October 4th, 2012 – The Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD – www.auditoriaciudadana.net/en) joins international mobilisations against debt as part of the Global Week of Action against Debt and IFIs. This week’s fight was established in the World Social Forum at Nairobi in 2007, to denounce the injustice of foreign debt on peripheral states and the submission policies imposed by multilateral agencies like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. «During the last five years, this week was held in Spain without much impact, but this year is due to become one of the biggest social mobilization weeks, since foreign debt also threatens our economy and subjugates our democracy» says one of the PACD activists.

The PACD states that, «as what happened from the 80’s with the people of Latin America, Africa or Asia, debt has become, in our country and in the European periphery, the financial power’s instrument of mass domination to also subjugate European democracies. The most blatant interference of international agencies in our sovereignty occurred last year with the shameful constitutional reform to prioritize debt repayment over people’s rights, without any social consultation».

They claim that «a new blow to our fragile democracy is being prepared by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which will subject us to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and its sadly famous Structural Adjustment Programmes that devastated the economies of poor countries for decades. Theft of popular sovereignty has made clear that democracy is incompatible with capitalism».

For this, they state that «debt is illegitimate because, as in peripheral countries, it has been induced by financial powers to subdue populations to their private interests. In addition, most of Spanish public debt has been subscribed to benefit a small elite in detriment of the majority. The clearest example is seen in the bank rescue, which has meant more than 215,000 million euros to the public treasury, to which we must add the 100,000 million bailout fund that the EU has made available for Spanish banks and which the State is the ultimate guarantor. Private debt becomes public debt and we are all made to pay, never benefiting from it, rather the contrary, for debt payment implies a huge drawdown of resources that ensure basic rights such as health, education, pensions or decent wages».

Therefore, the PACD has started a citizen debt audit process to demonstrate the illegitimacy of public debt and private state guaranteed debt, to repudiate its payment and demand civil and criminal liability for those who generated it. They call on all people to join this process and hit the streets on the Global Week of Action against Debt, specially on October 13th, (http://www.globalnoise.net/) to defend our sovereignty and shout out loud and clear: DON’T OWE! WON’T PAY!

The activities planned for this week in different cities are available on the web: http://www.auditoriaciudadana.net/en, Facebook http://www.facebook.com/AuditoriaCiudadanaDeudaand Twitter: @AuditCiudadana

Contact:

auditciudadana@gmail.com

@AuditCiudadana