|
|
|
|
Snapshots From the 'Battle of Seattle' The WTO Conference in Seattle was met by massive protests, signifying that many people around the world do not believe trade should take precedence over human rights and the environment.  By Michael Lindemann Start Date: 12/10/99 "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed corporations, which dare already challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -- Thomas Jefferson By almost any measure, the World Trade Organization's Ministerial Conference that ran from Nov 29 through Dec 3, 1999 in Seattle was a disaster for the WTO. On one hand, it highlighted numerous and serious disagreements among many different factions within the 135-member organization. On another level, it brought to light a hitherto unrecognized groundswell of public distrust and outright opposition toward the secretive, powerful trade body. On yet another level, it became the occasion for charges of police brutality and gross incompetence on the part of host city Seattle; and similar complaints of incompetence against the Clinton administration and the U.S. as host nation. Massive grass-roots demonstrations filled Seattle's downtown streets with colorful signs, costumes, music and chanting. The protests represented the broadest coalition of environmental, organized labor and human rights groups seen in decades, and drew participants from all over the world. But alongside an estimated 30,000 or more peaceful demonstrators, a small minority of self-proclaimed anarchists literally went berserk, smashing scores of shop windows, looting and committing countless violent and disgraceful acts. In the face of growing mayhem, seemingly desperate police clad in Darth Vaderesque riot gear turned downtown Seattle into a war zone. Innocent bystanders, including senior citizens and young children, were choked by clouds of teargas; and some were maimed by rubber police bullets which, according to witnesses, were sometimes fired indiscriminately into crowds. Dozens were injured and hundreds were arrested. Leading dignitaries, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, were unable to even enter the Seattle convention center because of the mayhem on opening day. Speeches by Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright scheduled for the opening session were cancelled. Taking no chances, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell on November 30 declared a civil emergency and imposed an overnight curfew from 7 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. PST, covering about 100 square blocks of the downtown district. As protests continued, that curfew remained in place and a 24-hour curfew was imposed on a smaller area immediately surrounding the convention center. President Clinton, arriving in Seattle under heavy guard to address the conference, expressed sympathy for the demonstrators' concerns. "For those who came here to peacefully make their point, I welcome them here because I want them to be integrated into the longer-term debate," he said. "If the WTO expects to have public support grow for our endeavours, the public must see and hear and in a very real sense actually join in the deliberations." Clinton made a point of stressing that the WTO must become more committed to environmental protection, more open to public scrutiny and more accountable to public concerns -- all key demands of the demonstrators. Clinton also stressed the need for fair labor practices in nations where lax labor laws currently result in exploitation of children and sub-minimal wages for many workers. "I believe that the WTO must make sure that open trade does indeed lift living standards [and] respects core labor standards that are essential not only to worker rights, but to human rights," he said. "I am well aware that a lot of the nations that we most hope to support -- the developing nations of the world -- have reservations when the United States says we support bringing labor concerns into our trade debate... But to pretend that it is not a legitimate issue in many countries is another form of denial, which I believe will keep the global trading system from building the public support it deserves," the president added. As the conference wore on, this issue of fair labor practices in developing countries became a major roadblock to progress. In the face of vehement complaints from delegates of developing nations, Clinton and U.S. trade representatives effectively had to back away from the president's initially strong statements on labor rights. But the stalemate was not resolved as the conference ground to a disorderly close on December 3. Also unresolved were a host of contentious agricultural issues and a major dispute over "anti-dumping" laws -- protectionist statutes employed by leading industrial nations to discourage massive imports (or "dumping") of manufactured products from poorer nations whose labor practices result in artificially low prices for their export goods. As it became clear that the conference negotiations were going nowhere, many complaints and excuses were heard. The Americans "were so determined to drive through their own agenda that they were blind to where this would lead," said a European Union official, quoted by Reuters news. Delegates from several developing countries voiced extreme irritation at how they were treated by more powerful nations. "They have been treating us like animals, keeping us out in the cold and telling us nothing," said veteran Egyptian trade negotiator Munir Zahran. In the view of Sir Shridath Ramphal, a veteran of more than 30 years of trade negotiations and head of a joint delegation of Caribbean nations, "This is absolutely the worst -- the worst -- organized international conference there has ever been... [U.S. Trade Representative Charlene] Barshefsky is intent on forcing the process and having a declaration at all costs, almost as if it doesn't matter what the rest of the countries think about it. Well, that is not going to happen. The WTO does not belong to the United States," Ramphal fumed. Monte Paulsen, a freelance reporter based in Washington, D.C., was in Seattle all week and spent time talking with many international delegates, seeking insights into why the process broke down. Paulsen quoted Barshefsky herself as saying, "We could have stayed all night, maybe for five more days, it wouldn't have mattered... The WTO has outgrown the processes appropriate to an earlier time... [W]e needed a process which had a greater degree of internal transparency and inclusion to accommodate a larger and more diverse membership." In Paulsen's own view, the WTO's failure in Seattle runs deeper than the sum of unresolved trade disputes. The massive