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News :: Protest Activity |
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September 10th, Cancun |
Current rating: 0 |
by Meridith Kruse
Email: Meridithkruse (nospam) riseup.net (unverified!) |
10 Sep 2003
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September 10th, Cancun
This morning we got up early, ate as much of a nutritious
breakfast as we could (knowing it would be a long time until
we had time to eat again) and left our hotel for the center
of Cancun. I am in Cancun with the Mexico Solidarity Network
and am participating in tons of alternative economic forums
and direct action marches against the WTO. While the rich
meet behind closed doors the poor suffering from their
oppressive decisions clamor for justice in the streets... |
September 10th, Cancun
This morning we got up early, ate as much of a nutritious
breakfast as we could (knowing it would be a long time until
we had time to eat again) and left our hotel for the center
of Cancun. I am in Canun with the Mexico Solidarity Network
and am participating in tons of alternative economic forums
and direct action marches against the WTO. While the rich
meet behind closed doors the poor suffering from their
oppressive decisions clamor for justice in the streets...
On our way to the bus station today we were all stopped by
the police to have our bags searched. This had not happened
before and I wondered if it was because my friend Carrie
was with us. She has the hardest time passing for a tourist
because of her many piercings, tattos, and black clothes...
she is unfairly targeted because of how she looks because of all
the hysteria that has been fanned in the local press here about violent
anarchists...We must be clear, the violence is already
present, WTO policies are another form of war, those opposing
the WTO are fighting for life, hope, and basic human dignity...
Coming into the center of town we head for the Convergence
Center, the Medical Post, and then the IMC site. All of these
locations have been created by volunteer activists, many of
whom arrived weeks before the WTO meetings began. On little
resources they have done amazing work. A bunch of us borrow
paint and duct tape to finish banners and volunteer to help
distribute water to protestors throughout the day. To
distribute the water we will manuever a three wheeled bike
attached to a cart through traffic and masses of people.
With some minor mishaps, it all goes well, and people are
definately glad to see us after hours in the hot hot deyhdrating
sun.
We arrive at the starting point for the march, the Casa de la Cultura.
Thousands of campesinos have come from all over the world and
have been camping out in the park here for several days. They come
not only Mexico, but from Korea, Africa, Canada, the US, and
many more places...small farmers come because they know their
lives are at stake. One of the biggest issues at the WTO is elminating
the subsidies rich countries, like the US, give to their farmers
to drop prices (this is how cheap US corn is "dumped" into
Mexico undercutting local famers prices and causing massive
poverty and desperation throughout the countryside.)
After a couple hours of speeches at the meeting point people
begin to line up for the march to the gates of the WTO. Many
many barriers (tall wire fences) have been put up in our path,
but we will try to get a close as we can. Protestors include
Zapatistas from Chiapas, small farmers from Korea, a marching
band from Seattle, students from Mexico City, members of the
FLMN, unions, indigenous groups, and more...
As we start, one group lays down a huge US flag for all the
marchers to walk over. Dirt, and more dirt, covers the US flag...
Soon after the march is underway a group of us are called to
help carry a huge chinese dragon...it has been made in honor
of the Mayan god of water who is upset about the privatization
of water. The huge 30 foot moving replica of this god goes in
front while the dragon snakes behind...it takes four people to
hold the head and then nine of us spread out below the body...
Our dragon stretches far, and we practice moving in slithering
motions, circles, and waves...
The beginning of the march is beautiful. It's so hard to describe
participating in one of these events. You are reclaiming the streets,
disrupting social space, speaking truth to power, and honoring
life, creativity, and hope...Several bands played, people literally
danced in the streets...some people came out to watch the very
festive procession of people from around the world...people with
so much experience and knowledge and truth to share about how
to create a globally just world...but who are excluded and
marginalized and pushed further and further down...yet rise again
resisting, resisting, resisting...
About an hour into the march the feeling began to change, tensions
rose as the crowd of thousands approached the first fence barrier...
The fence stretched for miles across the road leading to the WTO
conference center...but we really we nowhere close...many many
other barriers had been set up, we were kept so so far away...
So as the group gathered at the fence protestor began to call to
be let through, some started pulling at the fence, others started
throwing things into the line of police...There were tons and tons
of police in full riot gear with shields, sticks, tear gas, and
helmets...
I did not learn this until later, but very early, at this point
in the march, the leader of the small farmer group from Korea
climbed the fence and stabbed himself in the heart...
