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Call to participate
The following call was issued for the 1st Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference, which gathered a wide range of left and progressive activists from the Asia-Pacific region from April 10 to April 13, 1998, in Sydney, Australia.
Asia Pacific in Crisis
Until recently, governments, corporations, banks and international financial institutions, all touted the Asia Pacific region as the region of miracle growth, of accelerated development, of economic boom. For millions of other people, the reality has long been different. Their experience has been one of political and social struggle for basic human rights, for a sustainable economic and social order.
The massive worker and student struggles in South Korea against new labour laws, the sharpening struggle against the dictatorship and cronyism in Suharto's Indonesia; the continuing uprising of the East Timorese people for self-determination; the labour struggles and renewal in the Philippines in the face of Philippines 2000 neo-liberal offensive; the ongoing war on the island of Bougainville; the conflict in Sri Lanka over national rights of the Tamil people and authoritarian government are just some examples of struggles in the region. The economic crisis will only sharpen these struggles.
The strengthening of authoritarian practices as a means of defending the austerity and economic restructuring policies have become major concerns throughout the region. Laws to ban trade union organisers from worksites in Australia; outright bans on independent trade unions in Indonesia; restrictions and harassment of non-government organisations in Malaysia are examples of this tendency.
These restrictions have shaped a pattern of general resistance to democratisation by governments throughout the region. Now the IMF is demanding even more attacks on the rights and living standards of ordinary people as the price of a bailout of the embattled Asian economies. People's Resistance
But at the same time there are innumerable initiatives to fight repression and exploitation. New political movements have emerged in Indonesia; old movements are transforming themselves in the Philippines; an unofficial trade union movement can force the South Korean government to retreat; Malaysian democrats rally to the cause of the East Timorese; the Burmese democrats still refuse to surrender; anti-neoliberal activists are elected to the New Zealand parliament.
These are just a few of the many examples of democratisation initiatives in the region.
The Asia Pacific Institute has called the 1998 Asia Pacific Solidarity conference as a way to bring as many people as possible together to discuss these issues and struggles and to assess what fighting for democratisation and for socially just development can do. The conference aims to bring together political activists, NGO workers, intellectuals and academics from different ideological traditions.
Australian Supporters of the Conference:
Participants:
The following organisations and individuals participated in the conference: