Protesters are refusing to be quietened ahead of this week's World Trade Organization meeting in Doha, Qatar, despite fears of severe limitations on free speech and assembly. They face an unprecedented challenge in being heard at the November 9-13 WTO meeting, where the members are struggling to agree on an agenda to launch a new round of trade liberalization talks.
"I think their idea was to shut us down altogether. It is literally illegal to protest there. It is a very low and pretty desperate stunt," said Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach. "But it did not work because a bunch of us are going anyway plus there are protests around the world. I think they thought that if they went to Qatar they would just mow down the protests, instead we are popping up like mushrooms all over."
Two years ago, protesters were able to sweep through the streets in Seattle, Washington, where a WTO meeting collapsed in disarray after failing to launch a new round. This year will be markedly different. Some 500 non-government organization representatives were registered for the meeting in Qatar, Wallach said, but about 350 of them were corporations rather than protesters.
Greenpeace will nevertheless sail the protest Rainbow Warrior to Doha, where it planned to anchor directly outside the WTO conference center, Wallach said.
"They will have on board people from the Indian fisherfolk forum and people from Latin America who are displaced farmers, people from Africa who cannot get access to AIDS medicines because of the WTO," he said. "They will basically be an entire Noah's Ark of the real life problems caused at the WTO."
Greenpeace is calling on the WTO to agree to an open assessment of its impacts on social and environmental welfare instead of launching a new trade round. "We are not against international trade per se but it must not put the environment at risk," said a statement by Greenpeace political director Remi Parmentier.
Labor groups are also dissatisfied with the direction being taken by the WTO, said the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), an umbrella group of 64 unions, AFL-CIO chief international economist Thea Lee criticized the draft declaration of the Doha meeting for eroding progress in protecting workers' rights.
The document took note of the International Labor Organization's work but failed to make any commitment to cooperate, she said. It also reaffirmed that the ILO was the place to discuss workers' rights.
"That is not our view. Our view is that the WTO is also an appropriate forum along with the ILO. Removing the social dimension of globalization, labor relations, from the WTO is a backward step," Lee said.
In Myanmar, for example, the ILO had criticized the systematic and widespread use of forced labor one year ago, calling on member countries to review their relationships with the regime. he United States was the biggest importer of goods from Myanmar, 85 percent of which were clothing, she said.
"Virtually all of the apparel factories are jointly owned by members of the military junta. And these are the individuals who are carrying out the forced labor practices."
But when the AFL-CIO asked both the Clinton and Bush administrations to curb imports from Myanmar, Lee said, they had replied that such action would flout WTO rules.
"So the WTO at a minimum needs to clarify that when a country is taking a trade action against an egregious violator of labor rights that that will not be subject to dispute settlement at the WTO."
Notwithstanding the difficulties of protesting in Qatar, critics said they were already switching tactics from targeting the meetings to pressuring their home governments.
"What really has become clear to us is the WTO has no legitimacy, it is totally unaccountable," said Global Trade Watch's Wallach. "What we can do is spotlight and highlight that truth but also we can hold our governments accountable."
In Doha, the organizing committee spokesman Sheikh Abdullah Bin Ahmed Al-Thani told AFP any peaceful demonstration would be tolerated but "security forces will intervene if there is disorderliness or violence". — (AFP, Washington)
by David Williams
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
