People's Democracy

Today NATO Council with the approval of the German federal government has invoked the mutual defense clause in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Article 5 applies to the aggression of a state against one of the treaty’s parties, not an armed attack of a terrorist group. Therefore the decision is doubtful from a judicial point of view. Politically it may rather escalate than de-escalate the situation.

In no case there shall be counter-attacks with innocent people being the victims. Peace must be restored, not a chain of violence and counter-violence let loose.

Berlin, 13 September 2001

The present day marks a dramatic escalation in the strategy of violence in the world. The tragic attack which has killed people and destroyed US symbols must be severely condemned.

Thousands of innocent lives have been disrupted by an absurd and criminal suicide strategy. We share the unanimous grief of thousands of families and friends of the victims, whose only fault was to be there, in a place hit by this absurd and criminal violence.

We feel a great concern about democracy and we urge the conscience

of everyone to enhance the space for democratic acting and practice to avoid any reaction inspired by hatred and violence. We must defeat the logic of violence and retaliations which would weaken the already fragile and deteriorated guarantees for a peaceful living, after this traumatic change of the international scenario.

Rome, 11th September 2001

More than anything else, the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which have shocked the entire world, are signs of the state of crisis in which the world finds itself, no matter what the world leaders may say at the high masses of the rich countries, the G8.

We share the grief of the relatives and friends of the victims and we convey them our condolences. The American civilian victims, like the great majority of the American people, cannot be held responsible for the barbarous policies of their government and of the transnational corporations it represents. At the same time, we are deeply shocked by the hypocrisy of the US government, which bears an enormous responsibility for what has happened today.

For more than 50 years, the US governement and the US transnational corporations have been imposing their will on the entire world, destroying local economies, expropriating peasants, overthrowing popular governments and putting Pinochets, Marcoses and Mobutu's in power ­ people subordinate to the US, who would not hesitate to massacre their own people, away from the camera¹s. By doing so, they have aroused the hatred and the revolt of all the peoples that had become victims.

We join the appeals aimed at preventing the US government and their allied governments to use these attacks as a pretext for attacking countries that have nothing to do with this terrorism, but that have been at odds with the US government because of their independent policies.

The secretariat of the French Peace Movement is horrified and shocked by the cowardly attempts which have just made hundreds or thousand civil victims in New York and Washington.

This condemnation, to be stronger, can not limit itself to measures of precaution or security but should include a firm will to resolve by the frank negotiation all the international political, social, economic problems which, today, are the germs of the conflicts or the terrorism.