mining!