2003/02/02

Anti-Globalisation Movement To Expand Across Asia

Kalinga Seneviratne
Inter Press Service (IPS)

The third World Social Forum (WSF) ended Tuesday in an upbeat mood with organisers vowing to expand the movement all across Asia as it moves to India next year.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan 28 (IPS) -The third World Social Forum (WSF) ended Tuesday in an upbeat mood with organisers vowing to expand the movement all across Asia as it moves to India next year. Though questions were raised during the closing press conference about possibly losing the momentum built in South America in the last three years, the organising committee said confidently that going to India symbolises the globalisation of the movement sometimes dubbed as the 'anti-globalisation' movement.

''We are creating a new social and political climate around the world'', declared Candido Grzybowski of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis and a member of the organising committee. The Forum ''is a significant victory, our process is growing and becoming a gigantic movement of people.

Organisers were in a jubilant mood after attracting well over 100,000 people from Latin America, North America, Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, Middle East and Africa.

But Asian and African participation was small, a major reason it was decided to move the 2004 gathering to India.

Members of the Brazilian organising committee argued that the strength of the movement is its diversity, which they called a source of wealth not of division. ''It is not the ideology that is uniting us but the differences,'' said Grzybowski, adding, ''we are globalising but not losing our identity''.

''We need to get Asia and Africa more involved,'' he added, ''to conquer more hearts and minds to build a better world.

''Building that world does not simply mean taking an anti-globalisation stance'', argued Martin Khor, director of the Malaysia-based Third World Network, who has attended forums like this for the last 15 years.

''We are not against international cooperation. In fact, we are championing international cooperation,'' he told IPS. ''What we are against is a particular kind of kind of international economic relations where the strong countries and big companies dominate and create rules to perpetuate their dominance.'' ''So, many of us are calling ourselves the movement for global justice,'' added Khor.

''That is a new global relationship between countries that promote the weak rather than the strong, and that favour the local communities, whether they are farmers, consumers or workers, rather than favour the narrow commercial interests of a few corporations and banks, which are ruining the world.'' Organisers said the WSF is not an event but a process that takes place throughout the year, leading up to the next forum.

During the past year, social forums were held in India, the United States, Europe, Ethiopia and Palestine. Local forums, such as the Pan-Amazon forum, also took place, along with 16 neighbourhood forums in Porto Alegre itself and a national forum in Argentina to discuss the impact of the financial crisis there.

The process is for local forums to develop ideas and strategies that can be transferred to the WSF for dialogue at the international level, explained organising committee member Francisco Whitaker from the Brazilian Association of Non-Governmental Organisations. Organisers hope that various sectors of society, such as unions, youths, the judiciary, peasants and even parliamentarians, will organise forums at local, national or regional levels during the coming year and then take their viewpoints to India in 2004.

''We're trying a new method, a new political culture,'' said Grzybowski, ''to place diversity (of viewpoints) at the centre as wealth, as a weapon to build bridges''. World-renowned Indian novelist Arundathi Roy told participants on Monday that global social and protest movements like the WSF have forced the ambitions of the ''empire builders'', the neo-liberal capitalist interests, into the open. ''We, all of us gathered here, have laid siege to the empire,'' she said. ''We have stood up and forced it to drop its mask,'' Roy added to thunderous cheers from the audience of more than 30,000 people.

While the WSF revealed its ambition plans to globalise the movement, organisers reiterated that no political parties or current politicians would be given a platform at the Forum.

A special exemption was given this year to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, who was one of the initiators of the WSF. But Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, although popular among many WSF participants, was refused permission to officially address the WSF and had to deliver a speech to thousands of his supporters outside the forum venue at the local state assembly building.

''We have never had difficulty dialoguing with political parties,'' said Whitaker, ''but we want to make sure that civil society will have control over the building of the themes, thoughts and of articulating them''. Organisers said they spent about five million U.S. dollars organising the event, with most of the most funds coming from U.S. and European donors and the registration fees of participants. They estimated that the week-long event pumped 50 million dollars into the local economy.

''People in Davos (site of the rival World Economic Forum) want to hold a referendum to get them out,'' pointed out Grzybowski, but ''people of Porto Alegre are asking us to keep the WSF here''.