On 10 December 2010, the UN General Assembly agreed:
“Guided by the fundamental and universal principals enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights…Recalling that 2010 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples…we adopt that 2010-2020 would be accepted and declared as the Third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.”
While we affirm the significance and importance of the UN’s efforts, we must note that after three decades marked for an end to all forms of colonialism, even a strict and conservative definitional view reveals that direct colonialism still exists in every region of the world. The Occupied & Colonized Peoples’ Forum (OPF) gathers based on the belief that the eradication of colonialism must be brought about through the collective efforts of peoples coming together across continents in people-to-people formations. The initiatives of governments and international agencies are also necessary, but lasting change will only happen when international solidarity and grassroots people-to-people mutual aid solidarity are centralized in all struggles for justice and equality.
Knowing this, OPF has convened organizers, activist leaders, and scholars with diverse experiences and struggles to create a mutual learning community where historical events, present objective and subjective conditions, tactics and strategies for obtaining victories can be shared, appreciated, analyzed, and acted upon.
Created amidst the Covid-19 world pandemic, in the context of extreme global racism and repression against liberation movements, OPF presents itself as a vehicle and a medium for hosting discussions and analysis from a dozen or more nations in struggle and solidarity against occupation and colonization. Representatives from seven struggles participated in convening the Forum: Palestine, West Papua, Western Sahara, Tibet, Puerto Rico, Ambazonia and Kashmir (with the intention that others from Kurdistan/Rojava would soon be added).
Though we are currently focused on the struggles of these eight Occupied peoples, our aspiration is to expand to all those still experiencing any form of colonialism and neocolonialism. We are especially aware of the plight of First Nations, Indigenous, and Native Peoples—those who have suffered occupation and colonization the longest of all, and we know that the original peoples of our lands must be respected and included as central in all our struggles. For many of us, clarity about identity and our connection to the land is vital to our understanding of what liberation and self-determination—political, economic, personal and in all its possible forms—means.
Though the Forum promotes militant nonviolent struggle, it nonetheless recognizes the legitimacy of each particular nation and people choosing their own combination of strategies and tactics of struggle. The OPF does not seek to be the formal or official voice of any of these struggles; rather we strive to compliment all struggles, believing that there is strength in cooperation and collective action. We respect the autonomy of all participants and related organizations, looking together to organize substantial and concrete solidarity worldwide.
In our meetings through 2020, OPF experienced and identified common threads amongst the participants. There is similarity not only in the repressions we have endured, but also in the creative, radical resistance we sustain—which leads us to affirm that a culture of globalized repression must be met with a culture of globalized resistance. We seek to cultivate this culture through educating each other as to our respective plights and the realities of our resistances, supporting each other to gain greater exposure throughout the world, and working together to become better advocates of a transcendent 21st century solidarity committed to truly ending all forms of colonialism and injustice. Together we will build, with greater unity and visions of shared freedom, towards the liberation of all!
Signed virtually, 3 May 2021, World Press Freedom Day