CAMPACC held a series of workshops in early 2015 to explore the growing conflict between struggles for national self-determination (SD) versus the global ‘counter-terror” regime' and its effects on diasporic communities.
'Anti-terror' legislation has been used to advance the imperialist agendas of governments and a wider military-industrial-securitisation complex. Their agenda has attacked political organisations (as well as others such as lawyers, investigative journalists, publishers) that are perceived to be linked with SD struggles.
CAMPACC initiated a research and public outreach project critically examining these issues, especially in relation to UK migrant communities. The initial outcome are briefing papers drawing upon discussions from the workshops; these involved active engagement from various diaspora community groups, researchers, lawyers and academics involved in these issues.
(i) Evaluate past experiences, theories and practices of SD of different nationalities and nations in the light of their struggles and new challenges.
(ii) Analyse the strategic choices that were made by specific struggles for national SD, especially their relation to other movements and to imperial powers: who used whom? for what agendas? with what outcomes?
(iii) Broaden our understandings of SD in the changing context (of globalisation, post-9/11 events and counter-terror regimes, some far right groups seeking to exploit SD initiatives to pursue their own agendas) by learning about and from other struggles beyond our own.
(iv) Focus attention on the role of UK, the EU and its member states in the repression, criminalisation and general undermining of claims for SD in different countries, especially through counter-terror regimes (by contrast with their selective support for national self-determination, e.g. in Kosovo and Iraqi Kurdistan).
(vi) Analyse the tensions between ‘self-determination’ as a political right and as a legal right.
Develop research-based educational material with historically grounded analysis of different struggles for national SD.
Engage wider communities here on the role of Britain (as related to the EU, US and NATO) in undermining aspirations for national SD.
Foster discussions on community opposition to that role and means towards more effective strategies.