NYC prepares to crack down on dissent at WEF

New York Police face-off with mock demonstrators Jan. 17 at a mobilization exercise in preparation for the World Economic Forum.
Photo by Spencer Platt/ Newscom.

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Jan. 30— Beginning Jan. 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) will hold its first annual meeting ever in the United States in New York City at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Some 3,200 business leaders, politicians, journalists and academics will gather behind closed doors to set an agenda for the global economy as they discuss “A Vision for a Shared Future”. Thousands of protesters from around the country and abroad are expected to converge on the private talks.

Formed in 1971, the Swiss-based WEF is viewed by critics as the architect of corporate globalization and the catalyst for, among other things, the formation of the World Trade Organization. Although the Forum is a private affair, the meeting’s clout has begun to rival that of the United Nations as the world’s leading global body.

“Should a forum that is dominated by corporate interests be encouraged to take on the role of mapping out future frameworks for global governance?” asks scholar Peter Goodman.

For protest organizers such as Another World Is Possible (AWIP), Students For Global Justice, and the New York Anti-Capitalist Convergence (ACC) the answer is clearly no. If not calling for the abolishment of the WEF and/or capitalism itself, demonstrators will be voicing a host of demands against corporate imperialism, expansionist US military intervention, and for social and environmental justice concerns considered to be under siege.

The WEF is a private member organization comprising representatives from 1,000 of the world’s largest corporations, including Microsoft, Monsanto, Nike, General Motors and, until recently, Enron. Until this year, the organization held its annual meeting in the Swiss mountain resort town of Davos.

The exclusive meeting has historically given corporate executives a chance to sit down with government officials behind closed doors for the price of a very expensive ticket. It is open to members -- who pay upwards of $30,000 in annual dues. President Bush won’t attend because of scheduling conflicts, but up to eight Cabinet members will, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, to be among the 3,200 in attendance. Afghanistan leader Hamid Karzai is set to give opening remarks on Thursday. While the WEF helps set global economic and trade agendas that affect the entire world, the group predominantly includes European and American business people.

“What we are talking about is [demanding] democratic involvement in the important decisions that affect everyone’s lives,” said Kevin Skvorak, a carpenter from Brooklyn who is a member of Another World is Possible (AWIP). “These decisions are currently made by a gang of the richest people in the world and the politicians they control and pay for.”

Why is the Forum meeting in New York?

“As the world’s financial capital and the site of the recent terrorist attacks, there could be no better place than New York City to confront [post 9/11] issues,” said WEF founder Klaus Schwab on Nov. 7. City and state officials welcomed the decision with hopes that the meeting will help stimulate New York’s lagging economy.

But activists say something else motivated the change of venue — a bet that demonstrators would not assemble in New York while residents still felt so vulnerable. Protesters claim the meeting was moved to New York in an effort to muffle protest and dissent.

Former Philadelphia Police Chief John Timoney predicted “it is going to cost the city a fortune in security.” The New York Times has reported a military-like force would be ready: “Law enforcement officials said the Police Department’s response would have to include almost military-style tactics. All of the department’s tools and the lessons learned about security since Sept. 11 will have to be put to use, officials said.”

For the past two weeks, the police department has also been running officers through twice-a-day preparation drills in Shea Stadium by staging mock demonstrations where “protesters” attack police and attempt to overturn cars. During the drills, young cadets out of the New York City Police Academy, chant “No justice, no peace” as they link arms in locked boxes and sit down demanding to be arrested.

The WEF event is said to be the new city administration’s first big test of maintaining order. So police have been preparing, including rooftop snipers, plainclothes police, and officers from aviation, mounted, canine, bomb squad and emergency service units. The jail system is preparing to process hundreds of arrests. High-ranking police were sent to Seattle, Genoa and other cities where large-scale demonstrations have taken place.

“Police are preparing as if the Mongol hordes are coming,” said one activist. Police said they plan to strictly enforce an 1845 state law barring groups of demonstrators from wearing masks.

Chief of Patrol, Joseph Esposito, said the law applies to groups of three or more. “Three or more with masks and they’re marching, they’re under arrest,” he said.

Protest organizers said many marchers plan to don costumes and carry giant puppets — some worn over their heads — to emphasize their message.

“They’re going to have to arrest thousands and thousands of people,” said Yale Assistant Professor of Anthropology David Graeber of the ACC. This week, the ACC described the WEF forum as a provocation. In a statement published on the Internet, headlined “Shutdown the World Economic Forum,” the ACC promised “joyous, creative resistance” through direct actions spread across Manhattan.

Police officials have granted permits to some protest groups, allowing them to demonstrate in designated areas.

But Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed the NYPD had a list of “known agitators” profiled in places such as Seattle who would be “monitored” if they turn up in the city this week.

As many as 10,000 police will provide security throughout the meetings’ duration. Sources said uniformed officers will be stationed around-the-clock outside such high-profile chains as McDonald’s and The Gap.

Meanwhile, Timoney —now chief executive of Beau Dietl & Associates — said that his security firm’s armed guards have been retained by “quite a few corporations and business types,” for the affair. Timoney said guards “will be inside to make sure there is no misbehavior, to make sure there is no one who wants to throw a pie in someone’s face.”

What has happened at previous WEF meetings?

“The Forum has been remarkably successful -- since 1971 the ‘state of the world’ has dramatically improved for many of the participating corporations. WEF strategizing drove the neo-liberal agenda in the 1980s, bringing together politicians … to map out an agenda with transnational business executives. It offered a proactive forum, removed from the public gaze, and played a central role in diffusing neo-liberalism,” writes Peter Goodman, an Australian professor at University of Technology Sydney.

Until the late 1990s, the World Economic Forum attracted little attention outside the financial elite. But that changed when annual protests began in Davos as activists demanded more accountability of this leading agenda-setting organization. Demonstrations grew to include over 1,000 people two years ago, spurring Swiss officials to ban protests in 2000. In September 2000, the WEF held a regional meeting in Melbourne, Australia. There 10,000 protesters converged, forcing delays in the meeting as one-third of the delegates were prevented entry into the meeting center. WEF protests also occurred in Cancun last February when police were filmed severely beating protesters.

Protesters are mindful that New Yorkers are still fragile.

“We know what the atmosphere is since Sept. 11,” said Eric Laursen, a member of AWIP. “Our thrust is positive — to have street theater and music in an effort to show people what a better world it could be.”

“Our rights are like our muscles -- if you don’t use them, you lose them,” said David Solnit, 38, an organizer of Art and Revolution, a group based in Oakland, CA. “Civil disobedience and nonviolent protest are a legitimate part of democracy, but are now being criminalized,” Solnit said, speaking from a community center in the Lower East Side where he has been making large masks for use in protests this week. “If people didn’t break the law, America would still be a British colony, slavery would still exist, women wouldn’t be able to vote, and the Vietnam War might still be going on.”

Sources: Anotherworldpossible.com, Associated Press, Daily Jang, Indymedia: www.indymedia.org , New York Post, New York Times, Village Voice

Land reform activist murdered in Venezuela

By Andrés Cañizález

Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 25 (IPS)— The murder of an activist promoting President Hugo Chávez’s land reform program and an unsuccessful attempt on the life of another added fuel to the controversy surrounding a new Land Law, a month after it was passed.

In incidents hundreds of kilometers apart, gunmen shot land reform activists Alberto Mora, who died immediately, and José Huerta, who was seriously wounded, on Jan. 10.

Huerta and Mora were working in the area south of Lake Maracaibo, an important agricultural zone in western Venezuela, where landowners and ranchers have mounted stiff resistance to the Land Law decreed by Chávez and land-titling efforts granting peasant farmers ownership to their own plots.

The murder of Mora, the head of an organization of small farmers in the state of Merida, and the frustrated attempt on the life of Huerta, a member of the Communist Party and a former regional director of the National Agrarian Institute in the western state of Zulia, caused a commotion in the countryside.

“Everything surrounding these murders, of which there have been several, indicates that they could have been committed by assassins paid by people interested in silencing and intimidating the land reform struggle in Venezuela,” said Chávez.

The president of parliament, William Lara, said that the incidents “are aimed at creating destabilization” to hurt the government. The legislature is getting ready to launch an investigation, he added.

“Violence has been an isolated response” to the conflicts that exist on different fronts, “and we must continue fighting for things to stay that way, to keep differences from being resolved through violence,” said Lara, who belongs to Chávez’s Fifth Republic Movement.

Lara said that one of the possible measures to prevent violence from spreading in the area south of Lake Maracaibo would be to expand the so-called “theaters of operations” of military units posted during the government of Rafael Caldera (1994-99) along the Colombian border to prevent incursions by guerrilla groups from that civil war-torn country.

“People have accepted the presence of the military,” the legislator noted.

The attacks occurred as a tense debate rages around the Land Law decreed by Chávez. According to peasant farmer groups, since 1999, an average of 12 small farmers or rural leaders have been killed every year in incidents related to the struggle for the right to land.

