A-Infos (en) Peoples' Global Action May 18th, 1998

[pga@agp.org (Peoples' Global Action Secretariat)]

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May 18th, 1998

3rd international PRESS RELEASE 
by Peoples' Global Action

Today the Second Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) starts in Geneva, in the context of a hundreds of protests all over
the World. 

Nearly a million of people from all social sectors (farmers, indigenous
peoples, workers, women, ethnical groups, unemployed and many other groups)
are expressing since the 1st of May our rejection to the WTO, the
multilateral trade system, and neoliberal policies - participating in the
first international days of action of Peoples' Global Action (PGA) against
"Free" Trade and the WTO.

Selection of actions during the G8 Summit in Birmingham (16th/17th May) and
during the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Geneva (18th-20th May)

On Saturday, at the same time as the beginning of the G8 Summit, over
hundred thousand people throughout the world protested against the WTO and
their neoliberal policies: 

Global Street Parties were celebrated in 35 cities all over the world, for
example in Geneva, Birmingham, Sydney, Toronto and Prague with several
thousand people in each town. 

In Brazil, a protest march of 40 000 landless and homeless people reached
the capital Brasilia; 10 000 unemployed joined them on Monday. On Wednesday,
the final day of the WTO conference, a demonstration through the government
district of Brasilia is planned. 

In India, 23 regional conferences against the WTO are occurring today. In
Hyderabad, WTO symbols are being burned in several public places. On
Saturday, there were more than 100 actions against the WTO and on May 1st,
hundreds of thousands of peasants and workers urged the Indian to withdraw
from the WTO in a massive national rally. 

In Canada, a protest against the planned Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI) is scheduled for today. There will be further
demonstrations and direct actions in different Canadian cities on Wednesday.
The OECD meeting starting this weekend in Montreal shall be blocked
throughout its duration. 

On "Peoples’ Trade Day today, actions are being carried out in the United
States and in Geneva against different symbolic centers of global capitalism. 

Meanwhile, an incredible wave of repression is hitting Geneva: throughout
the town, people are being stopped by the police at random, arrested and
jailed for hours without any given reason - without judicial basis. Foreign
persons which "do not carry enough money on them" (about 500 SFrs.) are
registered for police records and then deported with a prohibition of re-entry.

Many people got heavily injured by the police on Saturday evening, although
they behaved passively. At least one young man from Geneva still is in
intensive care due to inner bleeding.   The bicycle caravan "Money or Life"
organized by WiWa Wendland in Germany was already stopped before reaching
Geneva, all foreign participants were arrested, deported and are not allowed
to re-enter Switzerland for two years. 40 Italians were arrested on their
arrival at the train station in Geneva and also deported.

On Sunday afternoon, the caravan traveled to the French border to return the
wagons, tractors and further equipment back to the German participants
banned from Switzerland who were waiting at the other side of the border. On
their way back to Geneva, ten people were arrested, among them two
journalists from Switzerland and from Berlin. These were also registered for
police records and had to spend hours in a freezing cold civil service
building wearing summer clothes. After this custody they were given a paper
written in French accusing them of having participated in all actions and
demonstrations and were urged to sign it.

We condemn these arbitrary acts of the Genevan police and justice. These
arrests are clearly illegal. We especially protest against the detention of
journalists.

Peoples’ Global Action is a worldwide alliance of organizations and
grassroots movements that was formed the last February in a conference where
representatives of grassroots movements from 56 countries of all continents
came together. The conference produced the Manifesto of the PGA (available
at www.agp.org) that states: 

"We live in a time in which capital, with the help of international agencies
like the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the World Bank (WB) and other institutions, is shaping national
policies in order to strengthen its global control over political, economic
and cultural life.

Capital has always been global. Its boundless drive for expansion and profit
recognises no limits. From the slave trade of earlier centuries to the
imperial colonisation of peoples, lands and cultures across the globe,
capitalist accumulation has always fed on the blood and tears of the peoples
of the world. This destruction and misery has been restrained only by
grassroots resistance.

Today, capital is deploying a new strategy to assert its power and
neutralise peoples' resistance. Its name is economic globalisation, and it
consists in the dismantling of national limitations to trade and to the free
movement of capital. 

The effects of economic globalisation spread through the fabric of societies
and communities of the world, integrating their peoples into a single
gigantic system aimed at the extraction profit and the control of peoples
and nature. Words like "globalisation", "liberalisation" and "deregulation"
just disguise the growing disparities in living conditions between elites
and masses in both privileged and "peripheral" countries. 

(…)

Land, water, forest, wildlife, aquatic life and mineral resources are not
commodities, but our life support. For decades the powers that have emerged
from money and market have swelled their profits and tightened their control
of politics and economics by usurping these resources, at the cost of the
lives and livelihoods of vast majorities around the world. For decades the
World Bank and the IMF, and now the WTO, in alliance with national
governments and corporate powers, have facilitated maneuverings to
appropriate the environment. The result is environmental devastation, tragic
and unmanageable social displacement, and the wiping out of cultural and
biological diversity, much of it irretrievably lost without compensation to
those reliant on it. 

(…)

The WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and other institutions that promote
globalisation and liberalisation want us to believe in the beneficial
effects of global competition. Their agreements and policies constitute
direct violations of basic human rights (including civil, political,
economic, social, labour and cultural rights) which are codified in
international law and many national constitutions, and ingrained in people's
understandings of human dignity. We have had enough of their inhuman
policies. We reject the principle of competitiveness as solution for
peoples' problems. It only leads to the destruction of small producers and
local economies. Neo-liberalism is the real enemy of economic freedom. 

(…)

The need has become urgent for concerted action to dismantle the
illegitimate world governing system which combines transnational capital,
nation-states, international financial institutions and trade agreements.
Only a global alliance of peoples' movements, respecting autonomy and
facilitating action-oriented resistance, can defeat this emerging globalised
monster. If impoverishment of populations is the agenda of neo-liberalism,
direct empowerment of the peoples though constructive direct action and
civil disobedience will be the programme of the Peoples' Global Action
against "Free" Trade and the WTO." 

In a press briefing that took place today at United Nations the
representatives of PGA declared: "The struggle that takes place in these
days will continue until the disappearance of the WTO and all other
institutions and agreements that cause misery and death. It is part of a
process of convergence of millions of people fighting all over the planet
for a just society in harmony with the environment. The movements that
participate in this process want to send a clear message to the WTO: we will
not allow economic globalisation to destroy our environment, our culture,
our future, our lives. Consequently, we reject the treaties of the WTO and
we will not allow their implementation".

For more information please contact our press office: phone:	(0041) 22/ 344
47 31 fax: 	(0041) 22/ 940 20 70 e-mail:  press-action@agp.org


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