Carry On With The Struggle For Land, Women’s Rights, Food Sovereignty, Dignity And Justice! | Scoop News – Scoop

Saturday, 15 October 2022, 7:55 pmPress Release: PAN Asia Pacific

On International Rural Womens Day, the Asian RuralWomens Coalition (ARWC) stands in solidarity with allrural women across the world in defense of land, rights,sovereignty, dignity and justice against worsening attacksof fascist, exploitative and patriarchalpolicies.

Today, rural women and advocates cometogether to resist all schemes to perpetuate corporatecontrol over agriculture and assert the call for a globalfood system anchored on rights to land and resources, womenand community-led agroecology and peoples foodsovereignty.

Rural women are main food producers ofsocieties. They toil and work to feed the peoples of theworld, yet live in abject poverty and hunger. Neoliberalglobalization has brought upon the rural sector anunprecedented multiple crises that aggravated thedisempowerment and discrimination of rural women. Corporategreed and capitalist control of food and agriculture drivenby the G8, WTO, IMF-World Bank and other bilateral andregional trade agreements have only served to benefit bigdespotic landlords, elites, oligarchs and TNCs. These havefurther perpetuated patriarchy and worsened rural womensconditions of oppression, violence andexploitation.

Monopoly corporations control andexploit rural womens local knowledge, endanger theirlives and livelihoods, destroy their resources, poison theirlands and waters, and wreak havoc to rural communities. Landgrabbing and land inequality have resulted in increasedhunger and malnutrition, poverty and landlessness, genderinequality, social injustice and strife.

Theseconditions have further worsened the rural crisis andexacerbated the forced migration and trafficking of ruralwomen. As migrants and workers, they are doubly subjected toincreased gender violence, abuse, exploitation,discrimination and criminalization. Neoliberal exploitationcontinues to attack formal and regular work worldwidethrough wage slavery, labor flexibilization, union-bustingand repression. More and more rural women are being pushedinto informal work and unemployment.

Governments arecomplicit with land-grabbers and exploiters. State fascismis showcased in the intensified militarization of thecountrysides, various forms of harassment against womenpeasants and advocates and the criminalization andsuppression of peasant movements and struggles. Rural womenare being targeted, resulting in unending cases of humanrights violations, illegal arrests, political persecutionand extrajudicial killings of rural women andadvocates.

One hotspot is the Philippines, where humanrights group Karapatan has documented at least ten victimsof extrajudicial killings in rural communities, includingnine-year-old Kyllene Casao, within the first 100 days ofMarcos Jr. At least four victims of enforced disappearanceswere documented, among them womens rights advocates Ma.Elena Pampoza and Elgene Mungcal who were abducted inTarlac, and peasant couple Geral Ganti and Dalen Alip-on whowere abducted from their home in Himamaylan City in NegrosOccidental.

The Philippine military has beenconducting intensive military operations, indiscriminatebombings and strafing with artillery and machine gunfire inthe areas bordering the rural villages of Carabalan andMahalang in Himamaylan since October 6. Starting October 9,the military declared a one-week lockdown in the area, withthe Himamaylan City Social Welfare and Development Officedeclaring as many as 15,024 evacuees as of October 10, oralmost 14% of the Himamaylans population. As a result,residents have gone hungry and children are in dire need ofmilk and diapers. Villagers who were allowed to return totheir homes found their livestock slaughtered by themilitary. Houses and belongings of rural women leaders andadvocates being red-tagged by the government were ransacked,according to Karapatan-Negros.

Meanwhile, Marcos Jr,son of the former dictator, had appointed himself Head ofthe Department of Agriculture, a government agency thatholds power over billions of pesos worth of importationand smuggling of agricultural goods and is the centralrecipient of foreign loans and investments from the WorldBank and other financial institutions.

Elsewhere inAsia, last October 8 in India, Dalit women agriculturallaborers, including a pregnant Dalit woman, were assaultedand locked up in a workers colony at Husanehalli inChikkamagalaru district of Karnataka after protesting thebeating up of a woman rural worker over an alleged loandispute.

In Indonesia, women agricultural workers inoil palm plantations owned by large landowners continue toexperience various forms of physical violence, sexualviolence and discrimination. Ancestral lands of women fromthe national minority Sakai in Riau Province of SumatraIsland were seized for the development of big palm oilplantations, big timber plantations and oil mining. As aform of resistance to landlords and as a means to survive inthe midst of extreme poverty, they continue to assert andharvest Fresh Fruit Bunch of palm oil in the said lands,facing oppression and violence from the plantation securityunit, the police unit (POLRI) and the Indonesian NationalArmy (TNI). Similar conditions are faced by rural women wholive near or work in big plantations of landlords throughoutIndonesia. President Joko Widodo Administrations AgrarianReform and social assistance programs have weakened thepower of the people to live and continue to cause disunityamong rural women.

But fascism begets resistance.Rural women are organizing and asserting their rights inAsia and all over the world. They continue to defypatriarchal traditions and boldly resist caste and genderviolence and brutal attacks. They fight for freedom fromoppression and discrimination.

Together with othersectors of society, they uphold human rights, womensrights and the rights of all marginalized groups. They havechallenged governments, corporations and landlords. Theyhave tirelessly campaigned against development aggression,corruption, violence on women, trafficking, and militarism.They have joined strikes and protest actions to fight forhigher wages, food security, and basic services such aswater, health and education.

Rural womens movementsare advancing and in various levels of mass movements toresist patriarchy, local feudal-capitalist forces andimperialism.

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Carry On With The Struggle For Land, Women's Rights, Food Sovereignty, Dignity And Justice! | Scoop News - Scoop