BOMBAY: Anti-globalisation activists called yesterday for the world to unite against the United States and big business as 100,000 people from 130 countries met off a Bombay highway in the movement’s first forum since the Iraq war.
The World Social Forum, billed as a counterweight to the World Economic Forum of business and political leaders which opens on Wednesday in Switzerland, is holding discussions and demonstrations on issues from Iraq to child labour.
But the common thread for the diverse set of activists is opposition to US President George W. Bush, who is accused by forum leaders of endangering world security and bending trade rules to satisfy corporations.
“The world must stand up against the United States which is dominating the United Nations and has amassed more weapons than the rest of the world combined,” said Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general and longtime anti-war activist.
“We have to remove Bush. He has committed a war of aggression,” Clark told a crowd of hundreds. “His shock and awe war campaign against Iraq is hi-tech terrorism.”
Demonstrators paraded effigies of Bush portraying him as everything from a handcuffed war criminal to a Hindu demon as they packed a wooded exhibition grounds in industrial north Bombay.
US companies were not spared, with activists leading 200 villagers from the southern Indian state of Kerala in smashing up cans of Coca-Cola and accusing the beverage giant of taking resources in parched communities.
Paul Nicholson, a farm activist from Spain, said the anti-globalisation movement saw large corporations in general as their major foe.
“The business lobby puts pressure in the developing world to reduce local subsidies all the while trying to get their own raised in the developed world. This means we need to come to the developing world’s defence,” he said.
Gautam Mody, a spokesman for the forum, said a plethora of issues were being discussed and it should not be seen only as a US bashing session.
“It is not that the anti-globalisation meet has gone anti-US.
But I would say that it has gone strongly anti-war,” Mody said.
Campaigners from across continents danced to drums, bellowed out protest songs and handed out leaflets promoting panel talks and information booths on topics ranging from “the resistance in Iraq” to “breastfeeding in a globalised world.”
Novelist Arundhati Roy, one of India’s best known activists, urged the diverse anti-globalisation movement to focus during the six-day conference on picking two US companies that benefitted from the Iraq war and launching a campaign to shut them down.
Speaking yesterday at the Mumbai Resistance, a nearby leftist gathering that believes the World Social Forum is too moderate, Roy said both meetings should work to “make it materially impossible for the empire to achieve its aims.” “Iraq is no longer a country. It’s an asset,” Roy said.
The World Social Forum was launched in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to build on the violent protests during World Trade Organisation negotiations in 1999 in Seattle.
The last meeting in Brazil turned into a rallying ground for protests against an invasion of Iraq which was launched just over two months later. – AFP



photo;French Junior Minister for Sustainable Development Tokia Saifi walks past a march of Indian dalits at the 2004 World Social Forum (WSF) in Bombay yesterday. – AFP
Last update on: 19-1-2004