Photo: EADailyLast Sunday, Sept 25, Moscow hosted the second international expert conference “The Dialogue of Nations: The Right to Self-Determination and the Construction of a Multipolar World.”
Organized by Russia’s Anti-Globalization Movement, the conference was attended by representatives of self-determination movements from all over the world. And even though each movement had its own history, the conferees had one common concern – the existing world order and the United States’ unipolar hegemony.
The conference was opened by Deputy Foreign Minister of the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic (TMR) Dmitry Palamarchuk. He said that a week ago his republic marked the 10th year of the nationwide referendum that confirmed the wish of the Transnistrian people to be independent and to join the Russian Federation. “The referendum of 2006 it was our contribution to a new fairer world. The self-determination processes that are arising all over the world can be fairly called as a new wave of decolonization,” Palamarchuk said.
He pointed out that a nation’s self-determination is a globally recognized legal principle. “And those actually ignoring the international law are not the news states who seek to exercise this principle but the old American and European ‘democracies’ who have ruined Libya and Syria, are fueling Arab springs in the Middle East and are sponsoring and masterminding color revolutions all over the post-Soviet area,” Palamarchuk said.
Executive Director of the Texas Nationalist Movement Nate Smith said that lots of local governments worldwide are seeking self-determination nowadays. Texas is one of them. According to Smith, there is a peaceful way to gain independence.
Jose Enrique Folch, Spokesman for the Catalan Solidarity for Independence, said that next summer the Catalans are going to organize an independence referendum. Folch complained that the Spanish authorities are implementing an openly discriminative policy with respects of Catalonia.
President of the Yes California Independence Campaign Louis Marinelli said that the Californians are very different from the other Americans and have the right to seek independence. According to Marinelli, California is separated from the rest of the United States with thousands of miles of mountains and deserts. As a result, it has its own history, own heritage, own mentality and culture.
No matter how the presidential race in the United States ends, Marinelli’s campaign is going to organize an independence referendum. Marinelli expects the Californians to say yes to independence, first of all, because the U.S. Government is openly exploiting their state.
Marinelli complained that California is forced to subsidize the other states at the expense of its own people. The Californians are forced to subsidize Washington’s aggressive terrorist military campaigns abroad but they don’t want to have anything in common with this policy. Marinelli pointed out that California is the sixth biggest economy in the world, it has a population of 40,000,000 and has no representation in Washington.
Advisor of the Foreign Ministry of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Ruben Zargaryan said that the process for Nagorno-Karabakh’s international recognition is underway. He pointed out that the key parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan. So, Nagorno-Karabakh must also be a negotiating party. According to Zargaryan, delay of Nagorno-Karabakh’s international recognition and Azerbaijan’s aggressive policy constitute major challenges for the region’s security.
Member of the Lebanese Democratic Party, advisor of the leader of the party Salim Hamadeh pointed out that the right of self-determination can be perceived not only as the right of secession but also as the right of resistance to secession. “This is our case in Lebanon and Syria, where we do not support the idea to create weak decentralized mini-federations. The state, whose president Woodrow Wilson once came out for a nation’s self-determination right, is no longer adherent to this high-minded initiative. Today, the United States is rudely intruding into political systems worldwide with a view to ruin states and to use their resources,” Hamadeh said.
He noted that the United States has begun using religion to set communities against one another. “These nonconventional wars can have catastrophic consequences for the global system and for whole humanity. Terrorism is the weapon of the unipolar world. The Americans are currently using it in the Middle East. Their goal is to gain control over the local resources and they don’t care for the rights and wishes of the local nations. So, we believe that unipolar world must be replaced by multipolar one, where the rights of nations will not be ignored,” Hamadeh said. He added that the new world should be based on a balance of forces, where Russia should be one of the leaders as the only country that can confront the United States.
Vice President of the Lombardy-Russian Cultural Association Gianmatteo Ferrari is sure that Russia is Europe, who does not want to lose its identity and the rest of Europe must follow its example. Ferrari urged Europe to stop using Euro as it makes richer only big transnational banks. “The first thing the European nations must do in order to restore true sovereign Europe is to follow the UK’s example and to exit the European Union. Only then will they be able to build federal Europe, where all nations will have rights,” Ferrari said.
Secretary of the Republic Sinn Fein Party Diarmud McDouglas said that the rights of Irishmen in the UK are still being violated. He said that the British are suppressing the Irish religion and are disseminating their sectarian doctrines. In the 21st century too they continue showing discrimination with respect to Catholics living in Northern Ireland. McDouglas noted that the British prejudice against Catholics is so strong that the members of the British royal family were not allowed to marry Catholics before 2015.
According to him, the British Empire is still fighting the Irishmen: the British authorities continue persecuting the Irish Republicans and arresting them with no legal grounds. At the end of his speech, McDouglas expressed solidarity with the American Indians who are struggling against the attempts of U.S. companies to use their lands for their projects and with the Palestinians who have been suffering from slow genocide for decades.
Novorossiya was represented by the leader of the Slavonic Guards Movement Vladimir Rogov. He said that today Novorossiya and the whole post-Ukrainian area are having hard times. According to Rogov, self-determination movements rose mostly in the republics that faced external control after the fall of the Soviet Union, more specifically, in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. “Those countries are also suffering the biggest economic declines. Over the last 25 years production in Ukraine has dropped by as much as 35%. In Moldova it has dropped by 29%, in Georgia by 15.5%,” Rogov said.
He reminded the conferees that recently the United States approved the provision of lethal weapons to the Kyiv regime. “By doing this the Americans have encouraged new fights and deaths in Donbass. The battles going on in Novorossiya today are decisive for our future: either we will win and will get the rights enjoyed by nations worldwide or we will face the United States-imposed right of the strong,” Rogov said.
Among the speakers were representatives of Somaliland, Borinquen, Western Sahara and the movement for the revival of Talysh. The organizers of the conference hope that it will show the world that the right of a nation to self-determination is as important as a state’s right to decide its policies and forms of government.
Kristina Melnikova