Intensify peasant struggle against imperialist plunder, war and militarism
DAY OF THE LANDLESS | MARCH 29, 2025
This year, the Asian Peasant Coalition reaffirms its anti-imperialist position and the centrality of the peasant struggle for land, food, and justice in achieving sustainable agriculture and food for all. The APC recognizes the clear onslaught of imperialism in its many forms in the Global South, particularly in the sector of peasants, farmers, farmworkers, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, rural women, rural youth and children.
The past year has once more recorded massive grievances against the Global North, especially the imperialist US – from its brewing of wars and militarism to the expanding corporate and private capture of the world’s resources such as land, water, and even data in the guise of climate action.
Asserting its political power amid the decline of its global hegemony, the US backed Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Yemenis. It has also set its sights in the Asia Pacific, with the Indo-Pacific Strategy priming the region for war against China with ally states by building its military bases, clinching security agreements and military partnerships that embolden “counter-insurgency” programs, and holding big war exercises.
A major component of imperialist expansion and capture of communities and food systems is facilitated through technology, greenwashing, and supposed “carbon-offsetting” practices – neoliberal solutions that put corporations as fundamental and on leading duty for climate change mitigation and adaptation. These so-called “sustainable” and “smarter alternatives” that imperialists and their corporations long campaign and promote are robbing small farmers and rural communities of their land and resources, preserving the current capitalist mode of production in agriculture. Such has been the case in Africa, with governments pledging 1.2 billion hectares of land for “green grabs” staged as climate initiatives.
Corporate concentration of resources in the food systems – from production, marketing and distribution, to how consumption is facilitated – is further enabled by digitalization that treats land and resources as immaterial data. With only four to six agri-business TNCs dominating across resources (from seeds, agrochemicals, livestock genetics, synthetic fertilizers, farm machinery, animal pharmaceuticals, commodity traders, food processing, retail and food delivery), comes the unmistakable influence on development that attune the public to corporate soft power.
Governments complicit to advances of agricultural privatization convert land use from self-sustaining food production to serving corporate demand for profit, disrupting established farming practices and displacing communities. In Indonesia, the government of Prabowo Subianto inherited Joko Widodo’s partiality toward streamlining wide-scale monocropping, facilitating the logistics of food and energy’s profit- and export-oriented production, and coordinating government support for foreign investments into the Indonesian agriculture, energy, and mineral sectors. Displaced farmers then become migrant workers and refugees pursuing precarious jobs overseas like in Malaysia – a host to such cases of mass refugees movements and rural displaced peoples from its neighboring countries.
There are also cases of rural people reportedly fleeing due to militarization and conditions of war, which also make use of advanced technology including its massive data gathering to surveil and attack those engaged in agricultural-based labor to facilitate landgrabs for green projects, mining of critical minerals, and the corporate capture of food systems. One such account is the US-contracted surveillance plane that crashed into a rice farm in Ampatuan, Maguindanao del Sur in southern Philippines. Drones are used in Gaza and the West Bank to target civilian Palestinians and control movement. In southern Thailand, farmers report feeling concerned about their safety where the state is explicitly placing communities under surveillance, storing digital records of routines, and controlling peoples’ political expressions and participation. Military expansion and agricultural digitalization go hand-in-hand in rationalizing the profit-driven production rather than collective nutrition and national development.
The undeniable potential of technological advancements to uplift people’s lives is quashed by imperialism’s greed for profit and militarism, which in turn exploit, marginalize, and deprive people especially the rural sector. Worse, today’s climate crisis is capitalized to push for neoliberal reforms that enable imperialist plunder and secure corporate interests. In all such instances, rural people with peasants at the forefront continue to build and strengthen the broadest and widest mass resistance for their right to land and life.
In this year’s Day of the Landless, the APC reaffirms its land to the tillers campaign amid the backwards condition of production and quality of life in the rural Global South. Our call: Intensify peasant struggle against imperialist plunder, war and militarism. PEASANTS RISE FOR LAND! ASSERT OUR RIGHTS TO OUR RESOURCES, RECLAIM OUR FOOD SYSTEMS!
The DOTL 2025 campaign is organized by the APC, in partnership with the Peasant Commission of the International League of People’s Struggle, People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty, and PAN Asia Pacific.
A. March 29 Global Action for the Day of the Landless
- Join the global day of action on March 29 to assert for people’s right to land and express solidarity with the landless people worldwide on-ground and online.
- We encourage our members and network to organize mass actions/mobilizations at the community and/or country level to highlight your local land struggles.
- Post content on social media as participation. These can be in the form of photos, videos, statements, graphic art, etc. that echo our calls for this year’s DOTL GDA.
Contributions will be featured during the Global Landless Speakout.
- Take part in the ILPS Commission 6 Global Landless Speakout 2025 on March 29!
