Police State Atmosphere Stifles
Dissent at WTO in Qatar

Monday November 12 1:37 PM ET
Bove Continues WTO Fight in Qatar
By TAREK AL-ISSAWI, Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) - Jailed in France and tear gassed in
Seattle, French farm activist Jose Bove had to raise a ruckus
again to get to the World Trade Organization (news - web
sites) meeting in Qatar - only to end up feeling sidelined.

``They don't allow us to attend some press conferences, they
exclude us from the debates, guards are everywhere and entire
sections are closed'' to all except delegates, he complained
in an interview.

The irrepressible sheep farmer has been the star of a few
brief demonstrations inside the hotel complex where the WTO
session is being held. Each time, he and activists from other
organizations invited as observers are quickly surrounded by
cameras and reporters, but attention soon wanes.

Bove accused the WTO of intentionally bringing the ministerial
meeting to Doha, because ``it is impossible to bring people.''

WTO officials say Qatar was the only country that volunteered
after the 1999 Battle of Seattle.

Bove was one of thousands of demonstrators who were in Seattle
to protest the WTO meeting. That meeting failed to reach
agreement on new trade talks amid clashes between the
protesters and police.

Bove almost didn't make it to Qatar.

He said Qatari authorities stalled on issuing him a visa
although he was accredited by the WTO to attend. He received
it by fax a few hours before his flight, after he had gone
public with his case.

``I don't know if it was delayed from the Qatari government,
the WTO or the United States,'' he said.

Bove spent three weeks in jail in 1999 for vandalizing a
McDonald's restaurant that was under construction. He was
convicted of the charge in March and sentenced to three months
in jail. He remains free pending appeal.

Bove said his mission in Doha was to tell the world that big,
rich countries were pressuring smaller, poorer ones to agree
to their terms of trade, depriving them of many of their
economic mainstays and destroying their ecological systems.

``On all the issues, nothing has changed, and the small
countries can't win against the big countries like the United
States, Canada and the European states,'' he said.

Source:
<http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011112/wl/wto_french_farmer_
1.html>
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Protest Group Softens Tone At WTO Talks

By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 12, 2001; Page A01

DOHA, Qatar, Nov. 11 -- The way the plan was originally
conceived, six boats loaded with anti-globalization activists
were to sail into the port of this Persian Gulf sheikdom to
protest the World Trade Organization meeting here. "We were
organizing everybody in our movement," said Jose Bove, the
French farmer renowned for vandalizing a McDonald's
restaurant.

The scheme was scrapped, however, after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. Bove, one of a few dozen activists roaming the halls
at the conference center where the WTO meeting is being held
through Tuesday, instead has joined in staging occasional
demonstrations.

Profound changes have buffeted the anti-globalization movement
since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In an era of suicide hijackings, war and anthrax in the mail,
the movement's leaders are finding it difficult to generate
much indignation about problems like sweatshop wages or food
impurities.

And as events at the WTO meeting here illustrate, many of the
movement's adherents are feeling heightened discomfort about
engaging in the sort of militant activity that once brought
them attention because they are loath to risk being associated
in the public mind with Osama bin Laden and his followers.

The movement leapt into prominence at the WTO meeting two
years ago in Seattle, where a loosely allied throng of left-
wing students, labor union members, environmentalists and
anarchists disrupted the gathering amid violent clashes with
police.

In Seattle, and in protests at international meetings in
Prague, Washington, Quebec and Genoa, the activists forced the
press and elements of the power elite to confront myriad
concerns about the clout of multinational corporations and the
increasingly free flow of goods and money across national
borders, which the activists blamed for adversely affecting
workers' livelihoods and the environment.

Comparing the meeting here with Seattle is unfair in many
ways, though, because Qatar offers a poor environment for mass
demonstrations, not to mention civil disobedience or "direct
action" against fast-food outlets and other corporate targets.

The meeting of trade ministers from the organizations 142
member countries is aimed at striking an accord on an agenda
for multiyear negotiations to lower trade barriers worldwide.
The last meeting to set such an agenda was in Seattle, where
trade ministers failed to achieve their goal.

