Thousands turn out for anti-EU protest in Belgium

Around 20,000 people marched against corporate globalization during a meeting of European Union members in Ghent, Belgium, on Oct. 19, 2001.

By Danny Fairfax

Ghent, Belgium, Oct. 31— As participants in the first major “anti-globalization” protest since the beginning of the war against Afghanistan, those who gathered in this north Belgian city on October 19 knew they had a great responsibility on their shoulders: to properly link opposition to the war to opposition to the capitalist system behind it.

With Ghent playing host to a “Eurotop” meeting of the heads of government of the 15 members of the European Union, Belgian anti-corporate activists sought to make sure that the summit would not pass without resistance. And after 18 solid hours of protests and actions under the banner of “A different Europe for a different world,” which culminated in a 20,000-strong march, they succeeded.

Months of preparation for the demonstration in Ghent, which has a large student population, reached a climax in the days leading up to Oct. 19 — with the city covered in posters advertising the protest and actions occurring almost daily.

On the day itself, actions began early. At 7am, an action organized by ATTAC Flanders began outside Ghent’s main train station. Opposing the government’s intended privatization of the railways and postal system, the action attracted 100 people and made a big impact on commuters coming into work.

While that was still in progress, 150 other demonstrators gathered outside the town hall in nearby Kortrijk, site of a meeting of the conservative European People’s Party, to oppose Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, the center of controversy after claiming that Western “civilization” was superior to Islam.

By midday two more protests had started. The “Anti-capitalist Youth March” organized by Internationaal Verzet (International Resistance) attracted 2,000 university and high school students from around Belgium.

At the same time the “Pink & Green” march, comprised mainly of anarchists, gathered. Because the march was not officially sanctioned, the 500 protesters were subjected to an enormous police presence.

Along with the presence of armored trucks with gun turrets, cops in full riot gear stood behind quickly-assembled razor wire barricades to make sure the march did not attempt to enter the “orange zone,” a softer version of Genoa’s and Gothenburg’s forbidden “red zones.”

The only friction came, however, when protesters offered flowers and lollipops to police officers — and some refused.

Both marches concluded at Woodrow Wilson Square in south Ghent, which was the focus point of the protest, where dozens of groups, from Marxist organizations to non-government organizations such as Oxfam, held stalls and information booths. In addition to that was a giant mural under the words “Stop militair Europa!” where people could add their own hand-painted messages.

At 5:45pm the square was also the site of a six minute-long mass die-in to symbolize the deaths of Afghans during the war, as well as the 35,000 children who die worldwide each day from starvation.

As a 10,000-strong rally of unionists, emboldened to action by the recent lay-off of 11,000 workers at troubled Belgian airline Sabena, arrived in the square shortly afterwards, the main march, scheduled to begin at 7pm, began to take shape.

By that time 20,000 people were amassed in the square. The size so exceeded organizers’ expectations that, when the head of the march was already half-way through the route, there were still people back in the square waiting to begin marching.

Winding its way through Ghent’s medieval streets for two hours, the march passed without violent incident, underlining both the protesters’ preference for politics to come to the fore rather than violence, and the folly of the mayor of Ghent, who had ordered a city holiday for the day.

After coming back to Woodrow Wilson Square, the protest turned into a festival, featuring a concert by Ghent super-band “Global Players,” which lasted well into the night.

The protest in Ghent was the third in Belgium in the last two months and the biggest yet. Activists in Belgium are “blessed” with a plethora of summits against which to protest, as the country is the current seat of the rotating EU presidency and the headquarters of the European Commission.

The protests against the “Eurotop” summit were also a lead-in to a yet larger protest: the EU meeting in Brussels on December 14, where the introduction of a single European currency is top of the agenda. D14 is set to be by far Europe’s largest anti-capitalist protest since Genoa.

Source: Green Left Weekly: www.greenleft.org.au

African ministers leave US meetings with little hope

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Oct. 30 (IPS)— Hopes that President George W. Bush might announce more debt relief and aid for Africa, especially for the fight against AIDS, evaporated here this week as Bush and top officials instead lectured ministers from more than 40 sub-Saharan nations on terrorism and the virtues of free trade and economic liberalization.