All we could see at the back of the march was the rushing in
of an ambulance with its sirens blaring, we did not know why
it was coming into the mass of protestors,
As of tonight we do not know the condition of this brave man,
he was taken to the hospital in critical condition, he may die...
He stabbed himself in the heart. He stabbed himself in the heart.
Others were injured as well, when a protestor was hurt people
would call for the volunteer medics and they would rush into
the crowd to pull out the wounded person and then treat them
on the street,
Our group continued to distribute water and make a return trip
to the medic station for more water and supplies,
Protestors continued chanting, singing, drumming, they held
a ceremony for the Korean farmer, the campesinos from Mexico
continued marching and gave their demands over a mega phone,
Suddenly a section of the fence was torn town...protestors had
been pulling and pulling for hours and a huge section finally fell,
Riot police were immediately at the opening, confrontations
between police and protestors was violent,
Unfortunately this was the focus of the newscoverage I just
say tonight...the moments of violence...not the hours of
marching or the messages for justice and against the WTO...
So, after a full day in the streets we regrouped under some
shade trees. We were all pretty stunned. We were all
speechless for a long time thinking about the Korean farmer.
How much to you have to suffer to do this to yourself? What
risks are you willing to take when there is nothing left to lose?
When will the world wake up about the desperate plight of
the majority of its citizens? When will the WTO be held
accountable? Hopefully its meetings are derailed this weekend,
I hope I hope
After a while we realized we had not eaten anything since
breakfast. We decided it was important to find food and
try to make it back into the hotel zone before it was too
late. Since the barriers were still up we took the long
hour long route through the hotel district...
I had not seen the full hotel district before. It was
disgusting. After all I had seen that today I just
sunk in my seat at the sights of opulence that wisked
by my window...towering Hilton hotels, shopping malls
five stories tall, US chain restaurants, bars to hold
all the spring breakers in their weeks of drunkeness,
fancy cars, more things than anyone needs...
And onto the bus came rich tourists, participants in
the WTO negotiations...and then local residents of Cancun
getting off their shifts as maids and security guards
at the hotels...and onto the bus came a father and
son who started to sing while playing the guitar...as
they ended the young boy took off his hat and walked
through the bus asking us for pesos...
We got back to the hotel and heard that inside the WTO
members of the NGOs had stood up and distrupted the
meeting by chanting "verguenza" or "shame" and then
walked out...
The TV on in the hotel carried scenes from the protests,
My head was still banging and my mind scattered, I do not
know how to make sense of anything anymore,
I wanted to write this to you all so you would know what
I saw on the streets of Cancun today. The contrasts were
stark...they symbolize the contrasts of the world, I guess
it is just too seldom we witness these contrasts colliding,
but really they do everyday and we are all playing some part.
As I finish this message I hear the woman next to me talking
to her friend, suddenly she turns to me and says...
"We just got news that the Korean farmer has died."
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Related stories on this site:
WTO/Cancun: Future Uncertain After Collapse Of Talks
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Comments
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Re: September 10th, Cancun |
by Robert Porter
rporter (nospam) newtonbigelow.com (verified) |
Current rating: 0
11 Sep 2003
Modified: 08:14:41 AM |
|
This is not only more informative than anything else I've seen about the conference in Cancun, it's also beautifully and sincerely written. Thank you, Meredith. |
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Re: September 10th, Cancun |
by Lisa Chason
chason (nospam) shout.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
12 Sep 2003
Modified: 07:39:33 AM |
Thank you Meridith -- please keep on reporting to us with your exceptional acuteness and sensitivity. Stay well-
Lisa |
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WTO Undermining Democracy: Lessons From California |
by Martin Wagner
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
14 Sep 2003
|
With terrorism, the war in Iraq, and economic troubles at home to worry about, Americans may wonder, "Why should we care about a WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico?"
We should care deeply, because our health and environmental standards are at risk.
In Cancún, trade ministers from more than 140 nations are negotiating new rules that undermine the ability of local, state, and federal governments throughout the United States to protect the public interest. It's a bold attempt to increase trade no matter what the social and environmental costs.
As a committee headed by California State Senator Liz Figueroa has recognized, trade rules being discussed in Cancún could jeopardize a state's right to protect our environment, human health, civil and labor rights, and a host of other laws.
