Selk’nam people genocide
The Selk’nam were one of three indigenous tribes populating Tierra del Fuego, spanning across Chile and Argentina, from the second half of the 19th to the early 20th century. They had lived a semi-nomadic life of hunting and gathering for thousands of years. The Selk’nam had an estimated population of 4,000 people, until they became targets of an organised genocide spanning fifteen years from the first mass killing on 25 November 1886 by the Argentine government.
Large ranchers began a campaign of extermination against the Selk’nam people, with the complicity of the Argentine and Chilean governments. Large companies paid sheep farmers or militia a bounty for each Selk’nam dead. Bounties for the death of a woman were more than that for a man.
The Selk’nam people were plied with alcohol, deported, abducted, some exhibited in circuses in conditions of de facto slavery, raped, and exterminated. Missionaries disrupted their livelihood through forcible relocation and brought with them deadly epidemics.
By 1930 the Selk’nam had been reduced to about 100 people. The last full-blooded Selk’nam, Angela Loij, died in 1974. Their language, Ona, is now extinct. They were one of the last aborigi- nal groups in South America to be reached by Europeans.
Alvaro Michaels
LONDON
Freedom for Ali Osman Kose
Ali Osman Kose is a political prisoner who was imprisoned in the struggle for an independent, democratic and socialist Turkey. He has spent 37 years of his 65 years of life in captivity in Turkish jails.
Recently he was operated on due to a cancerous mass in his kidney. Surgery was delayed for months and happened only due to public pressure. An independent medical opinion confirms that he cannot stand up without help. He cannot walk, wash his clothes, shower or eat without assistance. Ali has hearing, vision and blood pressure problems. The prison environment further aggravates his condition.
Article 16 of the Law on the Execution of Penalties and Security Measures says: ‘If the execution of the prison sentence poses a certain danger to the prisoner’s life, the execution of the prisoner’s sentence is suspended until he recovers’. This means Ali needs to be released according to Turkish state law.
Signed,
The Freedom for Ali Osman Kose Campaign
Demand Ali’s release by sending messages to: Turkish Embassy in London: [email protected] Forensic Medicine Institute: [email protected] Ministry of Justice: [email protected] Find out more at: https:// freealiosmankose.wordpress.com
COP 26? COP OUT!
The COP26 summit, like its preceding conferences, has not dealt with climate change. It is difficult to effectively solve a problem if one fails to address its cause.
With our government putting profits before people and the planet and the established environmental movement refusing to address the root of the problem, I joined the South London Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Supporters Group to speak on climate change from the only perspective it can be adequately spoken about – through an anti-imperialist and anti- capitalist lens.
Taking the climate summit to Rye Lane in Peckham, we exposed COP26 as a COP OUT and brought attention to issues such as green imperialism and third world debt; we called out British banks like NatWest and HSBC for their central role in the crisis.
Through identifying countries who have fought against imperialism like socialist Cuba, we are inspired by the reality that genuine, sustainable solutions to climate change are possible.
Mariam Malik
LONDON
Steven Donzinger: political prisoner
On 1 October Steven Donziger, the indigenous rights campaigner and US lawyer who has for years fought for the indigenous peoples over Texaco-Chevron’s oil pollution in Ecuador’s Amazon, was sentenced to six months in gaol for contempt charges. In a campaign of corporate persecution, he was found guilty in May of refusing to hand over his computer and other electronic devices to Chevron’s lawyers. Until October he has already been held under house arrest for 600 days – four times the maximum sentence of six months. Since 2009 Chevron has hired hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms to persecute Donziger.
In 2011, after an eight-year trial, Chevron lost a $9.5bn claim for comprehensive environmental remediation of some 1,000 toxic waste pits, across 1,500 square miles of pristine forest, created by Texaco which was subsequently purchased by Chevron. During the trial Chevron moved its operations from Ecuador and refuses to pay the judgement, interest or costs. The case demonstrates the necessity of supporting Donziger in his fight against Chevron, with its obvious attempt to abuse the legal process, obstruct justice, and abandon to their fate the indigenous peoples of the provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana.
