Many distinguished intellectuals, activists, working people, trade unionists and politicians from all five continents have just pointed out, by signing an appeal to world public opinion, the enormous nuclear, ecological, social and economic dangers for all humanity provoked by the conflict in Ukraine and the unleashed Cold War.
The appeal, drafted by the Initiative for the revival of the Bandung spirit (of the Non-Aligned Movement) and the Delphi International Initiative for the Defense of Democracy, is calling for an immediate end of hostilities in Ukraine and the beginning of negotiations, accompanied by the stopping of the arming of Ukraine and the lifting of sanctions against Russia. The full text follows.
The very composition of the list of signatories, who come from the South and from the North, the East and the West of our world, reflects the need for the unity of humanity in addressing its common and critical questions and challenges. No country and no region of the world, however powerful they may seem, can solve the problems they are facing, based exclusively on themselves.
It is impossible to win a world war after 1945. Even a prolonged Cold War will most probably assure the destruction of human civilization, if not of humans themselves, through ecological factors and the social and economic undoing of whole societies and continents. But, to terminate the war, the legitimate interests of all sides must be recognized.
All signatures bear for us the same weight, irrespective of the position of their holders in society. Often those of “ordinary people” are more important, because they need (and usually have!) more courage, since they do not enjoy the relative protection recognized personalities benefit from.
Still, we feel obliged, for reasons of a moral quality, to express our deep gratitude to the former United Nations special Rapporteur for the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order and a world-recognized authority on international law, Alfred de Zayas; to a leading representative of the Indian science and intelligentsia, the founder and honorary chairperson of the Indian Development Research Institute, Gabeshana Chakra and former head and founding member of the Institute of Chinese Studies of India, Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development Professor Manoranjan Mohanty; to the “father” of modern Homeopathy, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (often referred to as the “Alternative Nobel prize”), Honorary Professor of eight universities and a senior associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK) George Vithoulkas; to the veteran of the US anti-war movement, former Professor of Quantum Mechanics and researcher at Princeton and CERN, Bruno Vitale, as well as to all those distinguished and courageous individuals who supported this initiative.
The spirit of our appeal is best symbolized in its signing by Dr. W. H. D. Ulrich Schneider, the Secretary General of the International Federation of resistance fighters (FIR), which unites people who fought, guns in their hands, Nazism and Fascism.
We point out the importance of the fact that a small – for the time being – number of very courageous politicians from western countries have supported this initiative. They include the MP, President of the Socialist Party of Cyprus EDEK, Marinos Sizopoulos, the MP, former General Secretary of the AKEL Party of Cyprus Andros Kyprianou, the members of the European Parliament Clare Daly and Mike Wallace from Ireland and Tatjana Zdanoka from Latvia, the Swiss journalist and deputy, former President of the Grand Conseil of the Geneva canton Guy Mettan and the former Senator Lee Rhiannon from Australia.
We hope they are just the pioneers and many more will come and add their voices in opposing the war, especially as its impact on western countries and the whole world keeps growing.
Many more people than those signing the appeal have expressed to us their agreement to the main lines of the appeal, explaining they feel impossible for them to sign it, given the unpredented “irrational passion and hysteria” reigning now in all the West, a leading intellectual wrote un his answer to our request.
We spoke of courage because it certainly takes a lot of it to defy the unprecedented political and intellectual atmosphere being imposed now on all Western countries to terrorize and silence any person who disagrees with the relaunching of the Cold War, by describing him/her as some sort of “Putin’s” or “Russia’s agent”, thus deterring any discussion and any debate of his ideas before it begins.
It is an oxymoron that freedom of opinion and the right to information, that is the foundations of democracy, are abolished in the name of its defense. A new “witch hunt” has been unleashed across western states, against any person expressing reservations about the official political line, often with “arguments” and characterizations that have little to distinguish them from those used by Senator McCarthy (and we hope they will not attain the level of those used by Attorney General Vyshinskiy). Even Russian music and literature is being excommunicated while, for the first time since the persecution of Jews and the Roma, people are being persecuted in today’s Western Europe on the sole criterion of nationality and citizenship. We are descending into a new and more dangerous Middle Ages, and we must stop this descent before it is too late.
The text of the appeal is as follows:
An Urgent Appeal to the World Public Opinion: Stop the war before it is too late!