In Santa Monica, the city water supply was poisoned by MTBE, a chemical in gasoline that seeped into city wells and made the water undrinkable. Governor Davis ordered MTBE removed from gasoline by next year, but that may be thwarted. The Canadian-based Methanex Corporation, producer of one component of MTBE, is using international trade rules to demand the U.S. government pay one billion dollars - potential lost profits - if California bans the chemical.
Methanex based its challenge on a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement that allows foreign corporations to use secretive international tribunals to challenge federal, state, or local measures that might interfere with potential corporate profits. Will Methanex win this case? Maybe. The U.S.-based company Metalclad recently won a $16 million NAFTA tribunal decision against the government of Mexico when local officials refused to allow the company to operate a toxic waste facility in their community. And that is just the beginning.
Recently, California implemented one of the world's best regimes to regulate open-pit mining by requiring mining companies to refill the pits rather than piling mine tailings in the open where they pollute our environment. But Glamis Gold Ltd., a Canadian mining company, is already challenging these measures under the NAFTA investment rules.
Should the United States, Mexico, or any other country have to pay foreign corporations to prevent harm to the environment and human health? Isn't that legalized extortion? Well, yes, and it's one of many stranger-than-fiction trade rules being promoted in Cancún this week.
The NAFTA provision used by Methanex and Metalclad is a model corporations in the United States and other countries want to apply throughout the world, increasing corporate power to challenge meddlesome health and environmental standards enacted democratically by regional governments around the world.
Already, threatened trade challenges have persuaded the United States to allow pesticide residues on food that do not meet U.S. standards and Minnesota to waive its purchasing preference for recycled paper in the face of Canadian claims that it would disadvantage paper produced from logging native forests.
The United States has long been a global leader in environmental and health protection. Our organic food laws and toxics regulations provide high levels of safety for our children and environment. Under the proposed WTO rules, we would be pressured to forego such measures and adopt lowest-common-denominator international standards. Stronger protections would be open to challenge by foreign corporations eventually forcing the United States to weaken standards. This is already happening. Under already existing WTO rules, Europe was forced to pay huge tariffs to retain laws against chemicals in U.S. meat suspected of causing cancer.
Amazingly, trade negotiators still insist trade has nothing to do with the environment or public health.
The proposed WTO rules would also limit the US ability to guarantee essential public services, like providing clean drinking water, sanitation, and responsible forest management. Under these rules, any state regulation of service providers to protect human and environmental health could be challenged by corporations as being "more burdensome [to trade] than necessary." This 'trade at all costs' agenda is the basis for the protests in Cancún, as it was at the WTO meeting in 1999 in Seattle. Not much has changed in the last four years.
If you haven't heard about these plans, it's no surprise. The United States keeps the public in the dark while giving special briefings to industry representatives and making documents available to foreign negotiators. Although recent lawsuits have forced the government to disclose some of what it has proposed in certain trade negotiations, the US Trade Representative's office has sworn to continue hiding such documents in the future.
Democracy requires informed public participation. If these trade agreements are really for our benefit, one has to wonder why all the secrecy?
Most people throughout the world demand that their leaders give priority to openness and to protecting our children and environment -- not just increasing corporate profits.
Martin Wagner is managing attorney of international programs for Earthjustice. He has successfully sued the US Trade Representative for public access to the US negotiating position on free trade agreements and is pursuing legal channels for a public role in the Methanex case.
http://www.earthjustice.org/ |
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World Trade Talks End In Failure, Delegates Say |
by AP
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
14 Sep 2003
|
CANCUN, Mexico -- Talks designed to change the face of farming around the world collapsed Sunday amid differences between rich and poor nations, delegates said.
"It's over," said George Odour Ong'wen, a Kenyan delegate. "The chairman is calling the delegates to announce that the talks have collapsed.
Other delegations confirmed that the talks had ended in failure. It was the second major defeat for the body that makes rules for international trade. In 1999, similar talks collapsed in Seattle amid street riots and difference between members.
"The differences were very wide, and it was impossible to close the gap," Oduor said.
Rich and poor nations spent all day in talks about whether to launch negotiations on the controversial issues of foreign investment and competition. |
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Farming Is Korean's Life And He Ends It In Despair |
by James Brooke
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 3
15 Sep 2003
|
ANGSU, South Korea, Sept. 15 — Before Lee Kyung Hae left for Mexico on his final mission to defend South Korean farmers, he climbed a hill behind his old apple orchard here. In the quiet solitude of his former farm, he cleaned up around his wife's tomb.