Huerta, who was shot four times but survived the attempt on his life, is the agrarian secretary of the Communist Party of Venezuela. Mora, whose body was riddled by 10 bullets, was a member of the leftist Fatherland for All party, which backs Chávez.

Last year, the president made agrarian reform one of the banners of his Bolivarian social revolution. He was granted special powers by Congress to pass four dozen laws, including the Land Law, which went into effect on Dec. 10.

On that date, Venezuela’s leading business association, Fedecámaras, brought the country to a standstill with a general business strike to protest the way Chávez pushed through the laws “hastily” and without consulting the private sector.

Huerta, said he had resolved, through dialogue, 12 of the 15 land disputes that arose while he served as director in Zulia of the National Agrarian Institute, which was in charge of the land reform process.

“I believe in the people’s capacity for reflection, I am a militant of dialogue, and I talked a lot with the concerned parties and always looked for a way to reach a friendly agreement,” he said.

With respect to who was responsible for the shootings, Huerta said he had no doubt that he was shot by “sicarios” (paid assassins). According to his testimony, the gunmen simply opened fire, without trying to talk to him or rob him.

The People’s Defender in Zulia, Antonio Urribarrí, expressed his concern that ranchers might resort to violence using private armed militias, “which would lead us into a civil war, like in Colombia.”

Urribarrí also said he suspected that the murderers were hired assassins.

Minister of Agriculture and Land Efrén Andrade underlined that agrarian reform was one of the government’s top priorities, but added that “we absolutely do not want a war.”

Zimbabwe debates bill restrciting press freedoms

By Lewis Machipisa

Harare, Zimbabwe, Jan. 25 (IPS)— Sharp differences within the ruling party over a controversial bill restricting media freedom, this week came out into the public when one senior party member described the proposed law as “untidy."

For the fourth time, Zimbabwe’s parliament delayed debate of the controversial bill amid rising international criticism of President Robert Mugabe.

The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill would make it illegal for journalists to work without state approval and outlaw foreign correspondents from working in Zimbabwe.

While a clause making it criminal to criticize president Mugabe has been removed, another equally controversial law - the Public Order and Security Act makes it illegal.

Had all been well in the ruling party, the media bill should have been law last week. But a crucial stumbling block has been the Parliamentary Legal Committee that comprises two ruling party legislators and an opposition member.

Eddison Zvobgo, a tough-talking politician and respected lawyer, who was dismissed from Mugabe’s cabinet last year, chairs the committee. Giving reasons for the delay in presenting the bill, Justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa shifted blame to the committee saying it was taking its time and “holding this house to ransom."

Unwilling to accept criticism, Zvobgo redirected the blame to where he said it belonged. “It is unfortunate that the minister has made the statement he has made. Members are quite aware of the chaos that was caused by government, by the minister, in putting this bill together.”

“It is the minister who has held this house to ransom by his inability to put this bill a lot more neatly,” said Zvobgo, amid wild cheers from the opposition legislators.

The fight pitting Zvobgo, on one hand, and the information minister Jonathan Moyo and Chinamasa, on the other, signals a discontent within the ruling party.

Although in the end some of the ruling party legislators will vote along party lines, privately some do not support the proposed law.

They see it as law designed by information minister Moyo to settle personal scores with some independent journalists. “The bill is embarrassing to us,” said one legislator.

The bill will be presented next Tuesday amid rising discontent among ruling party and opposition legislators.

“It’s the most repressive law I have ever seen,” said Tendai Biti, an opposition legislator. “It could have only been drafted in hell.”

The law would make it a criminal offense for a journalist to work for a media house that is not registered with the ministry of information. All media organizations will have to apply for registration with the ministry and it is up to their discretion who to give the license to operate in the country.

Those who defy the law face a fine not exceeding $18,000 or up to two years in jail.

Any organization that employs journalists not registered — under the controversial one-year renewable licenses — will lose their licenses and have their equipment seized.

Media unions in Zimbabwe say the proposed legislation is draconian and that they will ignore it.

Information minister Moyo says the bill would stop what he says are the lies being told by foreign correspondents about Zimbabwe.

On Thursday, the state-run daily, The Herald, claimed journalists from British Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Economist and the Sunday Times of South Africa had snuck into the country as tourists.

The journalists were accused of breaking regulations, compelling foreign journalists to seek permission one month before visiting Zimbabwe. Clearance is almost always refused. Three correspondents were expelled last year and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was banned.

“Our net is closing in on them and we should be able to account for all of them before the close of the day [Thursday],” the paper quoted George Charamba, permanent secretary at the Department of Information, as saying.

Analysts believe that the restrictions on the media are designed to obscure claims of violence during the campaign for the March presidential election.