Thousands protest Global Forum

A demonstration of over 20,000 people clashed with police in the streets of Naples, Italy on Saturday, Mar. 17, 2001, during an attempt to stop a meeting of the Global Forum.

Compiled by Sean Marquis

Naples, Italy, Mar.17— Thousands of protesters clashed with riot police in the center of Naples on Saturday. The demonstration was an attempt at shutting down a meeting of the Global Forum — a conference of government and technology leaders.

In an attempt to reach the conference center, demonstrators lobbed smoke bombs and paving stones at police lines and set trash bins on fire.

When protesters pushed past a police barricade, the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the crowd and then charged, beating demonstrators with batons as the protesters hurled back paving stones and iron bolts, witnesses said.

After 20 minutes of hand-to-hand clashes, police brought the situation under control, but as many as 100 officers and demonstrators had been injured, police said, including one police commander with serious head wounds, who was taken to a hospital.

As well as police and protesters, four television journalists were beaten and their cameras damaged. A journalist and a photographer said they had been beaten up by the police, and protest organizers said a pregnant woman was among those injured.

Some witnesses said the central square looked like a battle field as ambulances ferried the injured out. Several people, including journalists and parliamentarians, accused the police of using “gratuitous violence.”

Police were expecting demonstrations during a five-day meeting in the city of the Global Forum, a conference of political, finance and technology leaders who gathered to discuss the role of the Internet in government.
Anti-globalization protesters were dispersed with
tear gas after throwing rocks and smoke bombs.

The Global Forum, involving 800 delegates, has focused on how new technologies change the concept and practice of government.

While the five-day conference has a section dedicated to the digital divide, and ways of ensuring electronic access to developing nations, the protesters say the Internet Age is only exacerbating global inequalities.

Tough measures

A total of 6,000 regular police, paramilitary Carabinieri, and specialist bomb squads had been drafted into the port of Naples in the past week to prepare for the conference.

A kilometer-square area in the historic center was ringed off with barricades of steel fencing and riot vehicles and extensive spot security checks were carried out.

Similar measures have been employed at meetings of the G7 industrialized nations and Russia in Palermo and Trieste earlier this year, and are expected to be enforced when G8 heads-of-state hold their annual summit in Genoa in July.

Tight security has been imposed at dozens of summits and high-level finance meetings throughout Europe and the United States since huge anti-globalization demonstrations shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999.

Anti-globalization groups organized to bring thousands of demonstrators by train from Palermo and Milan to Naples for the protest, where they were joined by thousands of unemployed people.

Organizers said 25-30,000 people gathered at the main train station, before marching through the streets and then clashing with police as they tried to gain access to the venue of the Global Forum behind the 30-foot walls of Naples’ Royal Palace.

Businesses had closed in the center of town in recent days as police made preparations for violence. Police said most businesses were untouched during the fighting, but the windows of several banks and a travel agency were smashed.

By the day’s end, about 100 people had been arrested.

One day earlier, an anti-globalization rally in Naples was peaceful on both sides of the line. Protesters walked around with pasta colanders on their heads and threw lettuce leaves at watchful police.

Sources: Reuters, Associated Press

US funds war on Colombia’s poor

By Brendan Conley

Bogota, Colombia, Mar. 16—The United States is funding a war on the poor in Colombia, civil society organizers here said. Labor leaders, indigenous and Afro-Colombian organizers, and other members of civil society, said that the primary effect – and purpose – of Colombia’s war is the displacement of peasants.

“Plan Colombia finances the displacement of indigenous people,” said Hector Mondragon, a leader of the peasant and indigenous resistance.

Mondragon insisted that both the coca eradication program and the counter- insurgency war function as a pretext for the displacement of the poor. The United States and Colombian governments say they are fighting drugs and rebels, but “the real result is the displacement of campesinos and the concentration of land holdings,” said Mondragon.

Other Colombians said that the government is treating the symptoms of the Colombian conflict, not the cause. “The fundamental problems are economic, political, and social ones,” said Eduardo Martinez, of the Permanent Assembly of Civil Society for Peace – known by its Spanish acronym CECORA. He said social problems such as poverty and unemployment are worsening in this country of 40 million, with 56.5% of the population in absolute poverty.

“What solutions are being offered for these problems?” asked Martinez. “Plan Colombia: a plan to intensify the conflict. What international plans are being offered to help us? An extended agreement of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) – worsening unemployment, increasing taxes, and developing the neoliberal model.”

Colombian organizers here lay much of the blame for the conflict on international capital and global financial institutions. The overwhelming violence of this country, including massacres, torture, and assassinations, has been concentrated in areas where giant economic development projects are underway: mines, dams, and oil projects.

Violence is a way of life in Colombia, claiming 30,000 lives per year. Only 15% of these murders are directly related to the war, with the majority caused by the social and economic conditions.