"He cut all the grass before departing," Lee Kyang Ja, his older sister, said with surprise today, coming upon the site after climbing a dirt road behind the farm. On Wednesday in Cancún, Mexico, Mr. Lee, a 55-year-old farm union leader, scaled a barricade outside a meeting of the World Trade Organization and then fatally plunged his old Swiss Army knife into his heart.
The big news out of Cancún this week was the breakdown in the World Trade Organization talks, as the developing nations walked out in frustration over farm subsidies. To most of the world, Mr. Lee's act may have seemed like a sideshow, the latest face of extreme antiglobalist protest, perhaps, just a final desperate measure by a disturbed man.
But in rural communities like this one in southern South Korea, Mr. Lee, a three-time member of the provincial assembly, was seen as a heroic figure, a defender of debt-ridden farmers struggling to maintain an age-old agrarian tradition in a fast-developing country where manufacturing is king.
"Mr. Lee committed suicide to save the farmers," said An Sung Hyun, 65, a neighbor. "He sacrificed himself for farmers like me."
That sentiment is echoed in a new banner that greets drivers as they enter Jangsu. "The late Lee Kyung Hae, patriot and hero, we will follow your goal," it reads. "We strongly oppose W.T.O. globalization."
To protect farmers, South Korea has tariffs of over 100 percent on 142 farm products — consumers here pay about four times American prices for rice — helping support six million farmers in a nation of 47 million people.
But South Korea's real money is made selling cars, ships and cellphones around the world. To keep markets open for its economy, the world's 12th largest, South Korea has recently made concessions on food imports, in bilateral talks and in preliminary negotiations in the W.T.O. With each concession, life gets a little harder for the farmers.
"It is not hard to guess why he chose to terminate his life," said La Jung Han, an official in Seoul at the the Korean Advanced Farmers Federation, a group Mr. Lee headed for many years. "Probably, the main motivation was despair." It was "a despair deeply imbedded in the conditions of the farmers, the agriculture industry and the rural communities."
From his wife's grave, Mr. Lee's view would have included his modest one-story brick house and his experimental 40-acre farm. In the 1970's it was an effort by a college graduate from Seoul, much commented upon, to demonstrate how farmers could survive and compete despite declining prices for their products.
As documented by national television at the time, he taught students from agricultural colleges ways to extract greater yields from their crops, herds and orchards, all in an effort to breathe economic life into South Korea's countryside. Four years ago, he lost the farm in a foreclosure sale.
Beyond Mr. Lee's sloping farmland, the view extends to fertile, green bottom lands, where rice paddies intermingle with weed lots.
"Even now the land is being abandoned," An Sung Hyun, said, pointing out paddies abandoned across the valley floor. "If we import more food, more land will be abandoned."
At the local community hall today — as in dozens of rural communities throughout South Korea — a memorial altar, which bore Mr. Lee's portrait, was framed by seven-foot-high arrangements of white carnations, lightly illuminated by two mourning candles. All day long, groups of rough-cut men with sunburned faces arrived, removed their shoes, deposited carnations and bowed before his portrait.
"He was very strong and tender even though his image is one of violence," said Lee Young Jin, a printer and childhood friend. "He kept his faith and loyalty to the farmers."
Despite his loyalties to his rural roots, Mr. Lee, the printer, said that he was forbidding his own two children, both college students, to go into farming.
"Parents who are farming, don't want their children to do farming," he said, speaking in a room filled with farmers. "There is no hope. They cannot get any benefits from farming."
A city guide to Geneva, home to the World Trade Organization, was on the bookshelf today of the spare room where Mr. Lee lived in a family house here. In the room where his clothes still hung on hangers, a daughter, Lee Goh Wun, pulled out scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings chronicling his 30 years of farm protests, first in Seoul, then in cities around the world.
A decade ago, Mr. Lee stabbed himself in the stomach in Geneva. Last February, he returned there, living in a tent outside the trade organization's building and conducting a one-month hunger strike.
"He staged hunger strikes 30 times," said Lee Kyang Ja, his older sister, who followed his protests even though she lived in Chile for most of the 1990's. "For him, the most important things were farmers, his parents and his three daughters."
His daughter Goh Wun was to be married on Sept. 28. But today she was dressed in black. The wedding has been postponed.