The ministers, who also had expressed hope of hearing new offers of expanded trade preferences beyond those provided under last year’s Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), had to content themselves with a new, 200-million-dollar government “facility” to promote and insure US investment in Africa, a boon that will chiefly benefit US corporations.

“This really was a disappointment,” one minister from southern Africa told IPS after Monday’s meeting, the first US-Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum, a new mechanism established under AGOA.

“We thought there’d be more meat on the bones,” the minister, who asked not to be identified, added, noting that Bush’s failure to promise more than the 200 million dollars he committed earlier this year to a UN fund to fight HIV-AIDS was a particular disappointment.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked for commitments of up to ten billion dollars in order to stop the spread of the AIDS epidemic, which is killing an average of more than 6,500 Africans a day, about 1,000 more people than were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have called for US commitments of up to one billion dollars over the next two years.

But Bush, in his only remarks on AIDS to the Forum, announced instead that Washington will contribute more money to the global AIDS fund only “once (it) demonstrates success,” a benchmark which could take well into next year, according to experts.

“The Africans should have turned around and told Bush that ‘we’re prepared to support your global coalition against terrorism once you can show that it’s really working,” noted Salih Booker, director of the advocacy group Africa Action.

“They’re too polite to say that,” said Booker, who called the Forum’s proceedings “another lost opportunity to show Africans that the US really cares about their problems.”

The visiting ministers heard from administration representatives including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill.

The message from the rostrum varied little. Bush called on African governments to ratify the 1999 Algiers Convention Against Terrorism and celebrated increases in trade between the United States and Africa since AGOA’s passage.

Powell’s message was much the same. “It is growth, growth, growth that is the engine we must all hook up to if we are going to go forward together,” he said, adding that growth was made possible by increased trade and investment.

The Forum was designed mainly to highlight AGOA’s benefits, reinforce the importance of further economic liberalization in Africa, and persuade African trade ministers to support the launch of a new round of global negotiations at next month’s World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar.

In recent meetings, African leaders have stressed they want a greater say in WTO decision-making, which now appears far more responsive to priorities set by wealthy countries, according to Severina Rivera, a trade expert at Oxfam International.

They also want a “credible assessment of the impact of existing trade rules on their economies” to ensure that they are really benefiting from free trade and investment “before committing themselves to a new round of liberalization,” she said.

AGOA, which Congress passed last year after a three-year battle, provides for duty-free treatment for thousands of goods made in Africa in order to boost US investment in the region. To be eligible for such treatment, however, countries must liberalize their economies, adhere to World Bank and International Monetary Fund adjustment programs, and grant US investors the same rights as their domestic counterparts, among other conditions.

So far, fewer than a dozen nations have been fully certified and are exporting under AGOA’s most favorable terms, although a total of 35 have been deemed eligible to take advantage of the Act.

Violence threatens US led ‘war’ on terror

By N. Janardhan

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 30 (IPS)— After 13 months of Palestinian ‘intifada’ or uprising, and more than 950 deaths, the cycle of violence appears unending in the Middle East and might well threaten the US-led coalition in its campaign against terrorism.

Many were hoping that the recent diplomatic boost the Palestinian cause received from the United States and Europe after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, particularly Britain, would signal a positive turn in the peace process.

Coming amid what seemed to be a realization that the crisis over international terrorism had something to do with the Palestinian cause and what critics call the ‘fundamentally flawed’ American approach to the Middle Eastern conflict, statements from the White House and Downing Street were welcome.

But then came this month’s assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, the first Israeli Cabinet minister to ever be assassinated — a revenge killing by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose leader Abu Ali Mustafa had been shot dead as part of Israel’s policy of “targeted killing” a few months ago.

What followed was mayhem: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cut all contacts with the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and sent his army into six PNA-administered towns in the West Bank, unleashing a new wave of violence which claimed more than 50 lives in 10 days.

Palestinian political analyst Ghasan Al Khatib says, “Israel’s ability to reoccupy Palestinian-ruled areas at will has set a precedent which threatens arrangements which took effect after the Oslo interim peace accords were signed in 1993.”

Israel has since withdrawn from two towns after coming under intense pressure from the US administration. But a lot of damage has already been done -- not just for the Muslims, but also for the Christian community because of the Israeli government’s violent actions in Bethlehem, which is a PNA-controlled area.

