An Urgent Appeal to the World Public Opinion: Stop the war before it is too late!

11/07/2022

The war in Ukraine is continuing, unabated for four months now, causing vast destruction of life and property of the people of Ukraine and enormous damage to the global economy affecting the lives of millions of people the world over due to rising prices and energy crisis, and above all steadily increasing global tensions pushing humanity to the brink of a nuclear war.

The Russian military intervention in Ukraine was an evident response to the measures taken by the Kyiv regime and its armed far-right militias against Russians, Russian speaking population and other citizens of Ukraine, to the non-implementation of the Minsk agreements and to the continuous aggressive expansion of the NATO alliance inside the former USSR.

But even if we dismiss altogether the Russian arguments and if we accept fully the US and NATO’s arguments regarding the Ukrainian crisis, the Western response to the Russian intervention by arming Ukraine massively and by imposing unprecedented sanctions against Russia, is totally disproportionate. This policy, while not helping the peoples of Ukraine, is comporting very high risk of nuclear, ecological and socio-economic global disasters.

The prolongation of the Ukrainian conflict is increasing the risk of a nuclear world war by accident, by miscalculation or by provocation and the subsequent annihilation of humanity.

It is clearly impossible to tackle the burning challenges of our time such as climate change, hunger, and other existential threats to humanity in an atmosphere of international hostility. All the gains achieved since the end of the Second World War seem to be at stake today and the level of cooperation among nations and peoples has reached a stunning low at this moment. The continuation of this conflict gets us closer to the point of a collapse of human civilisation as the recent UN report warned us about (GAR2022: Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction).

The sanctions and counter-sanctions have already had devastating social and economic effects on the majority of the countries of the world.

By now it is clear that all those measures cannot help Ukraine to win a war impossible to win from its very beginning. They are contributing to the killing and migration of the Ukrainian youth and to the destruction of its country.

This is why we consider of utmost urgency to call for immediate ceasefire and start of negotiations accompanied by the lifting of sanctions and a halt to the arming of Ukraine.

We call on the world’s public opinion, all social movements, intellectuals, trade unions, religious communities and governments to act firmly in this direction and to coordinate their efforts.

There is no more important task for humanity now than to stop our descent into open world war and the collapse of Civilisation!

For Bandung Spirit Collective and Delphi Initiative for the Defence of Democracy
https://bandungspirit.org/ and Defend Democracy Press | Defending Democracy in Greece and Europe

Working group:

Isaac Bazié, Burkina Faso/Canada (Professor, Comparative Literature, African Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)

Beatriz Bissio, Brazil/Uruguay (Professor, History, Political Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Bruno Drweski, France/Poland (Professor, Geopolitics, Central and Eastern European Studies, INALCO National Institute of Languages and Civilisations, France)

Darwis Khudori, Indonesia/France (Professor, History, Oriental/Asian Studies, Université Le Havre Normandie, France)

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, Greece (Journalist and writer, Defend Democracy Press, Athens, Greece)

Manoranjan Mohanty, India (Former Professor, Political Sciences, Chinese Studies, University of Delhi, India)

Yin Zhiguang, China/UK (Professor, Political Sciences, International Relations, Fudan University, Shanghai, China)

Signed by:

Ibro Abdou, Directeur de ISEP, Institut de Stratégie, d’Evaluation et de Prospective, Niamey, Niger

Pamela Richard, Office Manager, Peace Action WI, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

John Riddell, essayist, historian, editor, translator and activist, Canada

Giorgio Riolo, Journalist, Rete delle Alternative, Milan, Italy

Rityusha Mani Tiwary, Assistant Professor, Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India

Danielle Riva, Utopie Critique, France

Florien Rochat, former Director of the Centre d’étude, de recherche et d’information sur les mécanismes à l’origine du maldéveloppement (CETIM), Switzerland

Louis Roussel, Psychoanalyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, USA

C. Saratchand, Professor, Satyawati College, University of Delhi, India

Dr. Ulrich Schneider, Secretary General of the International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR), Germany

Scarpalezos Dimitris, fr. Professor of Mathematics, University Paris VII, member of SYRIZA, France/Greece

Eddy Sebahi, Teacher, UDL, Lyon, France

John Sharkey, Retired Worker, Activist, Member, Bain Apartments Housing Co-operative, Inc., Toronto, UK/Canada

Masaki Sakiyama, Professor, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan

Helena Sheehan, Emeritus Professor, Dublin City University, Ireland

Mahendra Singh, Associate Professor, University of Delhi, India

Marinos Sizopoulos, MP, President of the Socialist Party, Cyprus

Stéphane Soejoso, Retired Manager, France

Yunus Soner, political scientist /journalist, Turkey

Rodolfo Milhomem de Sousa, Lawyer, Researcher, Universidade Autonóma de Lisboa, Ministério da Economia, Brasília, Brazil

Jeffrey Surovell, Writer, Adjunct Associate Professor – CCE, Social Science & Cultural Studies, Pratt Institute, USA

Eka Swadiansa, Architect, Practitioner & Researcher, Office of Strategic Architecture/OSA, Surabaya, Indonesia

Yanuardi Syukur, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Universitas Khairun, Ternate, and President of Rumah Produktif Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia

Narender Thakur, Associate Professor, University of Delhi, India

Pantelis Tzavellas, Doctor, Greece

Dr. Themis Tzimas, adjunct lecturer, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece

Dr. Oscar Ugarteche, SNI III/CONACYT, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, UNAM, México DF, Mexico

Nisar Ul-Haq, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Social Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

Dr. Evaggelos Vallianatos, historian and environmental strategist (at the US Environmental Protection Agency for 25 years), Greece/USA

Jean-Paul Vanhoove, Activist, Agenda des Actions Africaines, Courbevoie, France

Bruno Vitale, former research fellow at Cern and at the Princeton Advanced Studies, former Professor of Quantum Mechanics at the University of Naples, Italy/USA

Professor George Vithoulkas, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (the “alternative Nobel prize”), Director of the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy (Greece), Honorary Professor of the University of the Aegean (Greece), of the State University of Chuvash Republic (Russia), of the Kyiv Medical University (Ukraine), of the Pontifical Javeriana Medical University (Colombia), of the Kyiv Medical Academy (Ukraine), of the Dnipro Medical Institute of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Ukraine), of the National Educational Centre for Traditional and Complementary Medicine (Russia), of the All-Russia Scientific Research Center for Restorative and Resort Medicine (Russia), senior associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK), Greece

Mick Wallace, Member of the European Parliament, Ireland

Wang Hui, China, Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Marguerite Warner, Canada (Member, Peace Alliance Winnipeg)

John Webster, Labour Party, member, UK

Fernando Ximenes, editor of Delinking Magazine, member of Komite Esperansa, Timor Leste

Tatjiana Zdanoka, Member of the European Parliament, Latvia

Xueping Zhong, Professor, Tufts University, Medford, USA

Siphamaandla Zondi, Director, Institute for Pan-African Thought & Conversation, co-Director, Institute for Global African Affairs, Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Johannesburg, South Africa