AUT: Global Struggle Declared Against Neoliberalism (fwd)

[Chris <red@xxxxxxx>]

** Topic: DEVELOPMENT: Global Struggle Declared Against Liberalisation **
** Written  3:16 PM  Feb 28, 1998 by newsdesk in cdp:ips.english **
       Copyright 1998 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
          Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
                      *** 25-Feb-98 ***

Title: DEVELOPMENT: Global Struggle Declared Against Liberalisation
By Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 25 (IPS) - The first global movement opposed to the
liberalisation of trade and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created
Wednesday in Geneva by 303 delegates of civic groups from every continent.

The new group's strength will be put to the test May 18 to 20 with
worldwide protest demonstrations, scheduled to coincide with a WTO
ministerial conference here in Geneva.

A coordinating body, People's Global Action (PGA), will concentrate
information on the  demonstrations, which will be adapted to the needs and
realities of each region. ''We have a
common strategy, but will adopt different forms of protest,'' said Medha
Patkar, the head of India's National Alliance of People's Movements.

But the political manifesto of the PGA, approved at the close of the
conference Wednesday, underlines that the protests against the WTO and
neo-liberal economic model will consist of non-violent acts of civil
disobedience.

''Such democratic action carries with it the essence of non-violent civil
disobedience to the unjust system,'' says the document.

The PGA conference accepted the peaceful character of the disobedience
after some debate. But on the request of Latin American indigenous
delegates, an article was added that reads ''however, we do not judge the
use of other forms of action under certain circumstances.''

''Even democratically elected governments have been implementing these
policies of the globalisation of poverty without debate among their own
peoples or their elected representatives,'' the document stresses, and
''the people are left with no choice but to destroy'' WTO-led trade
agreements.

''We want to tell the governments that they are destroying humanity with
these policies. We aspire to a more just world,'' said Argentina's
Alejandro Demichelis, of the Confederation of Education Workers.

Demichelis' union was one of the creators of the PGA, along with the
Peasant Movement of the Philippines, Brazil's Landless Movement, the
Sandinista Central Workers union in Nicaragua and
Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Front (EZLN), and many other
groups.

Rene Riesen, with France's Confederation of Farmers, maintained that
developing countries were not the only ones disturbed by the expansion of
the neo-liberal model. Agricultural and food products should be excluded
from globalisation, as they cannot be put in the same category as other
merchandise, he added.

The PGA issued a call to people worldwide to cooperate in the action
against ''anti-democratic development.''

''We call for direct confrontation with transnational corporations
harnessed to state power for short term profit,'' the document says, while
underlining that direct democratic action against globalisation should be
combined with the constructive building of alternative and sustainable
lifestyles.

Spain's Sergio Hernandez, with the Fair Play organisation, pointed out
that all other attempts to organise movements against neo-liberalism at an
international level this decade had failed.

But he added that the example provided by the Zapatista movement, which
burst on the scene in Mexico in 1994, contributed to the success of the
PGA conference, which was organised with a
broad-minded outlook along the lines of the EZLN call for ''a world in
which all worlds fit.''

PGA leader Hernandez added that like the Zapatistas, the global movement
''is not interested in power.''

(END/IPS/TRA-SO/PC/MJ/SW/98)
Origin: Montevideo/DEVELOPMENT/
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