AUT: 1/2 (en)[caravan99] SECOND NEWS BULLETIN of the Inter-Continental Caravan (fwd)

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Subject: (en)[caravan99] SECOND NEWS BULLETIN of the Inter-Continental Carav=
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Here's number 2... not as attachment as we could be spreading viruses.
=46rench and german available, spanish is coming (really this time).
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
ICC news  BULLETIN
       InterContinental Caravan for Solidarity and Resistance
 Check out these websites:
http://stad.dsl.nl/~caravan
www.stalk.net/caravan
www.power-xs.de/icc-munich
www.rfb.it/icc99





issue no.2, 5 June 1999


 Another week of Caravan...
Already half-way through the Inter-Continental Caravan =F1 500 people from
the South travelling all through Europe for a month, protesting against
wordwide economic structures, activities of multinational corporations,
against genitic engineering, wars and nuclair threats. Here in Cologne
we=EDre doing fine, except for all the Bullen in town not even letting you
cross a bridge at times. Lots is going on everywhere, so here we go....
Spontaneous actions on GMO in the UK
We received these notes from Katherine about the Caravan in the UK. Sounds
pretty good!
`On Friday, the day of the London public hearing, a report from the
Nuffield Council was released which declared, we had a 'moral imperative'
to  develop genetically engineered crops to feed the Third World. The
papers were full of images of starving third world children scrabbling in
the dust. It was nauseating. The report did not consult EVEN ONE  PERSON
from a developing country out of its 87 or so experts. Thanks to the utter
and total brilliance of GEN and assorted genetics and other campaigners,
who set up an impromptu working group outside the hearing to develop a
plan, at 4 o clock we cut short the meeting and marched over, farmers in
the lead with banners saying "Food Control Eats You" and "Say no to GMO"
and shouting "GMO hai hai, WTO hai hai", took over the main road, marched
down it to the Nuffield Foun-dation offices which were luckily only 10
minutes away.
The crowd blocked the lobby and nego-iated for 5 of the farmer leaders, and
3 of us and a translator to go inside. We had a 30 - 45 minute meeting with
the director and assis-tant director, both of whom were quite embarrassed
and surprised, but civil. The farmers told them they were astonished at the
findings of the report and they were so frustrated their point of view was
not heard, that they had to come in in such a manner. They said their
problem was not production of food- in fact that poor farmers prices were
low because of overproduction and that storage was a problem - but
distribution, and they criticised genetially engineered crops and intensive
agriculture.  It was quite late in the day so i don't know
what media coverage it got - it certainly got a huge photo and caption in
the Guardian (of course!) the next day. Nuffield said they would pass on
the  message to the bio-ethics council. I picked up a grant applica-tion
form in the lobby on the way out, if anyone has a good idea how we could
use  it (Grassroots South bioethics forum?!  ;-)

