Asia-Pacific solidarity gathering

February 7, 2009
Issue 

A number of new guest speakers from across the Asia-Pacific region have confirmed their attendance at the "World at a Crossroads: Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century" conference, scheduled to be held in Sydney over the Easter weekend (April 10-12).

They will join speakers already confirmed from Venezuela, Argentina, India, Philippines, New Zealand and Canada for three days of discussion and debate on the urgent questions of our time.

The conference, hosted by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance — affiliates of the Socialist Alliance — will be an invaluable gathering of left and socialist activists from the Asia-Pacific region. Among the new speakers confirmed from the region are:

•M. Saraswathy, Malaysia — Founding member and current deputy chairperson of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM); chairperson of the PSM's Jelapang branch; long-term organiser of plantation workers, urban settlers and women workers in Malaysia; and founder of the Textile Union at Imperial Garment.

•Tomas Freitas, Timor Leste — Socialist activist originally involved in the Timorese clandestine movement against Indonesian occupation and, more recently, the campaign for fair maritime boundaries between Australia and Timor in the Timor Sea; director of Luta Hamutuk (Fight Together), a research and advocacy institute focussing on economic issues.

•Dr Brian Senewiratne, Sri Lanka and Australia — Sinhalese activist involved for more than four decades in exposing the human rights abuses perpetrated against Tamils by the Sri Lankan government and Sinhalese militias; author of various books published in Australia on the Tamil struggle that have been banned in Sri Lanka, where he has been labelled a "terrorist"; currently an activist in the Socialist Alliance.

Also confirmed to attend the conference are South Korean socialist activist Yongsu Won; Daphne Lawless, editor of the journal Unity and leader of Socialist Worker New Zealand; an anti-war activist from the Labour Party of Pakistan; and a representative of the Peoples Democratic Party, Indonesia.

They will join Reihana Mohideen, long-term activist in the women's and labour movements in the Philippines and international department of the newly formed Party of the Labouring Masses (PLM); and Kavita Krishnan, central committee member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

From the Americas: Michael Lebowitz, a Marxist economist based at the Centro Internacional Miranda in Venezuela; Luis Bilbao, a veteran of the Latin American left and a participant in the construction of the mass-based United Socialist Party of Venezuela; and Ian Angus, co-founder of the Ecosocialist International Network, among others.

The conference will host dozens of panel presentations and workshops focused on five particular streams: the capitalist economic crisis; social change, not climate change; the Venezuelan revolution and anti-imperialist rebellion in Latin America; resisting imperialism in the Middle East, and organising to fight for a better world: mass movements, alliances and left parties.

There will also be reports on struggles from countries represented and workshops dealing with Marxist theory, Australia's radical history, cultural resistance and more.

The conference will be held at Sydney Girls High.

[To register for the World at a Crossroads conference online, or for more information, visit <http://www.worldatacrossroads.org>, or phone 02 9690 1977 or email <dsp@dsp.org.au>.]

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