3rd April, 2008
IN SUPPORT OF A SOVEREIGN BOLIVIA OF
SOLIDARITY AND NONVIOLENCE
The Bolivian people are preparing to decide
whether to approve or reject their new Constitution through a referendum. This Constitution will protect human
rights, freedom of individuals and deepen real democracy, establishing levels
of participation and autonomy that reaches down to the municipalities and
communities. This Constitution
that recognises in its multi-nationality, the original peoples, discriminated
and exploited for centuries and that, without eliminating private property,
includes the right of the communities to a collective economy and to recover
the sovereignty of the Nation over natural resources. This advanced Constitution that rejects War as a method of
conflict resolution – A Humanist Constitution.
It has been an admirable process that Evo
Morales has lead with intelligence and courage, confronting the violence of
economic power with the methodology of nonviolence.
Nevertheless, radical right-wing groups are
forcing things in order to provoke a division of the country. They want to achieve their objectives
with bad faith, circumventing democracy and legal process and with total
irresponsibility towards the lives of their fellow countrymen. Their objectives are to recover their
privileges and appropriate resources that are for all. They call Autonomy what in reality is
secession, a separation of the Nation.
Separation that of course will leave them with control of the riches and
the population abandoned.
Latin American Governments showed great stature
in resolving the recent conflict between Ecuador and Colombia and latterly in
prioritizing the democracy of each country when it has been in danger. It is necessary that they pronounce
once more in support of Evo Morales and the referendum on the New Constitution.
It is important to make the Bolivian people
feel that their Latin American brothers and sisters and people around the world
are supporting them and that we will not accept fragmentation of the Bolivian
State.
The people must proclaim to the four winds that
it is no longer possible that someone comes along and subjects them to
massacres, because there is a Latin American and Global community that will not
allow it. They will not accept
that, with interventionist pretexts, like those used in Iraq and in so many
other places, democracy is interrupted when it is no longer convenient to the
interests of the powerful.
The United States has to understand that Latin
America will no longer be a mere object of greed for their businesses and their
geopolitical convenience. They
must comprehend that our peoples must be treated with respect, valuing the life
of every person, because everyone is important.
The response that populations and governments
give to the people of Bolivia is very important. If secession is a valid path, soon violent economic groups
that do not like the limits imposed by the State will resort to this mechanism
to disintegrate nations. It is not
indifferent what happens in Bolivia as other liberation processes set in motion
in the region will also be affected by the results.
Humanists of the world, in solidarity with the
Bolivian people, call on the international community to make statements and
other actions to influence those leaders who defend division to renounce their
seditious objectives and to sit down and dialogue, taking the process along the
path of unity and peace within a legal framework.
We request your support for the Bolivian
Government and its president Evo Morales and we ask that you refuse to
recognise any referendum that puts Bolivian unity in danger.
Tomás Hirsch
Spokesperson
for Humanism in Latin America
Giorgio Schultze
Spokesperson
for New Humanism in Europe
3rd April, 2008
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