"Frankly speaking, I am really, really proud of him," she said. "Because he sacrificed himself not for himself, but for the nation."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
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On The Streets And Behind The Scenes At The WTO Meeting In Cancun - A Win For Democracy |
by Lucy Boulanger and John Fogarty
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Sep 2003
|
The recent collapse of the World Trade Organization negotiations in Cancun represents a victory for democracy, civil society, and the unity of developing nations. The crumbling of the WTO meeting highlights the growing resistance from people who have been adversely affected by trade liberalization and free trade agreements. But what really happened in Cancun and why did the talks collapse?
We had heard about the notorious “green rooms”, off limits to all but the very influential, where delegations of experts from the United States (US) and European Union (EU) would pressure trade ministers from developing countries. Often alone and without counsel, trade ministers from poor countries would be coerced to sign onto the latest round of trade rules in secret “informal meetings” for which no minutes would be kept.
Yet it was still appalling to hear that on the last day of the WTO conference, Ministers from eight countries of the Global South (Kenya, Malaysia, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, China and India), had been called at 1:00 am for two hours of negotiations with the US and EU.
Additionally, there are no participatory procedures for drafting and revising WTO texts. Many WTO Ministers and the general public do not know how the drafts of the Declarations are made and very little time is given to the delegations to review and act on them. The initial Draft Text was made available only two weeks before the negotiations began. The views of many or most of the developing countries were ignored in the revised texts.
During five days of negotiations Ministers from 148 countries met to discuss new ways of enhancing trade for thousands of things ranging from corn to cotton to medicines to water. One of the most important issues in the "green rooms" was agriculture. The US and EU wanted all countries to lower tariffs, thereby promoting free trade.
The part of the “free trade” debate that the US and EU would not discuss was their insistence on continued agricultural subsidies for their markets amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Approximately 80% of American farm subsidies go to large agribusiness allowing them to flood the world market with cheap agricultural goods (a.k.a. dumping). In short, the US and EU represent the interests of large corporations.
To put the enormity of these subsidies in perspective, an American cow receives $2.90 a day in subsidies and a European cow $2.20 per day while 1/2 of the people in the world survive on less than $2.00 per day. Due to taxpayer funded subsidies American and European cows are financially better off than the majority of people in the world.
During the week of trade negotiations over 6000 campesinos (farmers) from all over the world held a separate shadow conference in Cancun to discuss the effects of trade liberalization on their lives and to inform the trade Ministers that the current system was not sustainable.
On the first day of the conference the campesinos organized a march from downtown to the conference center, which was strategically situated 8 km away from the city on a road, which was barricaded with a twenty-foot fence.
Included was a group of 200 South Korean farmers led by Mr. Kyung Hae Lee, President of the Korean Farmers Organization. Mr. Lee had dedicated his life to analyzing the effects of free trade and organizing farmers. Upon arriving at the barricade Mr. Lee climbed the wall and took his life as an act of solidarity with millions of small farmers who have been harmed by trade liberalization.
"Don't worry about me, just struggle your hardest," Mr. Lee shouted as he took his own life.
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) began in 1994 the rate of small farmer bankruptcies in the US and Canada has risen five fold and millions of Mexican farmers have been forced off their land. With the help of NAFTA and the WTO, big agribusiness has taken over.
A coalition of developing countries called the G-22, recognizing the destructive effects of the subsidies, resisted US and EU demands and walked out of the talks.
“For the first time in the WTO, the developing world united not on ideological grounds but on key and well articulated interests and acted in concert to advance its developmental agenda,” said South Africa’s minister for trade and industry, Alec Erwin.
It seems that the developing countries have now figured out that the WTO’s current playing field is not level and the trade is neither free nor fair.
The collapse of the talks is a victory for developing nations; however the US may use this as an opportunity to pull away from the WTO and use its bullying tactics on countries individually to pursue bilateral trade agreements. The US would like to do this throughout Latin America with the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
The US has already used open threats to continue to bully developing countries such as the one by Chuck Grassley, Chair of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, who said he would judge other countries seeking bilateral trade deals by their behavior in Cancun.
Whether it’s through the WTO or new forms of bilateral trade agreements, the economic principles that govern our new world should be based upon the promotion of human rights and democratic principles, not on corporate profits. Unfair trade agreements must be resisted and reformed into an economic system of trade that benefits the many, not the few.
Lucy Boulanger and John Fogarty just returned from Cancun. They are two physicians living and working on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. |
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