Archbishop Hanna Atallah, spokesman of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Holy Land, says: “Throughout the past 2,000 years, the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem has never been blocked the way it was the last few days. In the era of Israeli occupation, these two cities were separated by force and this in itself is an act of terror and racism that contradicts all spiritual values of civilization and humanity.”

Dr. Musa Keilani, a Jordan-based journalist, says: “It was no knee-jerk reaction -- the no-holds-barred approach Israel assumed following Bush’s public endorsement that Washington always saw the creation of a Palestinian state as the natural outcome of the peace process.”

“Sharon understood that Bush’s comments reflected an implicit realization that the attacks on the United States had some link with the Muslim and Palestinian frustrations. Israel could ill-afford that realization in a serving American president,” he adds.

Sharon’s ministers took the issue to the extent of warning Bush that the bipartisan support that Israel enjoys in the US Congress was enough to ensure that the president would be overridden on the issue of Palestinian independence and statehood.

But the Arabs also realize that they have their best bargaining chip in recent history -- the Muslim world’s support for the US-led attacks in Afghanistan. And the United States apparently understands this.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the two Middle East powers and US closest allies in the region, have repeatedly called for proactive international intervention to stem the crisis, and that voice seems to have gathered pitch after Sept. 11.

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz said, “The international community must deplore and condemn aggression by Israeli occupation authorities against the Palestinians, as the world wages war on all forms of international terrorism.”

Commenting on a link between the Sept. 11 attacks and US and other countries’ policies toward the Middle East, Mubarak said: “The world will never see the end of terrorism if the Palestinian question is not resolved.”

According to Shawqi Issa, executive director of the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment: “As long as the international community fails to take a strong position against the crimes being committed by Israel, this same community shares responsibility of gross violations of human rights being committed on a daily basis against Palestinians.”

PV Vivekanand, editor of a Gulf daily, said, “The worst mistake Israel ever made in the Middle East peace process was taking the Palestinian people for granted and assuming that the decades of brutal occupation have co-opted them into accepting that they were not a match to Israel’s military might and, as such, they should be thankful to whatever Israel was willing to offer them.”

Agreements were reached, he says, but they involved Palestinian compromises more than Israeli “concessions.”

Keilani said, “The requirements of peace are clear: The Israeli leadership should treat its Palestinian counterpart as an equal partner in the quest for peace instead of looking at it as an enemy to be handled with contempt and hostility.”

Activist’s murder -- a measuring stick for Fox

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, Oct. 30 (IPS)— Activists in Mexico point to the military in connection with the murder of human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa. Observers say the case will act as a measuring stick of just how far President Vicente Fox’s promises of change will go.

Ochoa, 37, who was shot and killed on Oct 19 after receiving a series of anonymous death threats, was a respected human rights activist who defended people accused of “subversion,” and peasant farmers who had allegedly been tortured by members of the armed forces.

“Her murder demonstrated that impunity continues to reign in Mexico, and that human rights defenders remain vulnerable,” said Edgar Cortés, director of the Jesuit-affiliated Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, where Ochoa worked.

Cortés believes the assassination was the work of elements in the military that feel threatened by the Human Rights Center’s investigations and legal advocacy work.

The investigation of the murder is in the hands of the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico City, which is governed by the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution.

But the calls for justice by human rights activists in and outside the country tend to be directed at Fox, of the conservative National Action Party. The president did not publicly condemn the murder until three days after the fact, and only once the US State Department had issued its own formal condemnation.

Fox took office in December, pledging to purge the country of impunity and punish those guilty of the abuses and corruption sowed by 71 years of government by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

However, he has already backed out on his promise to set up a truth commission to clarify the fate of those who were forcibly disappeared or killed in the context of the fight against guerrilla groups and alleged subversives in the 1970s and 1980s.

The government now limits its pledges to saying it will push for legal authorities to investigate the cases to the fullest extent possible.

Furthermore, against the recommendation of human rights groups, Fox named Macedo de la Concha to the post of attorney general. Under president Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), Macedo de la Concha was the chief prosecutor of the military justice system. Analysts say de la Concha could be implicated in Ochoa’s case.

Ochoa and her fellow activists in the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Centre, all of whom had been receiving death threats since 1995, reported that as military prosecutor, Macedo de la Concha covered up for armed forces personnel accused of torture and of planting evidence to frame innocents of crimes.

