Sunday 11 / Monday 12 December
Got to Hong Kong, and after a slight delay courtesy of the police, am raring to go!
Hong Kong is a very suitable place for the WTO to meet, Disneyland has just set up it's HK branch, and the streets here in the run up to Xmas are like Oxford Street on steroids. The amount of Christmas crap and adverts is breathtaking.
Reading the local press is similar to any build up to protests at a large international trade meeting, demonisation, but as ever a small but significant amount of coverage of the real issues. The main focus of these issues is on rice and cotton farmers and fisherfolk. In between the whipping up of a climate of fear in the HK Standard (similar to the London paper of that name in size, politics and hysteria) are a few interviews with farmers and migrant workers. You can feel the disappointment oozing off the pages as yesterday's migrants demo went off peacefully. Instead the line the press are pushing is "wasn't it small?" Given that the demo was mainly about migrant workers in Hong Kong, and given that no home 'helpers' (more accurately 'servants' or in some cases 'slaves') were given the day off, many being forced to work an extra day to demobilise the protest, the 4000 or so that turned out was a good start two days before the WTO actually begins. Migrant workers are not exactly renowned for flying to international demonstrations afterall.
Lia Ourwati a domsetic worker from Indonesia explained "many Indonesians are underpaid, they cannot take holidays and are forced to work beyond what their contracts say."
But it's Rice and Cotton that are going to dominate the proceedings here. There's been calls to get agriculture removed from the remit of the WTO. Chennaiah Poguri a farmers leader from India said "Agriculture is a way of life for many in India and Asia, for the multinationals it's about profit, and this is ruining the lives of the people" as he called for the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture to be scrapped.
As I saw in Seoul a couple of days ago, South Korean rice farmers are pretty angry with what's being dealt to them in the WTO casino of life. Economies of scale backed by huge subsidies are denying these farmers a market, not internationally but at home. Especially in the light of Lee Kyong-hae, the farmer who killed himself in protest at Cancun, the last WTO conference in Mexico held 2 years ago, the Korean farmers are getting demonised beyond belief.
"The migrants march was peaceful, but wait until these Korean farmers are joined by thousands of their colleagues" said the caption in a paper this morning - under a picture of some Korean teachers. Which was ironic reading for me, having arrived on a plane from Seoul with some Korean activists some of the farmers. Of all the people stopped and questioned by HK police? The brit, not the Koreans!
I got pulled out of the line at passport control and interviewed by immigration man, was completely upfront about what I was doing there (They only stopped me because they knew). Then waited about half an hour, then the police came and interviewed me - same questions as well as "have you ever been arrested?" - once or twice. "ever arrested abroad?" no. "ever arrested for anything violent?" no. "what do you want to see happen to the WTO?" I want to see it disbanded. "what will you do to help this happen?" Tell people exactly what they're doing and make them unpopular and unpalatable to the world's population.
I promised to be a good boy, they read me the riot act and gave me a souvenir copy of the riot act and I was on my way. I feel the UK authorities must have put me on a naughty list some where, they seemed to know about GR and everything.
Today, Monday has been a number of meetings in various venues across town, and tomorrow the conference and the protests start in earnest. I've just walked past the conference centre itself and the hallmark paranoia is evident - huge water filled plastic barriers, fencing and countless police. Wan Chai (the local area round the convention centre) is like under military police occupation.
Ada Wong, the district council chair of Wan Chai put it beautifully. "If this event is so scary, why did the Hong Kong government agree to host it?" She'd noticed an overwhelming police presence "doing nothing but patrolling."
I'm off to a meeting on War and Trade with Focus on the Global South - I'll tell you about that tomorrow.
Guy Taylor
Dec 19 2005, 04:16