Paul Bullock
NORTH LONDON
For information and support visit: https://www.donzigerdefense. com/donate-fd
Public health crisis in Scotlan
The rate of drug deaths in Scotland is the highest in the UK by over three and a half times, with the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board reporting the highest rates in Scotland. After a decade of austerity cuts, Scotland is now left with the highest rate of drug related deaths in Europe.
In 2018, the Scottish government declared the crisis a public health emergency, yet the rate of those dying from these completely avoidable deaths has not seen a decrease since. Safe consumption rooms including free and decriminalised access to drugs, access to counselling and proper social care are just some of the things which are required to combat this public health emergency.
The only way we can take back our communities and our health is to unite against the capitalist state whose ruling parties in Westminster and Holyrood have been for decades killing the most vulnerable among us through their use of austerity and their lack of urgency and care for public health and wellbeing.
Freya Morrison
GLASGOW
Peppino Impasato
On 5 January 2022 Giuseppe ‘Peppino’ Impasato would be turning 83. Peppino was a communist organiser in the small town of Cinisi, Sicily, who was murdered by the Mafia on 9 May 1978 at just 30 years old.
Peppino mobilised local people to protest and resist Mafia and state corruption. He used his programme on Radio Aut to expose the crimes of the local Mafia under the leadership of Gaetano Badalamenti, from Badalamenti’s role in the global heroin trade to his shady dealings with the state to win local building contracts.
Italian state officials covered up Peppino’s killing. In 2002 Badalamenti was finally found guilty of murdering Peppino and was sentenced to life imprisonment. A film released the same year, One Hundred Steps, documents Peppino’s story; it is one of bravery and a lesson in resolutely fighting for what you believe in.
Ria Aibhilin
LONDON
Racism in maternal health
I have just read the excellent new pamphlet of the RCG, Women’s Oppression under Capitalism. Referring to reproductive rights, the pamphlet says that women living in the most deprived areas of Britain are three times more likely to die in childbirth than those in the more affluent areas. Black women have four times higher risk and Asian women two times higher risk of dying in pregnancy than white women.
The National Maternity and Perinatal Audit of NHS birth records in England found that two thirds of stillbirths and half of births with foetal growth restriction among black women, and half the stillbirths and nearly three quarters of births with foetal growth restriction in women of South Asian heritage in the most deprived areas, could have been avoided if the risks were the same as white women in the most affluent 20% of areas.
Support March With Midwives who have a manifesto to tackle racial inequality in maternity and fight back against NHS cuts. www.facebook.com/marchwithmidwives.
Hannah Caller
EAST LONDON
May the people rise
The birth of both legal systems and prison have been influenced by mass population growth across the civilisations. A combined result of the evolutionary trajectory of the human animal’s ability to ‘reason’ and theorem of mind and consciousness must not be understated. Of overriding prevalence is the ‘God playing’ of an elite minority. ‘God playing’ is still as prevalent today in a post- modern world which imprisons millions of children, men and women from predominantly poor socio-economic factions of this earth, as it was at the time of the birth of the first legal system in 3000BC. ‘God playing’ has evolved and flourished under the spiteful guise of morality, while the reality of the world oppression of the lower classes and disadvantaged has flourished parallel with ferocious momentum.
Adam Robinson
DURHAM
Adam Robinson is a writer and political activist.
You can write to him at: A6035AK, Houseblock 6, HMP Holme House, Holme House Road, TS18 2QJ.
Death from Tory policies
Owen Paterson, the ex-MP at the centre of the current episode of Tory corruption, has mentioned his late wife who killed herself two years ago fearing the shame and humiliation of an investigation into her husband’s very well-paid lobbying activities.
May I mention the thousands of people, who in poverty, pain and despair, over the last ten years in Britain have killed themselves as a direct result of cruel and calculated Tory policies.
Tim Grant
WALES
