Isabelle Bartter reports on
the first major BDS campaign to originate in Latin America.
July 27, 2017
MORE THAN 200 Latin American
organizations and activists published an open letter on July 9 to the board of
directors of Cemex, a Mexican construction materials company, calling for an
end to its participation in Israeli apartheid.
Ready-Mix, a subsidiary of
Cemex, operates factories in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West
Bank and Golan Heights, and has provided materials to build checkpoints and the
tram service connecting settlements in East Jerusalem, not to mention the
illegal apartheid wall itself.
This campaign is significant
not only for its large scale and base of support, but also because it is the
first major international BDS campaign originating in Latin America.
In
an article for Electronic Intifada, Abdulrahman Abunahel, a spokesperson
for the BDS National Committee, said the campaign against the Mexican firm will
"not only expose its complicity in serious violations of international law
but will also affect its contracts."
As with most corporate
interests involved in the occupation, Cemex's crimes do not end in Palestine.
As Isabel Rikkers, a member of BDS Colombia, said:
Part of the inspiration for
this campaign came from Cemex announcing they were willing to help build the
U.S.-Mexico border wall. It is clear that Cemex is involved in actions that
promote apartheid and occupation in Palestine, and therefore they are violating
international law. We also want to call attention to the fact that their
actions in Latin America, including here in Colombia, have created a number of
social and environmental conflicts as well.
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FOR DECADES, Cemex has been
causing enormous damage all over Latin America. Activists and organizations
involved in this campaign want to emphasize that the corporations which profit
from Israeli apartheid are causing harm in other parts of the world as
well--and that solidarity with the Palestinian cause is linked to their own
health and well-being.
This especially hits home in
Bogotá, Colombia's capital, where BDS Colombia is based.
On June 5, 2010, an injunction
was issued to suspend all mining activities at CEMEX Colombia's El Tunjuelo
quarry, located in Bogotá. The injunction stated that since 1950, CEMEX
Colombia had illegally changed the course of the Tunjuelo River, drying it up
completely in some parts, and had used the edge of the river for illegal mining
activities.
Activists in the area had been
fighting Cemex for years before the injunction. As Andrey Tellez, a
spokesperson for El Movimiento Cívico, said in a forum on the social and
environmental effects of mining activity:
The mining activity in our
territories causes diseases and damage to our common spaces, and affects the
life of an area with serious social problems and with few opportunities. Mining
ends up benefiting a few companies like Cemex and Holcim, which derive high
returns, but don't compensate the city for the damages, and the employment they
generate is minimal and precarious.
In
an article published at BDSMovement.net, BDS National Committee
spokesperson Abunahel was quoted welcoming the efforts of Latin American
movements and organizations on the #StopCemex campaign:
Palestinians and Latin
Americans share many experiences of oppression, but we also share experiences
of popular resistance. It's inspiring to see Latin American movements and
organizations pressure the huge Mexican building materials company Cemex to end
its involvement in Israel's violations of Palestinian human rights. At the same
time, we support their struggles against injustice and walls affecting their
own region. Our struggles unite.
This sentiment was echoed by
Rikkers of BDS Colombia, who said, "The #StopCemex campaign embodies the
BDS movement's understanding of international solidarity, which is once again
key to winning this fight."
Considering the
current humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel's recent efforts to advance
the occupation of Jerusalem, including increased security measures around
al-Aqsa mosque and extension of the light rail system to illegal Israeli
settlements, these kinds of campaigns based on solidarity from below are needed
now more than ever.
The only way to defeat Trump—
and to redeem what is worth saving in liberal democracy—is to detach ourselves
from liberal democracy’s corpse and establish a new Left.
Elements of the program for
this new Left are easy to imagine.
Trump promises the
cancellation of the big free trade agreements supported by Clinton, and the
left alternative to both should be a project of new and different international
agreements.
Such agreements would
establish public control of the banks, ecological standards, workers rights,
universal healthcare, protections of sexual and ethnic minorities, etc.
The big lesson of global
capitalism is that nation states alone cannot do the job—only a new political
international has a chance of bridling global capital.
Excerpt from:
“We Must Rise from the Ashes
of Liberal Democracy”
BY Slavoj Žižek
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19918/slavoj-zizek-from-the-ashes-of-liberal-democracy
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