Crop squat
On the Saturday we took the caravan up to  a crop squat, again thanks to
the last minute salvation of genius gene-tics cam-paigners, all of whom I
will love forever and ever. It was a Monsanto test site in Essex that had
been pulled up a few weeks ear-lier by protesters. We walked over the
fields and one squatter said when he saw the first Indians coming with
their turbans, and pink ribbons on their ban-ners, and chanting, he had
tears in his eyes. The genetics people had set up a small camp, with new
plantings of vege-tables, infor-mation stands on genetics, tripods,
ben-ders, and welcomed us with an Irish jig on fiddles and flutes.
Anarchist Teapot, who were also total stars, cooked a big stew for
everyone. The police came and were very fluffy, although there seemed to be
heli-copter surveillance. We all had tea and sat in the sun swapping
stories of genetics and campaigning and generally chatting and enjoying the
peace of being out of London. Some activists demonstra-ted lock on and
tripod tech-niques to the famers, and swap-ped ban-ners with them.  A nice
sight - a climber going up the tripod to fly the Pun-jabi far-mers union
flag next to the RTS flag already up there. The farmers planted organic
vegetables into the earth of the destroyed test site, and watered them.
This was in-credibly moving. One of the farmers sang Punjabi songs whilst
Dave, an English guy, played the sitan (a type of banjo) and accompanied
him. It was a totally beauti-ful combination of western and eastern music,
for some reason it really worked. The singer, Jagdish Singh, sang a song
about resistance to the British colonial rule, and then the squatters sang
an Irish tune on the same theme! Then Jag-dish sang a song which he
summarised afterwards saying, "this is a promise to our guru that we will
never run away from our fields of battle", and the campers, who were
staying overnight in the field, said, "Us too!". We were all blown away by
the day, it was really really special. There was a journalist from the
Economist who came along with us, and when I asked her what she thought of
the crop squat, she said "absolutely bril-liant!  I've had more
intelli-gent conversa-tions in the last hour than I have had in three
months of cafe squat-ting in South Kensington."  (i guess that's no
guarantee of what the article will be like though).
LOTS of love and stamina to everyone -
and i wish for many more moments of inspired genius in the next 3 weeks.
See you in Cologne. Katharine
More press coverage
Media attention in the UK has included 4 or 5 pieces in The Guardian; some
in the Asian press; 2 BBC radio interviews (one on BBC world service, one
BBC south east TV footage, also to go into a documentary on genetics
campaign); another Inter Press article (=D1South Asian farmers take protest
toLondon" - www.oneworld.org/ips2/ may99/04); the BBC Food programme;
pro-bably something in The Big Issue (maga-zine); Head Magazine; Red Pepper.
In Italy, Corriere della Sera, the main italian newspaper, published a
photo of the white crosses we planted on wednes-day and wrote: "The crosses
of misery: An expanse of crosses in Viale Elvezia, word-less Spoon River,
to recall the horror of misery and war, of the "neocolonization" of the
South, of the unbalance between poor and rich countries, of the ravage
caused by some trade agreements. A delegation of "Caravan 99" -an
association (sic! demon-strating in these days in several european cities
which arrived yester-day to Milan, invited by the Leoncavallo -- wanted to
represent all this with a strong image: these mourning white crosses filled
the park behind the Arena for the whole day."
Monsanto action in Belgium

=46riday the 28th, the ICC was in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, to demonstrate
before the European technical center of Monsan-to. After the "Chez z'elle"
vegetarian meal, a 500 people walk left, strongly squared by the police,
that obliged us to go through an industrial zone poor of workers to avoid
student town where we could have strengthened our troops. Anyhow, some
televisions were present and were interviewing and filming the discussions
between Flemish farmers, already trapped by seeders, and the Indians. A lot
of dishevelled youngs and even some shy NGO's were there (Nature et
Progr=CBs, Oxfam Solidarit=C8 ...)
In front of the Monsanto seat, talks were taking place. Behind the
Monsanto-fence Michel Somville, the Belgian =D1Mister GMO debate", member of
the Ecological Studies and Formations Center, spots his usual opponent in
tele-debates. "Shouldn't we organise a delega-tion to discuss with factory
represen-tatives?" he asks. Indians refuse this "Belgian" dialogue: way too
soft for them. They explain it patiently through a mega-phone: "Sir of
Monsanto, we do not want you to be in our country because, with such
factories, it's impossible to nego-tiate". Regarding the actual
power-relations, everybody agreed, even the "Mr. GMO-debates".
Nevertheless,  discussions continued on both sides of the railing, as if we
had come and visit some prisoners. Finally, two reporters went through the
gate, in order to "hear both the parties".
What about the direct non violent actions? The place is along the speedway
Brussels-Namur, we could intend some sight seeing tour to make us seen of
the car drivers? Young organisers of the ICC in Belgium don't like this
idea. The Monsanto Technical Center is well surveyed. And, this evening, a
street party against war is organised in Brussels. Actually, we have not
such a big desire to visit jail tonight ... So, at 11:00 PM, we reach peaks
in pretty lively atmosphere in St Gilles, Brussels, in a street party that
astonished all the inhabitants. It was never seen in the Brussels streets.
Antoinette Brouyaux
Left  Radical Demonstration in Cologne
The left radical movement in Cologne mobilised to a demonstration and a
counter-Summit on the actual days of the EU Summit (June 3-4). After
difficult negotiations the police and the organizers of the demo had
finally reached agreement on a route. However, the police insisted that the
two cars with loudspeakers had to be fully searched. Police presence was
even higher than during the Euromar-chers=EB demonstration on Saturdays. Eve=
n
though the police was permanently escor-ting the demonstrators, still some
Police PR people were spreading leaflets saying: =D1Everyone has the right t=
o
come together and to express one=EDs opinion, in peace and without weapons.
It is a task of the police to guarantee this basic right. (...)  Ihre
K=96lner Polizei."
Arriving at the meeting point on Ebert platz, the ICC group was
enthusiastically received by the crowd which reached 3500 participants.
Some speeches through the loudspeakers were arranged for some ICC
participants: Ghopal (Nepal), Popodu (Karnataka), Diana Damian (Mexico) and
the two women from Bangladesh. In Germany you can be charged for things
that you say during a demonstration. This was one of the reasons why the
cars` windows were covered, to make it more difficult for the police to
identify the people speaking. Some of the speaches of the ICC participants
were so energetic that people often didn=EDt even need translation to start
applauding or whist-ling. The ICC expressed their solidarity with the large
diversity of european struggles present at the demonstartion and called for
global resistance against the current economic world-order. One of the most
powerfull moments was, when one of the women sang a song of resistance
which has been prohibited in Bangladesh.
The demonstration gathered many people from all over Germany and other
parts of Europe. She was mostly targeted against fortress Europe and the
=A5problem=A5 of immigration - a very hot topic in Germany at the moment, as
the German police killed a Sudanese refugee a few days ago when forcing him
into a plane back to his country.
Three different Caravans were present at the demon-stration: the ICC, the
Geld oder Leben-Caravan (Mone-or-your-Life) and the Caravan for the rights
of migrants and refugees, that has started fasting in protest against the
death of the Sudanese refugee. The Dutch delegation had showed up with the
by now famous =D1EU-Rot op!" banner. The demonstration was also characterise=
d
by opposition to the war, to the high level of police repression in the EU
and the capitalist suprana-tional EU-project as such.
The people from the ICC were very tired and went out of the demo a little
before the end. At the very end of the demonstra-tion the police provocated
the demonstra-tors  by arres-ting one person. Everyone stopped in the
middle of the street, shouting for this person to be released. The
situation seemed to be about to escalate as several hundred policemen
surrounded the street in a matter of seconds. Eventually the police showed
a bit of intelligence for a change and released the arrested person,
allowing the  people to finish the demon-stration in peace, with music and
nice food. So contrary to many specula-tions the demo didn=EDt turn into
riots in a city filled with 12.000 policemen.
=46rauenveranstaltung: a meeting of revolutionary sisters