The majority of the human rights abuses in the conflict are carried out by paramilitary forces – the so-called self-defense groups – and is directed against the civilian population.

“The displacement of campesinos is part of an economic development model,” said Mondragon.

War on the poor

Hector Mondragon spoke to a group of 100 US citizens here on a human rights delegation with the organization Witness for Peace. He described a recent massacre in the town of Flor de Monte. He said the military and paramilitaries joined forces to massacre the population.

“The military surrounded the population, to avoid anyone – for example the guerrilla – being able to stop the massacre,” said Mondragon. “During the next five days, the paramilitaries did what they wanted with the people.

“They put people on tables in the middle of the central plaza, including on the altar of the Catholic Church. They tortured them. They stabbed them until they died. They strangled the people little by little. They raped women. They danced on the dead,” said Mondragon.

The massacre took place in an area where the Chevron corporation has large oil projects, said Mondragon.

“Can the people of the United States let Chevron bring oil to them from this region where people are treated this way?” he asked.

Victor Viafara, of the Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians, said Afro-Colombian people are being driven from the Pacific coast region whenever their presence – or their resistance – threatens international capital.

“Many groups are driven off their lands by paramilitaries and the army,” said Viafara. “The majority of the people killed are community leaders.” The organizers said that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – known by their Spanish acronym FARC – have also committed human rights abuses. Viafara said that Afro-Colombian civilians had been killed by the FARC.

Mondragon denounced the recent murder of three US citizens by the FARC.

“They were defending the rights of the U’wa people,” he said. “That is why they were killed by the FARC.” The business sector denounced the FARC in stronger terms. “The FARC violate, in a permanent form, international law,” said Jose Miguel Narvaez of the Federation of Cattle Ranchers. “The FARC continue to say they are working to protect the poor and dispossessed. But the people who least support this movement – because they have been most affected by it – are the poor people.”

Colombian activists said that people in Colombia have legal rights and freedoms, but repression is carried out by extralegal means.

Viafara said that Afro-Colombian people had won the constitutional right to land title in the Pacific coast region. But when people began to request their land titles, “the paramilitaries arrived and began to assassinate the community leaders.”

Mondragon explained the reality of free speech in Colombia. “Here in Colombia, anyone can say whatever they want, whenever they want, just like I’m doing now,” he said. “But they kill you on the way out.”

The drug war

Members of the civil society sector here denounced US and Colombian drug policy.

“The US has a belligerent, zero-tolerance policy,” said Ricardo Vargas of Accion Andina. “The US government wants to eradicate drugs at the source, where they are produced, because of the effect on those that consume them.”

Vargas said that Colombia is the number one coca-producing country, and he drew a distinction between those that produce crops that are raw materials for drugs, and those that manufacture and sell illegal substances. He said the government goes after small and medium sized coca farmers.

“Go visit the jails – you will find peasants and day laborers,” he said.

The focus of US drug control efforts is fumigation, and Nelson Berrio of CECORA, said that the aerial fumigation of coca is harming human health and the environment.

“Everywhere that fumigation happens, the food crops of the people living in the area are also destroyed,” said Berrio. “Fumigation also produces long-term sickness for people living in the region.”

The fumigation is being carried out with a glyphosate herbicide produced by the US multinational Monsanto, said Vargas. “Roundup Ultra has been used in fumigation in Colombia since 1999,” he said. “The formulation is certified by Monsanto.”

Vargas said that Roundup Ultra contains new ingredients that allow the herbicide to stick to coca leaves, but the new formulation has not been tested or approved by the Colombian government.

“This is completely illegal,” he said. The new ingredients also allow the glyphosate to stick to human skin, according to Vargas.

Mondragon said that fumigation is ineffective in reducing coca production. In 1999, he said, 16,000 hectares of coca were fumigated, but 38,000 more hectares were planted.

“This plan is increasing the narco- trafficking,” he said.

Vargas said that the fumigation program has destroyed alternative crops that were planted to take the place of coca, such as rubber trees, peas, and medicinal plants.

“Fumigation is not compatible with alternative development projects,” he said.

The Colombian government has carried out most of its fumigation efforts in the southern part of the country, where guerrilla groups collect taxes from coca farmers. This will increase drug production in the north, where it benefits right-wing paramilitary groups, according to Vargas.

International interests, international solidarity

War in Colombia is financed by international capital, and peace in Colombia depends on international grassroots action, according to Colombian social justice organizers.

The US government is financing Colombia’s military because a FARC victory would be intolerable to US interests, according to Felix Posada, of the Popular Communication Center for Latin America (CEPALC). The theory is that, in the event of a FARC victory, Colombia could create an alliance with the leftist government of Venezuela, an alliance that would harm US investments, according to Posada.

“President Pastrana is simply a representative of financial interests,” said Posada, and therefore he is intensifying the war.