The war in Ukraine is continuing, unabated for more than four months now, causing vast destruction of life and property of the people of Ukraine and enormous damage to the global economy affecting the lives of millions of people the world over due to rising prices and energy crisis, and above all steadily increasing global tensions pushing humanity to the brink of a nuclear war.
The Russian military intervention in Ukraine was an evident response to the measures taken by the Kyiv regime and its armed far-right militias against Russians, Russian speaking population and other citizens of Ukraine, to the non-implementation of the Minsk agreements and to the continuous aggressive expansion of the NATO alliance inside the former USSR.
But even if we dismiss altogether the Russian arguments and if we accept fully the US and NATO’s arguments regarding the Ukrainian crisis, the Western response to the Russian intervention by arming Ukraine massively and by imposing unprecedented sanctions against Russia, is totally disproportionate. This policy, while not helping the peoples of Ukraine, is comporting very high risk of nuclear, ecological and socio-economic global disasters.
The prolongation of the Ukrainian conflict is increasing the risk of a nuclear world war by accident, by miscalculation or by provocation and the subsequent annihilation of humanity.
It is clearly impossible to tackle the burning challenges of our time such as climate change, hunger, and other existential threats to humanity in an atmosphere of international hostility. All the gains achieved since the end of the Second World War seem to be at stake today and the level of cooperation among nations and peoples has reached a stunning low at this moment. The continuation of this conflict gets us closer to the point of a collapse of human civilisation as the recent UN report warned us about (GAR2022: Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction).
The sanctions and counter-sanctions have already had devastating social and economic effects on the majority of the countries of the world.
By now it is clear that all those measures cannot help Ukraine to win a war impossible to win from its very beginning. They are contributing to the killing and migration of the Ukrainian youth and to the destruction of its country.
This is why we consider of utmost urgency to call for an immediate ceasefire and start of negotiations accompanied by the lifting of sanctions and a halt to the arming of Ukraine.
We call on the world’s public opinion, all social movements, intellectuals, trade unions, religious communities and governments to act firmly in this direction and to coordinate their efforts.
There is no more important task for humanity now than to stop our descent into open world war and the collapse of Civilisation!
Bandung Spirit Collective and the Delphi Initiative for the Defence of Democracy
https://bandungspirit.org/ and http://www.defenddemocracy.press/
Working group:
Isaac Bazié, Professor, Comparative Literature, African Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal, Burkina Faso/Canada
Beatriz Bissio, Professor, History, Political Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Uruguay/Brazil
Bruno Drweski, Professor, Geopolitics, Central and Eastern European Studies, INALCO National Institute of Languages and Civilisations, Paris, Poland/France
Darwis Khudori, Professor, History, Oriental/Asian Studies, Université Le Havre Normandie, France/Indonesia
Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, Journalist and writer, Defend Democracy Press, Athens, Greece
Manoranjan Mohanty, Former Professor, Political Sciences, Chinese Studies, University of Delhi, Council for Social Development, Institute of Chinese Studies, India
Yin Zhiguang, Professor, Political Sciences, International Relations, Fudan University, Shanghai, China/UK
Cosigned by:
Ibro Abdou, Directeur de ISEP, Institut de Stratégie, d’Evaluation et de Prospective, Niamey, Niger
Asvi Warman Adam, Professor, BRIN Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional, Jakarta, Indonesia
Shirin Akhter, Associate Professor, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India
Sayf Alaydrus, Student, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia
Annamaria Artner, Habilitated College Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Milton Friedman University and Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Institute of World Economics, Budapest, Hungary
Francis Arzalier, Historian, President Collectif Communiste Polex, Saint-Denis, France
Ellen Elizabeth Barfield, Full-time Volunteer Justice and Peace Activist, Veterans For Peace, War Resisters League, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
David Barkin, Profesor Distinguido, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana- Unidad Xochimilco, Ciudad de México, Mexico
Fikret Başkaya, Professor, President of the Free University, Istanbul
Anice Benjelloun, Business Professional, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
Matyas Benyik, Social Scientist and Activist, ATTAC Hungary Association, Budapest, Hungary
Georges Beriachvili, Professor, Stanislas High School, Paris, Georgia/France
Jean-Louis Bertrand, France, Informaticien, Editor, Casalabriva, France
Reiner Braun, Executive Director of the International Peace Bureau (IPB), Germany
Heriberto Cairo, Professor, former Dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Yücel Candemir, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
Russell Caplan, UCU Trade Union and Labour Party, London, UK
