Declaration of the 2019 SAT Congress

The 92nd Congress of the World Anational Association (SAT) held in Barcelona from August 4-11, 2019:

• considering the situation in Catalonia in recent years, expresses its apprehension in face of the fact that conflict between two nationalisms may lead to violation of basic human rights that should be respected by all sides, and calls upon peoples and governments to try to solve the political and social problems in peaceful and democratic ways that allow for freedom of expression, and accordingly demands that the political prisoners be freed;
• alls upon governments and enterprises to devote more attention to the safety of all workers in order to prevent accidents, because human life is always more precious than material values;
• disturbed by the threat of a new Cold War, calls on all people to support the activities of ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) in favour of a nuclear arms ban, an aim that is only to be achieved if there are more extensive efforts to limit nuclear arms by means of international treaties;
• calls upon the governments and peoples of North and South Korea to approach one another in their attitudes, in order to prepare the ground for fruitful cooperation and coexistence;
• recommends that the working class always try to procure information from the various sides when dealing with touchy subjects or with conflicts, and to pay attention to the interests that lie behind all sources of information;
• supports the Yellow Vests movement in France, which has unmasked the inequality and the distance between those elected to office, the elites and the people – a movement grounded, among others, in ideas drawn from libertarian communalism (i.e. ones modelled on the Paris Commune);
• prompted by the refusal of visas for participation of Africans in the Congress, draws attention to the injustice of merchandise and money being able to travel more freely than human beings;
• calls for migrants to be welcomed;
• emphasizes, in solidarity with the hand puppet company Títeres desde Abajo (Puppets from Below), whose members were imprisoned, that freedom of expression is a right that must constantly be fought for;
• welcomes the activity of the upcoming generation against procrastination of effective measures to limit climate change; in an age of possible collapse of our civilisation, it supports the worldwide Fridays for Future movement that aims to slow down climate change, and it calls for participation in the world general strike on September 27;
• calls, in view of the enormous threat to the human race posed by the economic policies of the Brazilian government in Amazonia (including the possible massacre of the first American peoples), for all to protect nature and its inhabitants;
• notes that construction of new pipelines in North America invariably takes place on stolen land and threatens nature, and therefore expresses its support to those resisting construction, and welcomes additional information on this topic.