Cymraeg 
by Yali Banton-Heath, LWA’s Campaigns Communications Coordinator
Today is the International Day of Peasant Struggle – a day to stand in solidarity with peasants, indigenous groups and land defenders across the globe who are on the frontline of the struggle for food sovereignty. Today we come together to mourn losses, celebrate successes, and denounce the continued criminalisation, oppression, and repression of peasants, workers, migrants, and indigenous people communities worldwide.
La Via Campesina commemorates this day, April 17th, to remember the Eldorado do Carajas massacre of 1996. On this day 27 years ago 19 members of the Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Workers Movement) in Brazil were murdered by state military police while they were protesting against a large private ranch which they were campaigning to be turned into public ownership.
The Eldorado do Carajas massacre was a harrowing moment in the history of the global struggle for food sovereignty, and while the movement has made significant gains and continues to build momentum year on year, for many peasant communities across the world violence and persecution remains a harsh reality.
Not only are peasant and indigenous groups facing police brutality, murder and arrest in their struggles over land rights and food sovereignty, but they are also experiencing violent oppression through the destruction of their livelihoods, economic exploitation and manipulation and the pollution and dispossession of the lands, waters and soils on which they depend.
In Peru, since the military coup and controversial ousting of president Pedro Castillo (the son of peasant farmers) in December 2022 there have been widespread protests calling for the resignation of the new president Dina Boluarte. Peasant and indigenous groups have travelled from across the country to take part in demonstrations and to exercise their right to protest – demanding a Plurinational Constituent Assembly process and to stand up for food sovereignty and peasant rights. Peasant leaders and protestors have been met with violent police crackdowns and arrests, and on December 17, the Peruvian intelligence police raided the premises of the Confederación Campesina del Perú to arrest and interrogate the peasants who were gathered there.
In France earlier this year La Via Campesina member Confederation Paysanne took part in a protest which saw over 30,000 farmers, activists and local groups take to the streets in Saint-Soline to speak out against the construction of a local ‘mega basin’ reservoir. In the face of large agribusiness interests this demonstration showed the will and determination of peasants to continue to stand up for land justice and food sovereignty despite being met with a violent police response which left over 200 people were injured.
In Thailand towards the end of last year peasant groups came together to protest the government’s new ‘Bi0-Circular Green Economic Model’ policy which would facilitate the dispossession of peasant forests, farms and common land and place them in the hands of large corporations. The government used repressive tactics to quash the voice of peasants and deployed police who violently attacked protestors, made numerous arrests and left many people injured.
In South Korea, Ko Chang-geon, the Secretary General of the Korean Peasant League (KPL) was arrested in February this year in an attempt to suppress KPL’s ongoing struggle against the anti-democratic Yun Seok-ryul government. Chan-geon has been at the forefront of the fight against neoliberal policies in South Korea and is an ardent campaigner for food sovereignty and peasant rights. La Via Campesina have issued a demand for his immediate release.
In Myanmar since the military coup in February 2021 the struggle for democracy is ongoing but the death toll of protestors and dissenters continues to rise. Peasants farmers – who account for 70% of the country’s population have been mobilising agains the coup and joining the pro-democracy movement. While protests have been concentrated in towns and cities, rural communities have also been on the frontline of ongoing conflict between the Myanmar military and rebel ethnic groups and have been forced to flee their homes and their farms – plunging the country deeper into a food crisis.
In Haiti, where over a third of the population are at risk of hunger and communities are still recovering from the earthquake that hit in August 2022, the political turmoil that has followed in the wake of the assassination of their president in July last year has exposed the country to increase foreign interference and land grabs. These land grabs and evictions of peasant communities are a modern wave of the type of racialised extractivism which has shaped land rights in Haiti for centuries.
In Tanzania the mass evictions of Maasai pastoralists at the hands of the state continues after the government declared in June last year that 150,000 hectares of Maasai land would be turned into a game reserve for tourism. Since this eviction began, dozens of community leaders have been arrested and put in jail and many more local villagers have been subjected to violent eviction tactics including the firing of rubber bullets and teargas.
Here in the UK farmers and land workers are also having to fight to defend their homes, land and rights from the interests of large agribusiness. In Lincolnshire locals are campaigning to save their farms from being flooded by a new reservoir proposal. Across the country tenant farmers are facing evictions left, right, and centre from absentee landlords who want to develop or sell the land. And migrant agricultural workers in the UK continue to be exploited on farms under a violent immigration system which continues to strip away the rights and security of people who come to the UK to work under the seasonal worker visa scheme.
But battles are being won. In Peru a historic Supreme Court sentence has sentenced five illegal loggers who murdered four Ashéninka Indigenous leaders in 206 to 28 years in prison. Indigenous groups hope that this will help to put an end to the culture of impunity surrounding the violent oppression and assassinations of land defenders and indigenous activists who are fighting tirelessly to save their forest territories in the face of extractivism and ecological collapse.
In Colombia the government has recently signed the Escazu Accord which enshrines protections for the safety of environmental and land defenders, and have also committed to the implementation of UNDROP (UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas) which is a promising step in the right direction to securing the rights of peasants and indigenous groups in the country.
As the protestors in Peru have been chanting:
“Five centuries resisting
Five centuries of courage
Keeping always the essence.
It’s our essence and it’s our seed
That is inside us forever.”
The seed of justice will forever be at the heart of the global movement for food sovereignty, and now more than ever we must stand in solidarity with our friends and allies across the globe who are fighting for food, economic, environmental and climate justice.
La Via Campesina has issued a Call to Action to commemorate today, and on Saturday April 21st Landworkers’ Alliance will be joining The Big One to mobilise and be a voice for farmers and peasants in the climate justice movement: “Agroecology Cools the Earth! – “Fight Climate Change with Food Sovereignty!” More info on The Big One can be found here.
Image credit: Umut Vedat/ La Via Campesina