Suchetana Chattopadhyay, Professor, Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
Anuradha Chenoy, writer, Professor, former Dean of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, former chairperson and director of the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, India
Clare Daly, Member of the European Parliament, Ireland
James De Burghe, Author, Member, Society for Anglo- China Understanding (SACU), Manifesto Group, Great Britain, China
Radhika Desai, Professor, Department of Political Studies, Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Canada
János Debreceni, Activist, Organisers for Left, Budapest, Hungary
Alfred de Zayas, Professor, former (first) UN rapporteur on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Switzerland
Ousmane Diakité, Gestionnaire du Sport, Centre d’Appui à la Scolarisation des filles, Caracas, Mali
Bartłomiej Jarosław Doborzyński, Worker, Bookmark, Gdańsk, Poland
Klaus Dräger, former policy advisor of the GUE/NGL on employment & social affairs, Germany
Alan Freeman, University of Manitoba, Canada/UK
Leo Gabriel, Journalist and Anthopologist, Member of the International Council of the World Social Forum, Austria
Maria Gardner, Art Lecturer, UK
Philippe Gendrault, Independent Health Professional, San Francisco, USA/France
Fengzhan Geng, postdoc Researcher in the University of Kassel, Germany/China
Dimosthenis Georgopoulos, economist, sociologist, statistician, Greece
Manas Ghosh, Assistant Professor, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
Harald Grünberg, Activist, Marxistisches Forum Partei Die Linke, Berlin, Germany
Hall Greenland, Writer, Australia
Mamdouh Habashi, Socialist People’s Alliance Party, Politburo member, World Forum for Alternatives, Vice President, Egypt
Asha Hans, Chairperson, Development Research Institute, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Frances Hasso, Professor, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
Odile Hélier, Anthropologist, la France d’en bas
Victor Hugo, Comisión por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, CDDH, Ecuador
Magdy Imam, Former Professor, Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany/Egypt
Costas Isychos, former alt. Minister of Defense, member of the Network for the Defense of Humanity, Greece
Earl Jackson, Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, USA/Taiwan
Kwon Keumsang, Suwon Family & Women Center, Suwon, South Korea
Hiiock Kim, Activist, The Alternative Culture, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Soyoung Kim, Professor, Korea National University of Arts, Seoul, South Korea
Peter Koenig, former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), Switzerland
Sanoop Sajan Koshy, Research Scholar, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India
Dmitriy Kovalevitch, Marxist group ‘Borotba’ (Struggle), Ukraine
Tamás Krausz, Professor, Head of the Department of Eastern European Studies, Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Marios Kritikos, member of the General Council of ADEDY, the Trade Union of Greek Public Servants, Greece
Andros Kyprianou, Deputy, former General Secretary of the AKEL Party, Cyprus
Annie Lacroix-Riz, Emeritus Professor, Contemporary History, Université Paris VII-Denis Diderot, France
Angela Lee, Festival Director, Producer, Film Critic, The Chuncheon SF Film Festival/CCFF, Chuncheon City, South Korea
Mi-Jeong Lee, Lecturer and Artist, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Korea/Canada
Denis Lemercier, Maître de conférences retraité, Université de Caen, France
Lin Chun, Professor, London School of Economics, China/UK
Pierre LeBlanc, Journalist and Activist, Canada
Michèle Leclerc-Olive, honorary researcher CNRS (HDR), member of the laboratoire Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux Sociaux (IRIS), President of CORENS (Collectif Régional pour la Coopération Nord-Sud – Hauts de France) and of CIBELE ((Collectif Régional pour la Coopération Nord-Sud – Ile de France), France
Jeffrey Lever, Visiting Fellow, Law Department, London South Bank University, UK
Marie Lynam, GMB trade union and Labour Party, London, UK
William Mallinson, writer, former British diplomat, Professsor of Political Ideas and Institutions, Universita degli Studi Guglielmo Marconi, Greece/UK
Rasigan Maharajh, Chief Director, Institute for Economic Research on Innovation, Tshwane University of Technology, Tshwane, South Africa
Birgit Mahnkopf, Professor (Retired) on European Politics, Institute of Political Economy (IPE) at Berlin School of Economy and Law, Berlin, Germany
Michel Marti, Retired railway worker, CGT trade unionist, Yellow Vest since the beginning, France
Charles McKelvey, Substack Writer, USA/France
Guy Mettan, Journalist & Deputy, Grand Conseil, Geneva, Switzerland
Dragana Mitrovic, Professor, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Political Science, Serbia
Paolo Motta, Architect, Territorial Planner, Private expert & researcher, IASQ International Association Social Quality, Amsterdam, Italy/Spain
Francisco Nemenzo, Professor Emeritus and former President, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
Gerardo Otero, Professor, School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, USA
Seema Mehra Parihar, India (Professor, Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi) Gerardo Otero, Professor, School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Mausoléo Pascal, Nurse (retired) France
John Philpot, senior criminal litigation attorney, specialized in international criminal law, Canada.
