S’bu Zikode was elected to represent Abahlali baseMjondolo at the People’s Rights Forum in Istanbul. The final declaration of the forum has been translated and is below. The Housing Rights and Women’s declarations will be translated soon.

People’s Rights Forum Final Declaration

The people of Turkey has the historical accumulation, ability and possibility to determine her own faith. The history of this land will be written by the labouring sons and daughters of this land coming from different linguistic and national origins.

The basic motto which integrates the will of this land with the universal values of humanity is: “Independence, equality and people’s democracy”.

Peoples, who are not engaged in struggle will have no rights!

The rights of the people is a program of struggle. The historical experience is clear: Today all those rights which are lost one by one, are not achieved as a result of the charities of the rulers, but as a result of the struggles of the peoples of the world.

The program of the rights of the people, is not a list of demands to be asked from the current owners of power; it is a charter of the people; none of its elements can be subjected to any kind of bargaining.

The struggle which is given for the rights of the people is a praxis, both of a resistance and of a founding construction; within the framework of the struggle for the rights of the people, resistance and construction are intertwined.

?çinde ya?ad???m?z dünyada emperyalizm art?k d???m?zdaki bir olgu olmaktan ç?km??; içselle?mi? bir olgu niteli?i gittikçe daha da belirginlik kazanm??t?r. Dünyan?n ezilen kutbu bak?m?ndan, emperyalizme kar?? mücadele ile kapitalizme kar?? mücadele aras?ndaki aç? fark? kapanm??t?r. Anti-emperyalist mücadelenin anti-kapitalist içeri?i, ideolojik bir tercih konusu de?il, nesnel bir durumdur. Bu durum, kendisini en aç?k ?ekilde, kamusal varl?klar ve sosyal haklar etraf?nda cereyan eden s?n?flar mücadelesinde göstermektedir.

In the world in which we live, imperialism is not any more an external factor; its character as an internal factor came much more apparent. In terms of the oppressed pole of the world, the angle and gap between the struggle against imperialism and the struggle between capitalism does not exist anymore. The anti-capitalist content of the anti-imperialist struggle is not a subject of an ideological choice, but is an objective situation. This situation shows itself, most clearly, in the context of the class struggles which occur around and over the public assets and social rights.

To what extent the proram of the people’s rights can be realized depends on, to what extent the neo-liberal colonialist wars waged by imperialism together with various means will be defeated. Neo-liberalism is the current neo-colonialist strategy of imperalism, which under the American hegemony has a collective charecter to a certain degree. This strategy had integrated state with capital and the country with imperialism; the bureaucratic and political elite and all fractions of the local bourgouise had united their faiths with the international monopoly capital.

The policies of commodification, marketization, precaurization of neoliberalism seize the rights of the people to education, to health, to housing, to transportation and to communication which should be organized with a social orientation; destroy the environment, natural resources and land in an irreversable manner and transform productive activity, which actually can be the most emancipating activity of humanity into most destructive forms of slavery. To defend the basic rights of the people; the common riches of humanity and all of the natural resources of the earth against neo-liberal aggresion is the most basic legitimate right of the people. Because, peoples will open a humanly life space to themselves as far as they can repulse the attacts of the neo-liberal capital.

The struggle for the rights of the people has a great importance in terms of determining the future of the struggles which occur over the faith of the land which is called the Greater Middle East. The struggle for the rights of the people, while in the Middle East directly opposes the occupation, invasion, war and neo-colonialism policies of US and its colloborationists; in Latin America, Africa and Asia, is an indispendisble part of the anti-imperialist popular labour resistances. The Middle East peoples, like all peoples of the world, will have their independendent right to talk and decide over their own faith, as far as the regional stratagies, occoputations and wars of imperialism can be defeated. The right of the oppressed peoples to determine their own faith in a free and independent manner, free from imperialist impositions, is a basic factor of the socialism of the 21st century. A social order where the labourers produce freely and share the social values equally can only be constructed as a multi-national and egalitarian order, which accepts the cultural and original differences as its own richness and which depends on the sovereignty of the peoples over the land where they are living.

The land of Anatolia has a common heritage that enables the peoples with different national origins which live on it to have a common, peaceful and a brotherly/sisterly life together. Turkish and Kurdish peoples, who had lived together as brothers and sisters for more than thousands years must together struggle against the seeds of hostility which are sown in a political environment determined by nationalism, racism, war and imperialist policies. The bright future of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples depend on the defeat of the neoliberal colonialization programs and fascism, as a result of the common struggle and unity of faith of these two peoples.

The social and political basis and assurances of the rights of the people program are the right to social ownership and the right to a direct people’s democracy. The struggle for the rights of the people defends a world where the labourers have the ultimate right to talk, to decide and to mandate; defends a world which is ruled by the producers and it aims to enhance the practices of direct democracy from today. For the colective rights of the people to produce emancipating results, the right to resist against all kinds of pressures should be guaranteed and the legal existance of private property as a right should be ended. The struggle for the rights of the people is against recognisiton of private property as a right and defends the right to colective property.

We call all participants, constituents of the People’s Rights Forum and all labourers to rise common struggles over these principles.

People’s Rights Forum