Proclamation of Câmpeni

From P2P Foundation
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Text

The Proclamation of Câmpeni – October 19, 2013

We, the inhabitants of the Apuseni Mountains, gathered today, Octomber 19, 2013 in Câmpeni, express our right to decide our own fate independently. Based on this legitimate demand, we proclaim the following: The land, the forests, the pastures, the water and the air of the Apuseni Mountains belong to those who live here, as inherited from our ancestors. We have the right and the obligation to give these, in a good state, to our own offsprings, so that they can also enjoy them. The inhabitants of the Apuseni are the only ones entitled to decide the best way to valorize the wealth that good God and nature endoweded us with, for the benefit of our community and of Romania!

Life in the Apuseni Mountains is not easy, but we have pastures on which we can raise our cattle, we have forests from which, with moderation, we can take the wood for our furniture factories, we still have clean waters, landscapes, and monuments of nature and of history which attract thousands of tourists each year. These are activities that already help the inhabitants of Apuseni to make a living and there are opportunities of development which, valorized with wisdom, can offer us a good living both to us and our children and grandchildren. We do not beg at others’ people’s doors, others have come to our doors and try to get and destroy what belongs to us!

Taxes can be collected from these activities, which will be used in our interest and the interests of the Romanian citizens. We demand our representatives in the Local and County Councils and in the City Halls, in the Parliament and in the Government, to use these taxes with full responsibility in order to create roads, schools and hospitals. This money is not for their pockets but for the development of communities and for a happy life for those who contribute to the budget. If proven that this money will be used against us, against our wish, we take the right to reject them as our legitimate representatives and we will defend ourselves the way each person is entitled to defend herself/himself against those who hurt her/him!

Any foreigner is welcomed in the Apuseni Mountains as long as he or she respects our way of life and does not do anything to change it against our will. We preserve our right to fight against all who, cunningly and through corruption are coming here to steal what is ours and to destroy the natural and historical resources that our life depends on. The happiness and wealth of some cannot be based on the unhappiness and empoverishment of others.


Considering all the above, we imperatively send the following clear-cut demands to politicians and decision-makers:

1. Rejection by the Parliament of all laws that provide special measures for the expropriation of Romanian citizens as well as other measures that waive the legal regime for the protection of the environment, the cultural patrimony, the water, the pastures and the agricultural land, the public goods etc., in favor of mining companies of all type.

2. Rejection by law of the use of cyanide in mining in Romania.

3. Including Rosia Montana on the tentative UNESCO list of Romania.

4. Urgent rejection by Government decision of the environmental permit for the mining project in Rosia Montana.

5. Declassifiying of all contracts and additional acts made by the Government, refering to the alienation, giving away and concession of Romania’s mineral resources.

6. Resignation of the initiators of the special law for Rosia Montana: the Minister of Large Projects, Dan Șova, Minister of Environment, Rovana Plumb, Minister of Culture, Daniel Barbu, Director of ANRM, Gheorghe Duțu, as well as Prime-Minister Victor Ponta;

7. Acceptance by the Government of the expertize and the opinions related to the mining project in Rosia Montana that were expressed by the following: the Romanian Academy, the Ad Astra Association, The Romanian Geological Institute, Romania’s Architects Order, the Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church and of the United Romanian Church and of other Christian churches in Romania as well as of independent experts;

8. The creation of a Parliamentary Commission for the Investigation of the Rosia Montana business in all of its dimensions: granting of soil deposits, the sponsorships given by the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation to public and private institutions, NGOs, or other legal and individual persons; influence of political decisions; violation of final court decisions; losses in freedom of the press and free speech through corporate publicity.

9. Rebuilding and developing road infrastructre in the Apuseni Mountains and granting fiscal and other facilities to the development of economic activities in the following fields: tourism, wood processing and the restoration of the forests, raising and processing of products of animal origin, apiculture, and other traditional activities.

10. Adoption by the Romanian Government of public policies and elaboration, with the help of the civil society, of strategies in accordance with the principles of sustainable development, for the optimal use of resources, preservation of cultural-historical patrimony and support for the local entrepreneurs;

11. Start criminal investigation by the legal institutions in the case of persons who signed and participated in the elaboration and validation of documents regarding the mining exploitation in Rosia Montana.

12. Legal prohibition of the method of hydraulic fracture in exploiting shale gas and respect for the sovereign will of the people in the regions where such exploitation is projected, people for whom we express our solidarity.


This is our will, the will of the inhabitants of the Apuseni Mountains, free people gathered in the Great Assembly of Câmpeni, and expressed today, October 19, 2013, with our spirit and mind directed at sustainable development which should allow for the access of many generations to all the resources God gave us." (http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2013/10/recommons-survey-of-projects-restoring.html)


Discussion

Devon G. Peña:

"As a co-inhabitant of the 80,000-acre common lands of the Sangre de Cristo land grant (merced) in Colorado, I am directly and acutely aware of the importance that place-based cultures hold for the protection of closed access to ancestral landscapes. Tragically, many of these ancestral common lands have been lost due to forcible conversion to the public domain or the incessant enclosures of private property and capitalist maldevelopment. There are thousands of place-based cultural heritage landscapes around the planet and in nearly every case a growing social movement seeking to restore the enclosed common[s]. These campaigns have predominantly been grounded in the struggles of indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and Asia, and the European common property tradition has largely been eclipsed by privatization and the ecological modernization that serves this mode of capitalist management. But there are now reports of a revival of the struggle for ancestral common lands in Romania. The Apuseni Mountains in Romania are part of the Carpathian Alps, a scattered range with high peaks in excess of 1840 meters (6036 feet).

The “Mountains of the Sunset” are home to ancient agro-pastoral peoples who managed the higher elevation grazing meadows and mountainous areas as common property until the advent of the Soviet bloc. The ‘peasantry’ was displaced to make way for the industrial projects championed by the Soviets including mass deforestation of the mountains for the sake of timber for the construction and maintenance of new railroads and factories. However, the displacement was never complete or absolute and many commoners maintained their traditions of access through acts of sabotage and trespass. In other words, they engaged in the coding for property rights via adverse possession and prescriptive easement.


The eventual collapse of the state bureaucratic capitalist formation in Moscow has led to a gradual transition across much of Romania involving a privatization schema in which a few investors claim ownership of entire mountain tracts. This is a pattern that actually closely parallels what happened with the private enclosure of Mexican and Spanish land grants in Colorado and New Mexico: A few well connected bureaucrats (e.g., land surveyors, local constables, district judges, etc.) take ownership of lands that have historically remained common use tracts. We also share a common history of resistance to gold, silver, and other mining industries. The struggle in Rosia Montana involves resistance to mining combined with the struggle to restore land rights. Sound familiar?

It is with a great deal of hope and excitement that I present the Proclamation of Câmpeni, a manifesto by the commoners of the Rosia Montana, and an inspired example of the widening resistance to neoliberal capitalist norms across the planet including Europe."

(http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2013/10/recommons-survey-of-projects-restoring.html)