In a sense, the Republic of Zolo was founded in war, and has been engaged in an asymmetric sort of warfare against "its own" population since its founding. Before its independence, Zolo was a colony founded by the violent expulsion or subjugation of the indigenous peoples by the settlers from Albion, but after its independence the state's policy of warfare against the native people and annexing their land continued. Much of the land claimed by the fledgling Republic, granted to it by its former colonial rulers, was still occupied and claimed by the indigenous peoples at the time of independence: they never ceded their lands or recognized the right of the Republic to occupy them. Between 1925 and 1955 the Republic fought 11 separate wars within "its own" borders against the Zolo, Sebani, Z'Boju, Lanuyana, and Si'lokan peoples, whose struggles for survival and autonomy were classified as "rebellions". In 1968 there was a massive cross-ethnic rebellion which was violently suppressed by the government over the span of 7 years in a brutal civil war which killed 4 million people; which ended with the destruction of the rebel groups and the more complete political subjugation of the indigenous peoples to the state, but which won (on paper, at least) equal legal and civil rights for indigenous citizens of Zolo and forced the government to legalize the Popular Front. Since 1968 there have been no large-scale wars, but there has been a near-perpetual low-intensity conflict between the indigenous peoples and corporate interests backed by the state intent on taking their land for commercial agriculture, forestry, or mining. Furthermore, indigenous activists have struggled to draw international attention to what they describe as a policy of "systematic criminalization and mass incarceration" of indigenous people by the police. In recent years, these issues have only intensified. Social tensions are high as people protest land theft, police brutality, and mass incarceration; all while the corporate rulers of the country seem to only accelerate their policies of land theft to expand commercial agriculture and mining, and give more funding to the police and military each year while leaving social services underfunded. Cultural, ethnic, religious, and class tensions are simmering. Now it seems that the country may be drawing closer to open war, as indigenous groups express their unwillingness to accept the current colonial state of affairs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1st Communique of the Zolo Liberation Front [ZLF]
This morning, May 10 2024, we attacked and destroyed 12 of the enemy's police cruisers in retaliation for the murder and kidnapping of Zolo people by the police. In the last year alone, these colonial occupation forces have murdered at least 438 Zolo. The police are a colonial occupying army on our land whose sole function is the terrorization of the native people of this land, including the Zolo, Sebani, Z'Boju, Lanuyana, and Si'lokan peoples, to maintain their exploitation and rule by the colonizers. They have stolen the name of our people for their evil colonizing state, for they have no culture of their own: all that they have they have stolen from our peoples. Right now, more than 300,000 Zolo are held captive by the prison system, kidnapped so that they may be forced to labor to enrich those same colonizers who claim ownership of our lands, who hoard all the wealth that we produce. Every blow struck against the colonial occupying army by the people is a step closer to freedom. So long as the occupiers remain, our people and our land will not be able to breathe. We will fight so that we may live with freedom and dignity. The land cries out to us to defend it from desecration, as the colonizers spoil our waters, poison the ground, cut all the trees, and kill all the animals. We are the land, and every assault upon it is an assault upon us, just as every assault upon our people is an assault upon the land. The colonizers cannot tolerate a people who will not sell their dignity, their culture, and their mother the land. They have no value but money, but for us, the colonized people, we have no greater value than the land; for we know it is the land that feeds us, and, above all, the land which gives us dignity. We call upon all the peoples trapped within this "Republic" to join us in struggling to overthrow our colonial shackles, and we call upon the people of the entire world to intervene to sanction the colonial regime and arm its indigenous peoples-- for the sake of the ecological wellbeing of our planet, for the sake of universal brotherhood, and to prove that all their talk about human rights is not just talk. Those who love freedom will not bear the colonial entity to survive any longer.
Death to the colonizers!
Long live the Zolo people!
-- Zolo Liberation Front
