CUPE Ontario is proud to respond to the call for our union’s support for the Awami Action Committee of the semi-autonomous region of Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan.
The persecution of the Awami Action Committee Gilgit-Baltistan (ACC-GB) and its leaders is a human rights crisis that has not received widespread, if any, coverage in the West. But the values of worker solidarity mean that we extend our support and solidarity to this movement and to its people in their fight for justice.
The AAC-GB is a community defence organisation that has consistently and peacefully protested for the rights of the poor and oppressed. It has organized mass demonstrations in the fight for land and environmental rights in Gilgit-Baltistan, education and health care, and controls on energy and food prices.
The AAC-GB’s struggles on behalf of ordinary people of Gilgit-Baltistan have made its leaders and members targets for repression by the authorities in Pakistan. AAC-GB’s activists have been jailed or forced into hiding and their families have been threatened.
Not once its history has the AAC-GB used, incited or advocated violence. Yet it has been brutally suppressed by Pakistan’s security forces for its commitment to justice and democracy.
Earlier this year AAC-GB leader Ehsan Ali and other AAC-GB members were arrested on spurious charges under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act. They were held in prison for three months and were only released after local and global solidarity campaigns. However, Ehsan Ali remains on Pakistan’s ‘Fourth Schedule’ watchlist, meaning the state can track his movements and re-arrest him at any time.
In the spirit of international solidarity, CUPE Ontario calls for the removal of Ehsan Ali from the Fourth Schedule and an end to the persecution of the Awami Action Committee in Gilgit-Baltistan.
You can find out more about AAC-GB and the international campaign in defence of its leaders by visiting https://pakistansolidarity.org/.