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Professor, Bethlehem University, Palestine
Kostas Raptis, Linguist, Journalist, Greece
Magda Refaa, Researcher and Activist, University Paris 8, Paris, Egypt/France
Marta Restivo, Front Office, Un’altra storia, Florence, Italy
Pamela Richard, Office Manager, Peace Action WI, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Lee Rhiannon, former Senator, Australia
John Riddell, essayist, historian, editor, translator and activist, Canada
Danielle Riva, Utopie Critique, France
Florien Rochat, former Director of the Centre d’étude, de recherche et d’information sur les mécanismes à l’origine du maldéveloppement (CETIM), Switzerland
Louis Roussel, Psychoanalyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, USA
C. Saratchand, Professor, Satyawati College, University of Delhi, India
Dr. Ulrich Schneider, Secretary General of the International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR), Germany
Eddy Sebahi, Teacher, UDL, Lyon, France
John Sharkey, Retired Worker, Activist, Member, Bain Apartments Housing Co-operative, Inc., Toronto, UK/Canada
Masaki Sakiyama, Professor, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan
Helena Sheehan, Emeritus Professor, Dublin City University, Ireland
Mahendra Singh, Associate Professor, University of Delhi, India
Marinos Sizopoulos, MP, President of the Socialist Party EDEK of Cyprus.
Stéphane Soejoso, Retired Manager, France
Yunus Soner, political scientist /journalist, Turkey
Jeffrey Surovell, Writer, Adjunct Associate Professor – CCE, Social Science & Cultural Studies, Pratt Institute, USA
Eka Swadiansa, Architect, Practitioner & Researcher, Office of Strategic Architecture/OSA, Surabaya, Indonesia
Yanuardi Syukur, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Universitas Khairun, Ternate, and President of Rumah Produktif Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
Narender Thakur, Associate Professor, University of Delhi, India
Dr. Oscar Ugarteche, SNI III/CONACYT, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, UNAM, México DF, Mexico
Nisar Ul-Haq, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Social Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India
Evaggelos Vallianatos, historian and environmental strategist (at the US Environmental Protection Agency for 25 years), Greece/USA
Jean-Paul Vanhoove, Activist, Agenda des Actions Africaines, Courbevoie, France
Bruno Vitale, former research fellow at Cern and at the Princeton Advanced Studies, former Professor of Quantum Mechanics at the University of Naples, Italy/USA
Professor George Vithoulkas, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (the “alternative Nobel prize”), Director of the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy (Greece), Honorary Professor of the University of the Aegean (Greece), of the State University of Chuvash Republic (Russia), of the Kyiv Medical University (Ukraine), of the Pontifical Javeriana Medical University (Colombia), of the Kyiv Medical Academy (Ukraine), of the Dnipro Medical Institute of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Ukraine), of the National Educational Centre for Traditional and Complementary Medicine (Russia), of the All-Russia Scientific Research Center for Restorative and Resort Medicine (Russia), senior associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK), Greece
Mick Wallace, Member of the European Parliament, Ireland
Wang Hui, China, Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Marguerite Warner, Canada (Member, Peace Alliance Winnipeg)
John Webster, Labour Party, member, UK
Fernando Ximenes, editor of Delinking Magazine, member of Komite Esperansa, Timor Leste
Tatjiana Zdanoka, Member of the European Parliament, Latvia
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Economist, Schiller Institute, Wiesbaden, Germany
Xueping Zhong, Professor, Tufts University, Medford, USA
Siphamaandla Zondi, Director, Institute for Pan-African Thought & Conversation, co-Director, Institute for Global African Affairs, Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Johannesburg, South Africa