After the demo (and despite their fatigue), the women went to the Alte
=46euerwache (the location of both the Anti-Summits) for a women=EDs meeting=
As we had lost every-one after having left the demo, I took them there, not
having a clue about where, what and why. Fortunately we found Chis there,
who fetched them some food. Trans-lators in Bengali, Kanada and Spanish
were organised, and we found the room. Not bad.
Although I did not plan to stay - =EBfrauen-veranstaltung=ED did not sound
particularly exciting to me (o prejudices!)- I did hang around for a bit
and ended up having one of the best evenings so far!!
Anita Sahai had come especially from Aachen to talk about the situation of
women in India. She explained about the differences between the North and
the South of India. In the South, women generally have more rights than in
the North, and they have better access to education. In both North and
South, women of higher castes are more restric-ted than women of lower
castes. In some cases, women of a very high caste are not even allowed to
enter their own living room when there is a visitor. Generally, the
situation of women has become harder. The economic situation forces them to
work outside of their homes as well. However, this does not lead to a
process of emancipation; it merely contributes to the amount of work women
have to do, as men will not share in the household chores.
Parvati Kalasannavar (Karnataka) spoke about the struggle, also of women,
against seed multinationals on Indian farmer families, and about the health
risks of genetically modified food products.
Salomi Mathew (Karnataka) explained  that women in India are suppressed
first by their parents, then by their husbands, and when they are older by
their sons. She also said that this is the general picture, and that there
are fortunately also good men. =D1We need to fight for our rights; not only
in India!"
According to Bahnishikha Jamali (Bangla Desh), women in Iran, Sri Lanka,
India and Bangladesh all share the same problems, and are the slaves of
their fathers, their husbands and their sons.  Despite the female
leadership that Bangla Desh has known (two prime ministers), this has not
improved the situation of women. The same goes for the involve-ment of many
NGOs, who have not been able to get to the heart of the problem, and have
not increased the power and the economic emancipation of the women in




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