International
March for Climate Justice and Land Rights in Madrid

THE Social Climate Summit, a meet parallel to COP25, also organised a Climate Justice March in Madrid to highlight the environmental devastation brought out by forest fires and displacement of indegenous people by the big capital particularly in Brazil. Half a million people attended this march. Marchers demanded to include land rights and indegenous people's rights an integral part of climate policy framework.

They criticised Brazil's Bolsonaro govrnment and its representatives for keeping silent about the recent forest fires and forest land encroachments. An indigenous peoples' representative Sonia Guajajara said that the Bolsonaro government is murdering the defenders of Amazon forests as well as snatching their livelihoods.

Another Brazilian activist criticised the governments of Latin America for refusing to hold dialogue with the indigenous peoples and for violating their own constitutional norms and international treaties.

Governments all over are making laws to benefit mining, agribusiness and other big corporations at the expense of rights and livelihood of indigenous peoples. In Brazil the current right wing government of Bolsonaro has made a provision of 'self declaration' of land ownerships which will benefit land grabbers and cronies of big capital. In the global liberalised policy framework terms like Self Declaration and Ease of Doing Business are euphemisms to mask attacks on the rights of the poor. In India too the recent change in Labour Laws has also given a self certification clause undermining industrial safety, where hundreds of workers die at workplaces.

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