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|
Sue Longley (UITA) and Hemasari
Dharmabuni
(UITA - Indonesia) |
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The event was
held in the framework of the 25th Congress of the
IUF and was attended by 30 unionists from Africa, Latin
America, Europe and Asia. Agrofuels and the severe
restrictions placed on worker unionization were the two main
focuses of this global meeting.
Gerardo Iglesias,
IUF regional secretary for Latin America,
expressed his concern over the expansion of African palm
crops in several countries of the region. “Every hectare of
palm devoted to agrofuel production will be a hectare less
for food production,” Iglesias pointed out.
“During his recent visit to several countries of the region
–he went on–, US president
George W. Bush
declared his support to the
production of ethanol, a support that was read by some
analysts as an abrupt change in his environmental policy.
They could be no further from the truth!
Bush disembarked now just as his father did in
the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, when he proclaimed:
‘The American way of life is not negotiable’,” the
Latin American secretary recalled today. And he added that
on “January 31, 2006, George W. Bush declared that
‘the United States must act now to
reduce its dependence on foreign sources of energy. Keeping
America competitive requires affordable energy: America
is addicted to oil, which is often imported from
unstable parts of the world…’.”
Iglesias
denounced that “If the North succeeds in its plans, our
territory will be turned into a great supplier of cheap fuel
for its ‘self-sufficient’ population: the 250 million
vehicles the United States has. The future, according
to the new policies of the empire, will expand the stretches
of green deserts, it will intensify the model of unmanned
agriculture, and it will deal a deathblow to our peoples’
right to food sovereignty,” he concluded.
Hemasari Dharmabuni,
of IUF Indonesia, discussed in turn the social and
environmental consequences of industrial oil palm farming.
“The intensive use of agrotoxic substances, specially the
use of Paraquat or Gramoxone –Hemasari
pointed out–, produced by the transnational
corporation Syngenta, is affecting the health of
millions of workers.”
Hemasari
cited a report by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN),
in which a Malaysian worker recounts that “When I started
handling pesticides I began suffering headaches.... In
particular, when I used Gramoxone, I would get nose
bleeds. I often had severe pains on the left side of my
stomach.”
The Indonesian leader also warned that “This
situation is even more critical if we take into
consideration that the migrant worker population is very
significant in Malaysia.”
© Rel-UITA
March 20, 2007