Because of limited hotel space, fewer than 200 representatives
of labor, environmental and other groups opposed to free trade
were granted visas by the government of this oil-rich nation,
which lies on a peninsula off the East coast of Saudi Arabia.

Although the government of Qatar allows peaceful protests, it
is a monarchy that has only recently begun democratizing.
Thousands of Qatari police and military personnel maintain
rigid security at the meeting site and hotels to prevent any
terrorist assault during the meetings.

Even so, for the anti-globalizers the need to soften tactics
"would have been an issue even if this meeting had taken place
in a western city," said Jamie Love, the head of a Ralph Nader-
affiliated group who is here seeking to relax WTO rules that
protect the patents of pharmaceutical companies on AIDS drugs
and other medicines. "Given the unbelievable atmosphere of
patriotism, being critical of government is touchy for people."

That is a source of frustration for many activists, who
contend that their analysis concerning the evils of
multinational corporate capitalism is no less valid now than
it was before Sept. 11. This analysis, they contend, may help
account for the anti-western sentiment in Muslim countries.
Some voice hope that opposition to the U.S. bombing of
Afghanistan would help them overcome their recent public-
relations troubles.

"We felt we needed to respect the mood after Sept. 11" by
refraining from major protests, said Walden Bello, a prominent
Filipino critic of globalization who is executive director of
the group Focus on the Global South. "But ever since the
bombing started in Afghanistan, I think the mood has changed.
I think there's greater sympathy for our views to be heard."

The meeting in Qatar also has underlined some of the awkward
divisions between the anti-globalization forces and the
governments of poor nations whose interests the activists
purport to champion. Although the activists and the developing
countries take the same position on some issues, such as the
desirability of easing international drug patent rules, they
differ sharply on others.

Food safety is one example. Bove, like many Europeans, favors
changing WTO rules so that countries can more aggressively
restrict imports of meat, grain, fruit and vegetables for
health reasons. The restrictions would stem from products
having been genetically modified or treated with hormones.

"The people who want to put a product on the market ought to
have to show that the product is safe," Bove said. "For the
moment, it's the country refusing to import a product that
must show the product is bad. We have to reverse that."

Bove's view, which is supported to some extent by the European
Union at the meeting here, draws vehement criticism from
officials of developing nations. The EU, the officials fear,
would use health concerns as an excuse to keep their farm
products out of Europe as a way of protecting the region's
farmers.

For that reason, developing countries are rejecting proposals
to start negotiating changes in WTO food-safety rules. On
similar grounds, the developing nations oppose initiatives
favored by U.S. labor and environmental groups that would
impose trade sanctions on countries that fail to observe
sufficiently high standards for workers rights and the
environment. Those standards, too, might provide a pretext for
blocking imports from the developing world.

The activists' "hearts are in the right place; their premise
that the global trading system has inequities is something
that we share," said Munir Akram, Pakistan's ambassador to the
WTO. "But we think they get deflected by misinformation about
things like food safety and labor standards, which could be
used for protectionist purposes, and could defeat the very
goals they seek of helping developing countries. The movement
from their premises to their conclusions-that's where we think
they sometimes go wrong."

Even so, Akram said, the protesters generally aid the cause of
developing countries in trade meetings such as the one in
Qatar.

One such illustration came Saturday when, just outside a press
briefing being given by a U.S. delegation, a group of
activists began chanting and waving signs to protest the way
the WTO meeting is being run. The protesters focused on the
creation of six committees of trade ministers that are meeting
privately to debate the issues still dividing the WTO's 142
member nations over the agenda for a new round of trade talks

"What goes on behind closed doors? Arm twisting! Arm
twisting!" the protesters chanted, a reference to the fear
that rich nations would use their economic clout to force less-
wealthy countries into making concessions.

Qatari security guards rushed to the scene. The activists
briefly considered trying to confront U.S. officials inside
the meeting, but thought better of it and dispersed.

Source: <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12542-
2001Nov11.html>

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Erik Wesselius
Corporate Europe Observatory / Transnational Institute