Press Release – Via Campesina – 16 December 2006
Farmers from the international peasant's organisation La Via Campesina are joining the “Reclaim Power Action” today in Copenhagen starting at 8 am at Tarnby train station and going to the Bella Center where the UN Climate talks are being held. This protest is organised by several large coalitions of social movements, unions, NGOs and activists known as Climate Justice Action and Climate Justice Now!
Farmers reclaim the power to exist
Market-oriented agricultural policies and transnational companies are destroying farmers lives. Small farmers are losing their livelihoods due to mass import of cheap subsidised food; they are evicted by “development projects”; they fall into the dept trap due to the high cost of industrial agriculture inputs.
The mechanisms currently discussed during the climate talk are further agravating the situation. For example, the pressure on land for agrofuel productions is expelling more farmers out of of their farms.
Farmers reclaim the power to save the climate
Farmers are shocked by the complete commercialisation of the climate talks. Inventing carbon trading is not necessary to save the climate. On the contrary, it only further strengthens the transnational companies who have over-exploited the planet and created the current chaos. Farmers, workers, women groups, and indigenous communities from around the world propose real solutions to the climate change. These include support of sustainable family farms and direct food markets.
Farmers reclaim the power to express a real people project
Today near the Bella Center, protesters from around the world will set up a peoples' assembly to discuss real solutions to the current crises and real policies and practices that urgently need to be implemented.
This assembly is taking place outside the official conference because there is not space inside for people voices to be heard. Business is controlling the talks, not people's need. The more the talks advance, the more farmers and activists are muzzled. Some countries are excluded from the “green rooms” processes, accreditations to the conference have suddenly been restricted and protesters are arrested arbitrarily.
Farmers reclaim the power to oppose violence
The real violence is happening inside the negotiation rooms. Decisions taken there (and NOT taken there) are leading to more natural disasters, more land grabs, more evictions in the name of environment protection, more hunger and poverty.
La Via Campesina condemns the massive police repression of the protests, the preventive arrests to avoid the free expression of dissent and the “show business arrests” of protesters. The farmer's movement supports and takes part in non-violent actions of civil disobedience when it is justified politically in order to develop a society with more justice and dignity. We clearly reject violence as a means of action as we reject the violence of the policies discussed behind closed doors. We are protesting today against the current global model of society obsessed with trade and privatisation of commons and we continue our struggle for solidarity, climate justice and food sovereignty.
Information and Interviews with farmers' leaders from around the world:
Boaventura Monjane and Isabelle Delforge: + 45 50598325
Fergal Anderson: + 45 50598429
