It is often said that, "the future is unwritten". But today in Nepal, at the very top of the world, the future is being written! During the first two weeks of April it was being written in the streets of Kathmandu, and Pokhara and in cities and towns throughout the country. It was being written in the brave and determined faces of the hundreds of thousands of women and men all across Nepal who risked their lives to press their demand that the feudal despot in Kathmandu be driven from the throne, the monarchy abolished and political power be truly put in the hands of the people. It was a very Sudden Spring in Nepal, and it took many by surprise. But this Sudden Spring did not emerge from nowhere. This new chapter of history started being written over ten years ago. Largely unseen by most of world, it began in the villages of Nepal’s vast countryside: a revolutionary People’s War led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) that has grown into a raging torrent from one end of the country to the other sweeping away centuries of oppression and exploitation based on class, caste, gender and nationality. In the one of the world’s poorest countries the seemingly immoveable barriers to social advance along with apparently immutable medieval traditions and superstitions are being overturned and thrust aside by this future that is rising from below. Today in Nepal crowns are rolling in the streets and dalits (untouchables) are storming the heavens.

Now that so many have come to know of it, the future being written in Nepal requires that we do much more than simply watch in amazement or even applaud with enthusiasm. It demands that we act. In a world in which capitalist globalisation is bringing degradation and impoverishment to ever more people, regions and whole continents; where anything and everything including the most basic necessities of life, and even life itself - from clean air and water to human blood and organs - are turned into commodities to be bought and sold for the enrichment of a tiny handful of powerful people, corporations and nations; where wars of conquest and domination have been declared "unending": in the midst of all this a radically different future - one in which aims to relegate all the cruelties and injustices to museums - is straining to be born in Nepal. Should it succeed in coming into being it holds the possibility of liberating millions of the world’s oppressed, and would act as a beacon hope and clarion call to untold others who currently share their fate.

The new future straining to be born in Nepal necessitates that everyone, everywhere, who shares this vision act now to support and defend it. The recent upsurge of the people has ushered in a new and complex phase. The struggle to uproot and eliminate feudal social relations and foreign domination is far from over and the popular consensus for a new form of political rule is under threat - grave threat. The people of the world who look to this new future and oppose imperialism’s aggressions and crimes have been much too silent much too long. The enemies of the people’s struggle inside Nepal, though forced to negotiate and make concessions by the masses’ recent blows so powerfully delivered, are regrouping in the hopes of launching counter-attacks of various kinds.

Behind them stand the international guardians of the world’s old order; the traffickers in human misery who are plotting to crush this future before it can mature and sustain itself. The big powers who for decades have treated Nepal, its natural resources and especially its people as their private domain of plunder - foremost among them the US and India - are now setting their apparatus of aggression into action to try to save their loyal royal servant, and if that is not possible to maintain as much of the current oppressive social system as they can and with it their dominance over this geo-strategically important Himalayan nation. They will stop at nothing, including military intervention and outright invasion to achieve their ends. What they call their "war on terror", or sometimes their "crusade for democracy", is nothing less than a life and death struggle for world strategic domination and control. And now Nepal is in their sights. The hundreds of thousands of lives that the current round of their deadly game in the Middle East and especially Iraq has already cost is a price they are more than willing to pay - for it is not their blood that is being spilled and it is not their tears that are being shed.

We cannot, we dare not, let them succeed in crushing the people’s aspirations in Nepal. For if they do, not only will the future of the people of Nepal suffer the dreadful consequences, but that of humanity as a whole.

On May 7, 2006 the Assembly of Movements of the 4th European Social Forum (Athens) accepted the proposal of the Anti-Imperialist Space to call for an International Day of Solidarity with the people’s struggle in Nepal on September 2, 2006 under the slogan: Support the People’s Struggle - Hands Off Nepal! We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, are calling on people everywhere to actively take up this call and organize actions and activities of all kinds in your countries, cities and communities on September 2nd in support of the Nepali people’s struggle, in opposition to foreign interference and intervention and for the release of all Nepali political prisoners still being held in India and China. Let us break the silence and make clear to all that we are determined to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Nepal and the future they are writing.

Initial Signatories: Union of the Working People (Greece); World People’s Resistance Movement (WPRM); Confederation for Democratic Rights in Europe (ADHK); Left Mass Formations of the Youth; Anti-Imperialist Component (Greece); United Nepalese Front (Europe); Nepal Solidarity Committees (Italy); Gegen-informationsbüro/GIB (Berlin); Lotta Unità (Italy); Comitato Informatzoione e Sostengno della Rivoluzione in Nepal; IKAD e.V. — Association Against Racism and for International Understanding (Berlin); Nepalese People’s Progressive Forum (Belgium and France); gruppe internationale solidarität (Magdeburg); Internationalist Nepalese Solidarity Forum (Germany and Switzerland); Nepali Samaj (UK); Collettivo Comunista Antonio Gramsci (Italia), Zambon Publishing House, Red October ,AWARAGAN,South Asia Solidarity Group (Norway;Workers’ Party of Belgium;