I wrote this just before receiving the communication from OdM, SG
Dear Friends,
By welcoming Qatar as the venue for the next Ministerial, the WTO and the European Commission have made their choice clear. Democracy and human rights are messy and they get in the way of proper deal-making among like-minded elites. Lots of WTO members, of course, care nothing about human rights but Qatar is special because it has more foreign workers than domestic ones and keeps tabs on them through a highly efficient police state. Let's not even mention women's rights or the right to demonstrate under normal circumstances. There are no direct flights to Qatar from Europe except from London and the prices are totally beyond the reach of the average NGO member. Forget democracy, forget participation, forget accountability. This is the perfect illustration of what the WTO is and what it wants.
Qatar provides ideal conditions for forging ahead with the new Round! They will try to get the MAI, GMOs, the destruction of public services and all the other items on their list that have been temporarily rendered impossible by the citizen movement. The WTO has indeed made its choice clear. Can ours be any less so? We are faced with the kind of diabolical choice with which the adversary will more and more seek to present us--and to separate us. Are you a good, reasonable, moderate NGO, prepared for "dialogue"? Or are you one of those terrible, unreasonable, radical organisations beyond the pale? If the former, by all means come to Qatar, where We Will Listen To Your Concerns. Without, of course, taking any concrete steps or even making any believable promises. But any presence of any NGOS, can give them a varnish of participation, democracy and thus of legitimacy. These NGOs will get nothing, repeat nothing, in return.
Since Seattle, I've been reading that this is the adversary's strategy--separate the "good" NGOs from the "bad" ones [see The Economist, the Financial Times, various websites]. It's exactly what I would do if I were in their position. I remember vividly that in December 1998 there were still two international NGOs prepared to meet with the OECD to discuss the OECD's role in an investment treaty--and this 48 hours before the MAI was buried once and for all! So I have few illusions. Some organisations seem willing to talk even to cadavers in exchange for a seat at the table--any table--and a good lunch.
I beg you however to reflect on the implications of an NGO presence, any NGO presence, in Qatar. My personal, gut feeling, not validated by any of the organisations I belong to, is that we must not show up there. We must refuse this simulacrum of a "world" meeting capable of arriving at any sort of "consensus". WTO member countries [from North or South] will be happily in Qatar because they know if they were anywhere else, their manoeuvres would be overwhelmed by popular protest. No NGO should provide any semblance of legitimacy to this choice of Qatar by actually going there [at their own expense, with money better spent on real programmes and projects] and participating in this simulation game.
Let's rather think right now of the symbols we can use and the number of places we can protest. Let's buy up all the camel masks we can find on the "Free Market": Pascal Lamy Chameau/Camel deserves one; we've got nine months to plan but please, please, don't include in those plans some sort of misguided view that you can actually change something by being in Qatar--this is exactly what they are counting on.
All the best to everyone,
Susan George
At 17:04 30/01/01 +0100, Marc Maes wrote:
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Brussels/Geneva, 2610112001 (Agence Europe) The choice still provisional of Qatar as the host for the next ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (5-9 November 2001) raises very heated reactions among the representatives of civil society, which fear possible heavy handed reaction from the Doha regime against the "Seattle" type demonstrations.
It is "scandalous", say "Friends of the Earth" and "Human Rights Watch, American section", suspecting that the intention is to "prevent public demonstrations at the event." "A small repressive Gulf State: what a perfect place to plot how to force new rules on world trade onto angry citizens around the world?", feel the NG0s, when recalling the "severe restriction on freedom of assembly and association" identified by the State Department, in its first report on human rights in Qatar. If it is confirmed, the choice would signal, according to Human Right's Watch, that "it is okay to build a global economy on the foundation of repression exactly the opposite of the message the WTO should bepronouncing".
The political decision, arose at the start of the week and was welcomed by the Union, will probably be endorsed next Tuesda by the WTO General Council, given that the candidates have hardly tussled, since the eye opening experience in Seattle, to host this 4th ministerial. Some member countries were approached, like ' South Africa, Brazil and Chile. But in vain. Santiago first of all proposed to raise the challenge but then finally renounced this idea, giving its insufficient financial means and assets as a reason for not doing so. There remains Geneva, which used the pretext of a host of events going on during that period, and Doha. WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell recalled that the Qatar authorities would be obliged to keep the rules of the WTO to establish a centre for NG0s and to authorise those with the necessary accreditation to meet the press and the delegations.
