Rey Asis of APMM during the Asia Pacific Peoples’ Forum on Sustainable Development

Magandang hapon!

Ta zha hao!

There is a saying in my country, Hay buhay, parang alamang, paglukso’y patay. literally meaning, Such is our life, like those of krill, when we leap, we die.

It is a saying that depicts the lives of marginalized Filipinos who have been conditioned to think that if they go against the tide if they go against the grain, they will perish.

Hopelessness and submission have been injected into the lives and cultures of not only Filipinos but every poor and struggling Asia-Pacific people. At least one song or saying in our native language depicts hardship, poverty, or destitution. And no amount of turning off notifications, avoiding them in the news, or simply shutting down our eyes and every bodily sense, we cannot deny that it is there.

Didn’t the new saying prove that – The COVID pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the vulnerabilities and inequality of people?

Yet we continue to struggle, we continue to challenge the system. Amid the COVID and the swift plummeting of the Agenda 2030 dream, we bore witness to campaigns and victories of people on the ground. The tens of thousands of farmers in India stood up against the farm laws. Migrant workers who asserted inclusion in health, financial and social aid. Millions of women pushed back against violence in all its forms. Communities and groups everywhere initiated mutual help, welfare support, food, and medical relief. Millions of people, choosing to be nameless, who simply wanted to be there for someone who needed help.

The people of Asia Pacific braved the pandemic. They were resilient and they resisted.

The people of Asia Pacific, we, have been campaigning for our rights and welfare, national sovereignty, freedom, and democracy, for the longest time. Throughout our histories, people’s campaigns have toppled dictatorships, expelled foreign military bases and occupations, stopped large-scale extractive projects and kicked out corporations, increased budget on education and social services, amended, rescinded, and passed laws that championed workers, women, LGBTIQ and people’s rights, distributed lands to the farmers, jailed abusive employers, regained ancestral domains, and protected our people, our lands, our planet.

These victories, though, do not happen overnight. I wish to share the story of Erwiana Sulistyaningsih. Erwiana was an Indonesian domestic worker severely abused by her Hong Kong employer in 2013 and made to fly back to Indonesia without event. Her physical condition was so severe that she had to go home in a wheelchair. A picture of her on social media sparked a people’s movement for justice for Erwiana and justice for all migrant workers. It started with migrant and advocate groups coming together and agreeing to lead a campaign for her. They convinced the HK government to take her case. And as the legal battle ensued, the groups raised awareness among migrants, in schools and NGO communities, staged picket protests, and formed what would be one of the largest campaign networks in Hong Kong. In 2015, Erwiana won her case. Now, she heads Beranda Perempuan, an organization advocating for the protection of Indonesian women in her country and overseas.

Indeed, a simple grievance of one can turn into a people’s movement through our immersion in communities and conversing with them about their issues, analyzing their situation and identifying with them their demands and calls, helping them form and sustain organizations, empowering them, gathering support and forging solidarity, and building their capacity to fight, launch and win campaigns. By trusting in the people, they can challenge narratives and rewrite their own, confront oppression and create new experiences, and build the confidence that they too can have power.

(You might be saying now, oh we have been doing that. I am happy that many of us are.)

Our advocacy and engagement go beyond the Agenda 2030 because as governments deliberate the progress or set back of the sustainable development goals, the multiple crises (climate crisis, health crisis, economic crisis) that people in the Asia Pacific and the world experience will worsen under neoliberal globalization. Outside these halls, political conflicts, militarization, and war continue to displace millions. Our freedoms of speech, association, and assembly are threatened and a word of criticism is matched with fascism. Even these advocacy spaces we participate in are under attack.

Yet we continue to engage.

Let us here in the Peoples’ Forum engage in the APFSD and beyond. Let us bring our advocacies with us back home and continue, together with people’s organizations and movements, to engage the duty bearers, our own governments, for accountability and action. We have the responsibility to relate our advocacies to the people’s campaigns while amplifying their voices, demanding genuine people’s participation, and combating political repression and censorship. By strengthening our cooperation with peoples and sectors in our society, by supporting and becoming part of their movement, by building solidarity and supporting one another, we bring back, harness, and become part of the people’s power. This is the essence of development justice.

The issues and campaigns of the grassroots are the substance that completes our advocacies. Their aspirations and struggles are present in the many presentations, papers, and exchanges that we have had in the past two days and even in the past peoples’ forums. They are the reasons why we are engaging in these spaces, why we formed or joined organizations, and why we are calling to change the system and shift the power.

Let our efforts here resonate, reflect, and be firmly based on the aspirations of the people on the ground and serve their empowerment. Let us, with them, challenge the language, culture, and narrative of hopelessness by exposing and opposing the systemic barriers that hinder genuine people’s growth and development, freedom, and justice. Let us all take that big leap and believe that with the people, we can change the system and shift the power.

Power to the people!

#APFSD #APMM