Posada said that Plan Colombia is a plan for regional war. Of the earlier $1.3 billion US contribution, 75% is military aid, according to Posada. The Colombian government will receive $800 million, while the rest will go to military installations in Ecuador and other neighboring countries, he said.

The repression of indigenous people in the Atlantic coast region is carried out to protect the installations of multinational oil companies like Shell, Texaco, BP, and Chevron, said Mondragon.

“Is it just a coincidence that there are so many massacres in these areas?” he asked.

Coca and poppy production itself is a result of international free trade agreements, according to Mondragon. He said that these agreements have resulted in a decrease in the annual production of coffee from 16 million sacks to 9 million over ten years.

“These people that harvested these 7 million sacks per year, that are no longer produced, what do you think they did?” he asked. “Our participation in the WTO is the real cause of coca and poppy production.”

Mondragon said that the economic system tells Colombians to produce those products in which they have a comparative advantage.

“Here in Colombia, we have a comparative advantage in coca and poppy.”

International solidarity is essential if Colombia is to achieve peace with social justice, according to Carlos Ivancas, President of Agricultural Cooperatives.

“It has been very important to us to see international and US civil society protest the current economic model,” he said. “The examples of Seattle and Prague are very important to us. We recognize them, and we need to support and strengthen them.”

The Colombian people need the support of US citizens, Ivancar said.

“We need for US society to pressure their government,” he said. “It’s very important that your movement for the environment and human rights is able to do something to change the system.”

The presence of a human rights delegation from the United States is encouraging to Colombians, said Viafara. “We need the will of the people in the United States to make sure our rights are respected,” he said.

CP&L activists convicted

Statement of NC WARN

Durham, North Carolina, Mar. 16— Seven people were found guilty today of trespassing at the Raleigh headquarters of Carolina Power & Light in January. The group had been seeking a meeting with CP&L head William Cavanaugh to ask him to stop the company’s two-year, two million dollar scuttling of safety hearings on the company’s proposal to create the nation’s largest stockpile of irradiated fuel rods in Wake County.

Six of the defendants, who had gone to CP&L prepared to risk arrest if necessary, in an expression of nonviolent civil disobedience, were sentenced to 10 days in jail (suspended for 18 months), fined $50 plus court costs, placed on 18 months’ probation, and ordered to stay off of all CP&L property. They immediately filed notice of appeal, and are scheduled for a jury trial in Superior Court on May 21st. A seventh defendant, Jim Senter, was found guilty but given Prayer for Judgment, charged $90 court costs and banned from CP&L property.

The protesters mounted a spirited defense, led by pro bono attorneys Stewart Fisher and George Hausen. Along with their claim that the arrest was nullified by improper actions of CP&L security, they argued that the seven had a First Amendment right to seek the audience with CEO Cavanaugh. But their most compelling defense was that they risked arrest out of necessity – that the actual harm of breaking the trespass law was greatly outweighed by the harm which could occur from a severe waste accident at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant.

Ruth Zalph said from the witness stand: “I feel I have rights as a citizen – but also responsibilities to my grandchildren and those of others … to do something about my concerns instead of just complain about them.” Attorney Fisher pointed out that his clients acted respectfully and peacefully, that they reasonably believed it was necessary to act, and that the potential harm from failing to act was greater than the harm from a technical violation of the law.

Attorney Hausen pointed out that the defendants had exhausted all alternatives to protect regional safety. Top experts assisting Orange County have warned that CP&L’s plan would substantially increase the risk of a major accident, but CP&L has taken active legal measures to prevent them from airing their concerns in a formal safety hearing. In such a hearing, CP&L would have to openly address questions about its waste expansion.

In contrast to the insistence for open scientific hearings, CP&L public relations witness Mike Hughes explained that the company had held two open houses where the public could ask questions about the nuclear expansion.

Hughes and a CP&L attorney, who was allowed to assist in the group’s prosecution, sat alongside the Wake County District Attorney. CP&L $7 billion-a-year company is now one of the nation’s largest utilities.

District Court Judge Donald Overby, who presided over the five-hour trial, said he was heartened to see people acting on their beliefs, but was required to find the seven guilty of trespassing. Lewis Pitts was the defendants’ lead witness, and he explained the frustrations of the complex federal process that allows a nuclear company to avoid open scientific scrutiny. He pointed out that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Inspector General recently began an investigation of the NRC staff’s review of the waste expansion proposal: “The NRC’s lack of independence from CP&L leaves their actions smelling like a four day-old fish.”

Pitts also emphasized that, along with Orange County, a half-dozen other local governments have insisted on open safety hearings. He said Sen. John Edwards has called for hearings and is now being lobbied by citizens across the region to use his weight to demand that the five-member NRC Commission use its discretionary authority to conduct open hearings and an environmental impact study.

Along with Pitts, Zalph and Senter, the others found guilty were Dr. Laura Wimbish-Vanderbeck, Nancy Woods, Mark Marcoplos and Jim Warren.