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WTO: Red Carpet for Delegates, Activists Get Harassment
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WTO: Red Carpet for Delegates, Activists Get Harassment
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by Aaron Glantz
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HONG KONG - After months of rumours that opponents of the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) will wreak havoc on the city, activists
here say Hong Kong authorities have launched a targeted campaign of
harassment.
Photographers take pictures of caricatures of world leaders US President George W. Bush (L), French President Jacques Chirac (C) and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair (R) as they take part in an Oxfam demonstration against World Trade Organization (WTO) food subsides in Hong Kong. Thousands of anti-globalization activists marched through Hong Kong watched by a huge security operation aimed at preventing a repeat of violence that has rocked previous WTO meetings. (AFP/Peter Parks)
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Trouble for activists could start right at Hong Kong airport, where
authorities have rolled out a red carpet for ministerial delegates and
high officials.
Among those taken aside for interrogation were French farmer and
activist Jose Bove, three Thai campaigners and four prominent Filipinos -
- including leaders of the country's left-wing political movement, its
largest feminist organisation and a prominent trade union leader.
"They started to ransack and go through my luggage," says Elisa Dita Lupi
of the Filipino Gabriella women's party. "They started separating and
listing down anti-WTO materials like leaflets and streamers and stickers
and for a while I thought they were going to confiscate them, but
eventually they relented and I got to gather my things."
Norma Binas, a leader of the Philippines May 1st Movement Labour Center,
said she was flagged for interrogation at passport control and then
escorted by 10 police officers with machine-guns to a special solitary
interrogation room.
According to Binas, the interrogators almost immediately turned their
attention to her group's political activities. "I told them that I have
come for the workers workshops," she said. "So the police asked me if I
had an invitation and I told them that it's on the internet. Everyone is
invited maybe you can look for it."
Binas said she was interrogated for six hours: "They had a two-page
questionnaire, asking whether we are involved in anti-globalisation
activities in our own country. So I told them the situation of the
workers in the Philippines -- protesting is the least they can do when
they're losing their livelihoods."
Eventually, all the activists detained at the airport were released,
though the Associated Press reports that French Trade Minister Christine
Lagar had to intervene to get Bove out of the airport.
Once activists arrive in the city, they are met by a gauntlet of
security measures. A force of 9,000 police has been deployed on round-
the-clock foot patrol around the convention centre where the week-long
WTO ministerial will be held.
In recent days, police have rigged wire mesh across pedestrian walkways,
sewer gates have been welded shut, truckloads of barricades have been
put up, and miles of 10-foot high linked water-filled crowd control
barriers have been erected along the perimetre of an exclusion zone
around the convention centre.
There have also been raids at places where the activists are camping.
The Indonesian Migrant Workers' Association, which helped organise a
peaceful demonstration of thousands of domestic workers against the WTO
on Dec 11, is being visited several times each day by Hong Kong
police.
"They say they're looking for illegals, but this is never something that
concerned them before," says one organiser who refused to give her name
for fear of deportation. "Everybody is worried right now. They're afraid.
What we're doing is not wrong, so why are the police doing things like
that?"
The organiser says a van with five officers has been stationed nearly
permanently outside their office door.
"This is not reasonable," she said. "They say they just wanted to check.
But everything is peaceful so how come they came so many times. It has
been four or five times in a day. They don't have any reason."
Police fear that during the Dec. 13-18 ministerial, violence of the type
that marked earlier WTO meets in Seattle and Cancun, Mexico could erupt
and seem to be taking no chances.
Anti-WTO activists have planned a second major demonstration as the WTO
meetings begin Tuesday afternoon. The first of three scheduled major
rallies was on Sunday. Hong Kong Police have stepped up security
measures across the territory.
In comments over the weekend, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang
Yam-kuen downplayed any allegations of police harassment.
"This is the first time ever in any WTO meeting that we actually have
NGOs inside the conference facilities side-by-side with the delegates,"
he told the South China Morning Post.
The NGOs he was speaking of are the relatively small group of more
established think tanks allowed inside the convention centre. "This is a
demonstration not only of the host but also the WTO (itself) attitude
towards the exchange of views," the chief executive added.
Still, the security steps have been stringent enough to catch the eye of
the human rights group Amnesty International.
In an open letter to Hong Kong security chief Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong,
Amnesty's Hong Kong chairwoman Si-si Liu Pui-san expressed concern that
the police do not treat the protests with "sensitivity and in line with
international human rights standards of freedom of expression,
association, and assembly".
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service
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