Despite the human rights group’s repeated complaints of death threats, the Attorney General’s Office headed by Macedo de la Concha ruled in May that there was no evidence justifying continued investigations into the threats.

Under the Zedillo administration, whose spokespersons accused the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Centre of “inventing” cases of rights violations, Ochoa was the target of numerous threats. At one point she was kidnapped and tortured by unidentified individuals who interrogated her regarding her supposed ties to guerrilla organizations. Ochoa continued to receive death threats after Fox’s historic victory.

Ochoa’s death “is the first political crime committed” under the Fox administration, said José Luis Soberanes, president of the governmental National Human Rights Commission.

Fox’s pledges for reforms of the justice system had received expressions of support from local and foreign human rights groups. But today, in the wake of Ochoa’s murder, they are demanding concrete results.

The president said he would do everything within his reach to support the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office in its investigation of the killing, and announced that he was working in coordination with groups like the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Centre to provide special protection for activists.

Ochoa, who came from a humble background, defended Teodoro Cabrera and Roberto Montiel, peasant farmers and environmentalists who have been in prison since 1999 in connection with a case in which the military is accused of torturing the two men and planting evidence to fabricate the charges on which they were convicted.

The case of the two peasant activists has drawn international attention, and rights watchdog Amnesty International and the environmental group Sierra Club launched a campaign to secure their release, declaring them “prisoners of conscience.”

Three weeks before she was killed, Ochoa visited the mountains of the southern state of Guerrero, where Cabrera and Montiel had founded an environmental group opposed to illegal logging activity. According to testimony, she was closely tailed by the military throughout her visit. Miguel Angel Granados, a columnist with the daily Reforma, said Ochoa’s murder was closely linked to the case involving Cabrera and Montiel.

Global justice activists voice outrage over WTO plan

By Robert Evans

Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 31—Global justice groups voiced outrage on Tuesday at proposals for talks on international trade barriers to be presented at a key World Trade Organization conference in Qatar next week.

In a joint statement, the groups — which argue integration of the world economy benefits multinational corporations but makes the poor poorer — said the meeting, which is aimed at launching a new trade round, could collapse if the project was not dropped.

Trade liberalization talks have been the focus of protests by a broad range of non-governmental organizations and anti-establishment groups since the last WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in December 1999, which failed to launch a trade round and collapsed amid mass street protests.

If agreed, the round would aim to slash tariffs on industrial goods, open WTO member countries’ markets wider for services like banking, tourism and telecommunications, and cut back farm subsidies in the European Union and the United States.

New drafts of texts for declarations to be made by ministers at the end of the November 9-13 gathering in Doha were “met with outrage by civil society,” declared the statement delivered to trade reporters in Geneva.

It said the drafts, drawn up by WTO General Council chairman and Hong Kong ambassador Stuart Harbinson, had been received with “disbelief and frustration” by developing countries.

The draft “presumes a consensus on a future WTO agenda which does not exist,” the groups said.

“Non-governmental organizations from around the world call on their governments to denounce this text as illegitimate and to oppose it being moved forward for use at the Doha Ministerial,” they said.

The groups included the US group Public Citizen; Friends of the Earth-International, based in Brussels; Via Campesina-International, which links peasant groups; and Public Service International, grouping civil servant bodies.

Developing countries are expected to criticize the Harbinson texts when the WTO General Council meets on Wednesday.

EU officials are insisting a declaration must provide for talks aimed eventually at linking environmental protection to trade rules — a stance rejected by most poorer countries.

Many groups in richer countries back developing countries’ assertions that linking environmental and labor standards to trade rules is a ploy by the big powers — mainly the United States and the EU — to protect their domestic producers against imports of goods produced more cheaply.

While anti-globalization protests have been joined by European farmers who fear a loss of subsidies under any new WTO rules, many developing country civil society groups back their governments’ demands for an end to such subsidies in the West.

Source: Reuters

Colombia: death squads pay army, police?

Documents found in a safehouse of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) in Calima, in the southern central department of Valle del Cauca, included a list of at least 30 members of the Colombian police and army who appear to be on the AUC’s payroll, according to the Bogota daily El Tiempo.

