Your Struggle is My Struggle!

ASA Solidarity Message for May Day Struggle
May 1, 2005

It is with utmost pleasure that we – the Asian Students Association (ASA) convey our strongest solidarity support to the workers’ movement in the world. Today, we are celebrating the May Day with a stronger passion and determination to struggle for the rights and welfare of the workers. At the same time, we also pay tribute to those who sacrificed themselves in order to fight for the cause of the movement.

In ASA, we believe that your movement is our movements. The workers movement is one of the important forces to build a society that uphold human rights, justice and democracy. From the history, we learnt that workers together with the students overthrown the repressive and undemocratic government. We are not just fighting for our own welfare, but also for the better society that accommodate all the people.

As the global scenario has change rapidly for the last decade, we are very much bombarded by the propaganda of cooperation heralded by neo-liberal gurus, giant multinational and transnational cooperation, and monopoly capitalists to co-opt the workers and the people to submit to their agenda of economic, political, cultural and social hegemony of the world.

The privatization that promoted by the WTO not only causes the increasing of the unemployment rate, the quality of the public services also decreasing. Through the unequal agreements in international and regional multilateral or bilateral economic platforms masked as free trade, the developed countries such as United States, Japan and European Union benefited so much from the natural and human resources of Third World countries. Unity and cooperation in the context of monopoly capitalist globalization is an excuse for colonial and neocolonial expansion and consolidation.

We, the students and youth across the Asia-Pacific region, experiences the same issues like yours. As what we have learned from our previous interactions, we are subjected to programs and policies which attack our fundamental right, the right to gainful employment, and the right to organize. Though in varying degrees, we are very much victimized by the current world structure which oppresses us and our people.

Therefore, the upcoming APEC Ministerial Meeting in Busan, Korea and WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong will be our common mobilizing event. We have to intensified our public education campaign to raise the awareness on the globalization and those international institution among the people and workers in particular.

A genuine unity and cooperation for the liberation and betterment of the people of the world will be our core. People’s solidarity as an alternative to the globalization mantra we have sought. The unity of the workers of the world not only to expose and oppose globalization but also establish the framework to build a society which benefits the greater majority who are mostly exploited in the present setup.

Our strength is in our unity. Our solidarity is our victory. Our victory is a victory for the people of the world.

Long live the workers of the world!
Long live international solidarity!