Covid-19 Solidarity appeal for the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia

By No Borders on October 14, 2020

This solidarity appeal was organized by Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières. No Borders News encourages our readers to donate to the appeal and share it on social media.

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Our partners in Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia need your support to continue their food aid to the unemployed, community-led sanitary protection, and mobilisation in support of public healthcare and human rights during and after the pandemic.

These practical movement-led solidarity initiatives have been built over several years, thanks in part donations from ESSF [1].

Our rapid response means we have already transferred more than we collected in our December 2019 annual fundraising appeal. Your contribution can help us continue to support our partners.

Philippines [2]: The MiHands coalition [3] in Mindanao [4] and their members as Tripod [5]: The MiHands coalition [6] is providing food aid and supporting community-led sanitary protection for marginalised communities, mostly indigenous peoples. This pandemic has not stopped the military and landlords’ thugs from terrorising the population. Our partners are active in the movement for peace in Mindanao.

This long read by Raymund de Silva analyses the political and economic crisis in the Philippines, militarized lockdown, the collapse of public health, and responses of the social movements [7].

In Pakistan, the Labour Education Foundation [8] is providing food aid for day-labourer families [9] who have lost their livelihood during the lockdown. Students are refusing to pay fees and have launched a campaign for fast internet nationwide and computers in every school. Acctually this would all cost less than 3% of Pakistan’s bloated military budget. Social movements continue to protest the criminalisation [10] of the Pashtun PTM [11] and other social movements. There is a growing coalition of movements that reject the ‘new normal’ [12] that the elite is preparing behind closed doors.

The Indonesian association Perempuan Mahardhika (Free Women) [13] is using its reproductive rights campaign network to provide food aid to unemployed women workers and their families in the industrial satellite towns of greater Jakarta.

The Bangladesh peasant organisations [14] and their allies are distributing food aid in urban poor neighbourhoods of Dhaka and promoting community-led sanitary controls in these overcrowded areas. Movement-led public education remains essential, since the garment sector employers are demanding that workers go back to work without any personal protection equipment or physical distancing, and while public transport is reduced and overcrowded. Movements are demanding that government suspend debt repayments and fund basic services instead [15].

These solidarity initiatives are resistance against the criminalisation, in certain coutries, of grass-roots aid. The official pandemic relief must not be manipulated by religious and political elites.

Practical solidarity is the foundation of our partners’ lobbying and mobilisation to demand the full respect of popular communities’ rights, their right to self-organize and to protect them in the “new normal.”

Please join us in solidarity with these progressive groups.

Thanks in advance!

Mark Johnson and Pierre Rousset on behalf of Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières