The statement published below is a call for protests when US President Barack Obama visits Guam, Indonesia and Australia in late March. It was released by the Working Peoples Association (Indonesia), Socialist Alliance (Australia), Socialist Workers (New Zealand), Power of the Masses Party (PML — Philippines), Solidarity (Australia), Labor Party Pakistan, and Socialist Alternative (Australia).
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We, the undersigned progressive, anti-war, anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist organisations in the Asia-Pacific region, call for a wave protests to meet US President Barack Obama's planned visits to Guam, Indonesia and Australia in March.
While Obama was awarded Nobel peace prize last year, his administration is escalating US-led military aggression all around the world and continuing the Bush administration's so-called "war on terrorism. This was in reality a return to colonial military occupations in the Third World justified by lies and a campaign of fear and racism.
The war-like policies of the US serve to protect and advance its economic exploitation and domination all around the world.
• The US has stepped up the war on Afghanistan and spilled it over the border into Pakistan.
• The so-called withdrawal from Iraq is a fraud as the US will retain hundreds of bases in and around Iraq and the Persian Gulf.
• The US is promoting a civil war in Yemen and is stepping up its threats against Iran.
• The US is increasing its military bases in Latin America and increasing its military.
• The US is building up its military bases on Guam, a small Pacific nation colonially dominated and deformed by US military occupation.
• Through the Naval Medical Research Unit 2, which has recently changed its name to the Indonesia-United States Center for Medical Research (IUC), the US is gathering intelligence, developing anti-virus industry and biological weapons in Indonesia.
• The Obama administration has allocated US$1 trillion to the military in its latest budget even while millions of workers in the US have been thrown out of work and have lost their homes.
• Under Obama, neoliberal pressure on the Third World has been intensified. Through the G20, $1.1 trillion is to be spent on an economic stimulus to be delivered through the International Monetary Fund. However, the IMF loans to Third World countries come with severe with neoliberal conditions which will further destroy the livelihood of millions while bailing out the banks and protecting the capitalist system.
Obama's visit to Australia will celebrate and boost the reactionary US-Australia war alliance and his visit to Indonesia is to help prop up the slavish and corrupt neo-liberal regime of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Obama's visit to Guam is aimed at consolidating US military domination and US colonialism in the Pacific.
We call on the governments of our countries to end their military treaties and agreements with the US and for the withdrawal of all political and military support for the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and all other imperialist wars.
We demand the removal of all US bases from our countries and from all the other 130 countries around the world with US military bases.
We demand an end to the presence of any US troops who are stationed in our countries, in the guise of conducting "training" exercises, or under military treaties.
We call on the governments of our countries to support a policy of international peace and cooperation based on demilitarisation and people-to-people solidarity.
In the wake of the global capitalist financial crisis, we demand that the governments of Guam, Indonesia and Australia end their support for the global neoliberal agenda led by the US imperialists.
We demand that the governments of the US and Australia cancel all the debts owed to them by Third World countries, which are illegitimate, accrued through the economic exploitation and subjugation of our countries.
This neoliberal agenda has imposed the pillaging of our peoples and the Earth on an unprecedented scale while the global corporate elite has grown fat on profits and massive public subsidies.
No prosperity and peace will come from this increasingly greedy and destructive capitalist system, which the US uses its military might to defend.
That is why we strive to unite to replace the existing exploitative system with a new world run and owned by the oppressed and exploited majority — based on solidarity, cooperation and respect for the environment.