The documents, which also included a list of companies apparently doing business with the AUC, were reportedly found on Oct. 10, just hours before a massacre of at least 24 people in Buga, Valle del Cauca. Earlier reports had indicated that the documents were discovered on Oct. 13, in a raid designed to catch the perpetrators of the Buga massacre.

By Oct. 14, the army had arrested 18 suspected AUC members in connection with massacres in Buga and elsewhere. But neither the raid nor the arrests seemed to slow down the AUC. On Oct. 13, a group of men in military uniforms, presumed AUC members, killed four people at a restaurant in the village of La Felisa, in Marmato municipality. On Oct. 17, AUC members killed three campesinos in the rural community of La Victoria, in the village of El Naranjo. Early on Oct. 18, some 20 heavily armed men believed to be AUC members killed four people and abducted 11 others in the San Javier neighborhood of Medellin, capital of Antioquia department. On Oct. 25, two suspected paramilitaries killed five people in Sincelejo, Sucre department, in a drive-by motorcycle shooting.

On the night of Oct. 26 and the early morning of Oct. 27, suspected AUC members killed at least 17 people in four separate massacres. Four campesinos were murdered in the rural area of Puente Chiquito, in La Dorada municipality, in the central department of Caldas. Four more people — including three women, one of them 70 years old — were killed in Monte Frio, a rural village in Natagaima municipality, just south of Caldas in Tolima department; residents say several other campesinos were abducted and are also presumed dead. In Fresno, a small ranching town in Tolima department, men dressed in camouflage uniforms dragged four campesinos from their homes and killed them in front of their families. In the northern department of Cesar, men dressed in civilian clothes and armed with pistols abducted five campesinos — including a 16-year old boy — from the village of La Aurora, Chiriguana municipality. Their bodies were found nearby several hours later.

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas

Nicaragua’s Ortega loses election, blames US

Managua, Nicaragua, Nov.5— Sandinista revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega conceded defeat in Nicaragua’s presidential election on Monday and accused his old enemy, the United States, of a “dirty campaign” to prevent his return to power.

Ortega fell to a decisive defeat and blamed US criticism of him ahead of Sunday’s election for scaring voters, upsetting his chances of winning back the presidency 11 years after he was voted out of office.

“There was very strong interference from external forces; that undoubtedly tends to polarize the elections,” Ortega said after results showed him trailing way behind his conservative rival, Enrique Bolanos, of the ruling Liberal Party.

“The fear element was used again; there was a return to a dirty campaign; a terror campaign was used,” Ortega said.

Ortega was a senior guerrilla commander in the Sandinista revolution in 1979 and then led Nicaragua for 11 years, fighting a bitter military campaign against illegally funded, US-backed Contra rebels at the height of the Cold War.

He was ousted in a 1990 election and lost again six years later, both times at the hands of US-backed candidates.

Ortega projected a softer image this time around, bringing former critics into his alliance and abandoning the socialist rhetoric of the 1980s to preach peace, reconciliation and free market economics.

Sergio Ramirez, Ortega’s former deputy president, said that the US attacks on Ortega had scared off voters, especially as Washington pursued its war against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks on America.

Source: Reuters

Anti-GE Maori occupy ERMA office

By Paula Oliver

New Zealand, Oct. 31— Maori protesters today unfurled anti-GE banners at the Environmental Risk Management Authority and refused to leave for more than half an hour.

The central Wellington office occupation coincided with a march to Parliament by an anti-GE hikoi (march) that had passed through much of the North Island.

An Erma spokeswoman said about 15 Maori protesters entered the authority’s office at noon today, requesting information about research that had already taken place.

Erma is responsible for evaluating applications for GE research projects.

The protesters, which included activist Ken Mair, put out banners, sang songs, and put earth onto the office floor. They would only speak Maori to Erma staff.

Security was tightened around the building, but the protesters left peacefully about 35 minutes later.

Outside, they accused their Maori MPs of “selling out” in the GE debate and expressed anger at the Government’s decision to allow GE field trials.

“We cannot afford to let the country go GE. The public want to know what’s going on, and many of them were not aware that GE was already going on,” said protester Angeline Greensill.

“We are unhappy with Helen Clark. She has denigrated Maori. She can forget about getting back to Parliament on the backs of Maori.”

Another protester said the Labor Party was kidding itself if it thought Maori would not do anything about the GE decision.

Source: New Zealand Herald