Its official. After the mobilisations of Geneva '98, London and Seattle '99, Washington, Melbourne and Prague '00 and Davos '01, the WTO doesn't dare come back to Geneva and is unwanted in all the other cities of the capitalist empire. That is an astounding victory for this young movement!
- So with WTO holed up like bandits in a feudal desert kingdom, what is our next move?
Certainly not to try and follow them there, where cost and the local dictatorship would reduce protests to a token level. Actually, there were already two good reasons to modify our tactics:
- So what is to be done?
The answer has already been developping since '98: a Global Day of Actions (GDA) targeting local aspects of WTO policy all over the world. These GDAs were overshadowed in the international media by the success of the central events, but are working better and better. For Prague, 110 cities across the world announced events (at least 70 are posted on www.indymedia.org )
People's Global Action has been proposing this form of action, precisely because its main objective has always been to project the grassroots resistance from all over the world onto the global scene, stimulate the circulation of struggles, solidarities, perspectives and alternatives. A huge global anticapitalist movement is already there. A reality that completely dwarfs Seattle or Prague. We only have to help it become conscious of itself. And we now have the political and technical means to do that.
For the Global Days of Action of 5-9 of November 2001 (N5-9?), I would propose that we try to take another step politically. Instead of just organising a local demo, what about immediately starting a local and worldwide discussion on possible themes and targets on which at least part of the movement would like to concentrate and coordinate?
Someone has already suggested examples such as "shutting down five or more major stock exchanges? Or targeting key corporations in several major cities--for semi-decentralized but regional actions on a global scale?"
In Geneva, we had the same kind of idea. Groups should start putting out propositions of themes. One can imagine lots of options: demos against the local government that plays along with WTO; against a particular branch of multinational capital (eg. consumer goods from sweatshops - north or south; gene technology, etc.); an aspect of capitalist domination (militarism and paramilitarism, or the fight for land and water, or climate change) etc., etc.
- How to choose?
I would propose that in each place, we reflect and inquire immediately to see which angle(s) can best mobilise in our area. And above all, which can best make a real link with the local struggles that already exist: privatisations; immigrants rights; women's struggles; struggles of reappropriation (squats and alternatives in the North, barrios and "informal" sector in the South); welfare and public service cuts; farmers' and consumer struggles against gene technology, etc.
Proposing these themes would then make links: locally, regionally and across the planet. The GDA could be the sum of several networks of linked events: For example, within the general mobilisation people could be demonstrating more particularly against Novartis, Cargill and Monsanto, knowing that there are half a dozen other places in the world where others are also burning crops, or whatever.
The discussion of the themes will naturally bring out the places where the bigger things will happen. Groups could still converge regionally or nationally to make massive protests if they want to. With the impetus that the movement has developped and as the distances would be less big, there could maybe be ten or twenty demos around the world each as big as Prague, plus dozens of smaller ones. (This said, we should remember that the GDA idea is actually more important for the small demos than the big ones. The Ecuadorean peasants or the Narmada movement in India don't need a network to act against globalisation, but a small group in some provincial town could never dream of demonstrating against WTO all alone.)
And of course, this framework will greatly simplify cohabitation in the movement between different forms of action, different priorities, etc. Each organisation can do their particular thing... "Just Do It!"
As for the WTO, let'em fry in the desert! Boycott this reunion of tyrants that don't even have the courage to meet in the presence of the people! We have nothing to say to them anyhow. If a change for the better can be made, it won't be decided in the WTO, but in our streets.
As usual, if we start right away, we have time!
Olivier
Susan George
10, rue Jean Michelez 91510 Lardy, France
tel. 33 [0]1 6927 4715 fax 33 [0]1 6082 6668
e-mail : susangeorge@wanadoo.fr
web page: http://www.tni.org/george