protests were aimed at more fundamental issues, he said. "The labor, consumer, environment, human rights, and student groups who marched in Seattle are opposed to the core beliefs of the WTO, which they claim promote not 'free' trade but 'corporate-managed' trade policies that threaten health, labor, the environment and basic human rights." Another on-the-scene observer, David La Chapelle (dlachape@ptialaska.net, http://www.tidesofchange.org), wrote: "[T]he events in Seattle have opened fault lines in a worldview which has been seriously out of touch with the realities of environmental destruction, wealth inequality, labor conditions and quality of life upon the planet.... In the name of free trade, local laws were to be 'harmonized' with global trade agreements. In effect this meant that local environmental, labor and health concerns could be overridden in the service of agreements that were brokered specifically to increase the economic well being of large business concerns. "It stands to reason that we should be suspicious of anything free.... Free, in our modern media-driven marketplace, almost always means that someone else, somewhere, is paying the price.... The WTO assumes that maximum growth of the business sector is automatically good for humanity. There is no doubt that business is an essential attribute of our human endeavors, but to leverage its power over the feedback of other values and communities is at the least arrogant and at the most lethal. Cancer presumes the same prerogative of growth," La Chapelle said. In an article published on November 29, opening day at the WTO conference, Donella H. Meadows (Donella.H.Meadows@dartmouth.edu), adjunct professor at Dartmouth College and director of the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont, addressed a question earlier raised by the influential business journal The Economist. Looking ahead in mid-November to what was already anticipated to be large-scale environmental demonstrations in Seattle, The Economist had editorialized that environmentalists -- "greens" -- were wrong to oppose trade. In reply, Meadows wrote: "Greens see no particular reason either to love or hate trade. They don't share the religious beliefs of economists, who love trade as indiscriminately as they love growth. Greens are inclined to ask questions. What is being traded? For whose benefit? At whose expense?... When those questions are answered, some trade looks lovable, and some we would be better off without. "What enviros, along with human rights advocates, labor organizations and many other citizen groups, emphatically do not love is the World Trade Organization. That's because they've had four years now to watch it work." Meadows took note of The Economist's grudging admission that "protecting the environment is as legitimate a goal as free trade." But she strongly disagreed, insisting the two are "not even close. Breath and life and health are infinitely more legitimate goals than corporate expansion. Human freedom and dignity can't be valued on the same scale as stock portfolios. Making deals, shipping stuff, globalizing the economy is a sometimes useful, often destructive preoccupation of a small, self-important minority of the human race. The environment is our life support system. There is just no comparison... Thinking there is, thinking that trade is an end, not a means, not even thinking about what the ends might be, that is the fatal lunacy of the WTO." [see St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.postnet.com/, Nov 29, 1999] One of the longer and more thoughtful position statements to come out of the WTO conference was called the Indigenous Peoples' Seattle Declaration. Written and signed by a broad coalition of indigenous group representatives from around the world, the statement included the following: "We believe that the whole philosophy underpinning the WTO Agreements and the principles and policies it promotes contradict our core values, spirituality and worldviews, as well as our concepts and practices of development, trade and environmental protection. Therefore, we challenge the WTO to redefine its principles and practices toward a 'sustainable communities' paradigm, and to recognize and allow for the continuation of other worldviews and models of development. "Indigenous peoples, undoubtedly, are the ones most adversely affected by globalization and by the WTO Agreements. However, we believe that it is also us who can offer viable alternatives to the dominant economic growth, export-oriented development model. Our sustainable lifestyles and cultures, traditional knowledge, cosmologies, spirituality, values of collectivity, reciprocity, respect and reverence for Mother Earth, are crucial in the search for a transformed society where justice, equity, and sustainability will prevail." [For full text and further information, email request to ien@igc.org or tebtebba@skyinet.net.] In the aftermath of the WTO fiasco, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told delegates to the World Civil Society Conference in Montreal, Canada on Dec 8 that many concerns raised by the Seattle protesters were not only legitimate but also underscored a very broad-based public fear of globalization. "Many fear that their customs, culture and even their livelihood are in danger of being lost in a sea of foreign products and ideas. Many sense that their elected government does not have as much control over things as it once did," Annan said. Such fears have some basis in fact but can run out of proportion to the benefits offered by global trade and cooperation, he added. Back in Seattle, city officials are trying to understand how so much could go so wrong, given such good intentions at the outset. The city's police department is deeply shaken. Downtown merchants are cleaning up millions of dollars in damage, assessing losses, considering lawsuits and other remedies. At the Federal level, Clinton's trade representatives are smarting under an international barrage of criticism even as they ponder next moves. Elsewhere in the world, nations great and small, as well as environmental and labor groups, human rights activists and others too numerous to mention, are reflecting upon the complex lessons of Seattle. One thing is sure. The WTO is not deterred -- not yet. But the organization has received an unexpectedly strong warning and a foretaste of what may come if needed and broadly demanded reforms are not forthcoming. As yet, WTO leaders have given no signal that reform is even contemplated. But Seattle was only a beginning. Stay tuned.
Built by Frontier on a Macintosh on 6/17/00; 12:10:19 PM. Web Comments  -
Produced by Larry LoweServed 2154 times since 12/10/99. |
|