Register: TBA
The International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS) Commission 6 will host the Global Landless Speakout that brings together movements and organizations from Asia, Latin America, and Africa to highlight the pressing peasant struggles and campaigns currently unfolding in these regions. These movements will share their on-the-ground experiences, detailing the challenges faced by peasants and rural communities as they confront issues such as land dispossession, economic inequality, and environmental destruction. These powerful testimonies will shed light on the collective action of rural populations fighting for justice and self-determination.
- Support the launch of APC’s Rising of the Landless
As an educational effort, the APC aims to publish the Rising of the Landless. This publication will be a collection of works from APC’s member organizations highlighting the different forms of struggle Asian peasants wage, their campaigns to highlight local and regional issues, political wins, gains and development, and how international solidarity is fostered and built across Asia, uniting the peoples’ struggle for land, food, and justice.
This publication will include the following themes:
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- Land struggle and land rights
- Struggle for the rights of farmers, indigenous peoples, rural women and youth, fisherfolk,
and pastoralists - Neoliberal policies affecting agriculture
- Militarization of the countryside
- Climate imperialism
- Youth and culture, promoting rural culture
- Solidarity and international networking
The publication will be launched during the Global Landless Speakout.
- March 30 – Palestine Land Day
Let us show our continuing solidarity for Palestine, with emphasis on supporting their resistance, through local actions and social media postings.
B. Build up activities
- March 14 – DOTL 2025 Campaign Call
Register: bit.ly/DOTL2025CampaignCall
The Campaign Call aims to unite the organizers’ members and network on this year’s DOTL campaign – its objectives, conduct, and coordination of on-ground activities in line with the commemoration.
- March 18 – Zero In: Mindoro
Register: bit.ly/ZeroInMindoro
Organized by Ground Zero
Large-scale military operations are taking place on the resource-rich island of Mindoro in the Southern Tagalog region of the Philippines. Ten battalions-worth of armed forces are currently deployed to facilitate the entry of mining and renewable energy projects. As a result, a de facto martial law is in place, subjecting locals with many forms of violations to their human rights and the international humanitarian law. Zero In: Mindoro aims to call the attention of the international community on the situation and urge for support and solidarity to #DefendMindoro.
- March 24 – Global Speak Out for Rivers and River Defenders
Register: bit.ly/Speakout4Rivers
Organized by IPMSDL, PCFS, & APC
In light of urgent concern for our rivers and river defenders, and in commemoration of the International Day of Action for Rivers on March 14, we are calling on Indigenous Peoples organizations, allies, and advocates, as well as peasant leaders, climate activists, and human rights defenders to Speakout for Rivers and River Defenders. Through this venue, we aim to spotlight pressing local, regional, and global issues that negatively impact our rivers, as well as the rights of those defending rivers from further degradation and resource plunder. Join us and together, let us rally behind our calls for accountability, climate justice, and peace.
- March 25 – Landless Voices: Land & Climate Change
Register: bit.ly/LandlessVoices2025
Organized by PCFS & PANAP
Landless Voices is an online consultative forum where rural people’s groups can share their land issues and struggles amid the global food crisis. In line with DOTL 2025, the theme of this session will center on land struggles amid the climate crisis. Participating organizations may share their experiences and best practices in campaigning against land and resource grabs for climate-tech and in forwarding people-led climate solutions including genuine agrarian reform and agroecology.
- March 27 – Advancing People’s Food Sovereignty in Africa (webinar)
Register: bit.ly/AdvancingPFSinAfrica2025
Organized by ILPS Africa & PCFS
This webinar aims to analyze the state of food sovereignty in Africa, particularly in the countries of Kenya, Zambia, and Burkina Faso, in accordance with broader global context. Key themes to be discussed include the corporate takeover of food systems, the role of IMF-WB, and action points and strategies for resistance.
C. APC Member campaigns
- Educational campaign themes
- Impacts of Big Technology and “Digital Agriculture” to peasants and the rural poor
- Climate Imperialism and its impact to our land and resources
- Fascism and militarization in rural areas
- Important dates
- SPFT – Youth camp; training the next generation of southern peasant farmers at SPFT on land, agroecology, and human rights
- ARWC (Seruni, Amihan, Tamil Nadu Dalit Women’s Movement) – March 8, One Billion Rising: Rise against Fascism, Rise for Climate Justice
- AGRA – March 8, International Women’s Day; March 29, educational community discussion on land grabbing; campaign for raising prices for rice, cassava, and fertilizer for small farmers
- Amihan, KMP, UMA
- March 24-29 Landless Caravan
- March 28-29 Negros agricultural workers picket, Tiempo Muerto kickoff
- March 28-29 KMP Bikol Landless Caravan
- Tenaganita – to develop continuous consciousness raising among migrant women and refugees and providing legal support
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