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World Social Forum Ends With Focus Shift
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WSF leaders called for worldwide protests on March 20 to mark the anniversary of Iraq invasion (AFP)
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BOMBAY,
January 21 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Anti-globalization
activists gathered on Wednesday, January 21, for a last high-decibel
rally in Bombay wrapping up six days of panels and protests that
witnessed a focus of shift on the agenda.
Police
said the activists clogged the streets of central Bombay for the
finale of the World Social Forum (WSF), which brought 100,000 people
from 152 countries to 1,200 panels on everything from the U.S.
occupation of Iraq to organic farming.
Starting
from the park where Mahatma Gandhi declared in 1942 a non-violent
struggle for independence from Britain, marchers banged drums, danced
in circles and hoisted banners for an array of causes, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Some
of the loudest chants were "Down with Bush! Down with
Blair!" led by South Korean trade unionists, keeping with the
tone of the forum which was strongly critical of the United States.
Opened
with the boycott of
famous U.S. trademarks like Pepsi and Microsoft, the
anti-globalization movement proposed Saturday, January 17, setting up
a rival body in the developing world to the World Trade Organization
(WTO) and slammed the increasingly growing U.S. hegemony.
But
the agenda of the gathering appears to have shifted from its central
focus on trade and the inequities of global capitalism, splintering
into a long list of regional causes, International Herald Tribune
reported Tuesday, January 20.
"The
focus has changed from unfair global trade and the monopoly of big
business toward antiwar, antidiscrimination causes," said Ellen
Lenox, an English teacher from Brasilia, as quoted as saying.
No
wonder that protesters of globalization are jostling with opponents of
war, and those fighting India's caste system are performing street
plays alongside groups opposing religious and sexual discrimination,
the American paper said.
Poor
People Involvement
Asma
Jehangir, a human rights activist from Pakistan, struck the strident
tone that dominated the anti-globalization convention, demanding an
end to US military engagements around the world.
"What
we want is no more war," she said. "The US army must take a
decision to leave Iraq. We want all US bases to go back home."
Leaders
of the forum have called for worldwide protests March 20 to mark the
anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"We
have managed to mobilize public opinion across the world," said
Vittorio Agnoletto, an Italian behind anti-globalization campaigns in
Europe.
He
said the major achievement of the forum, the first to be held in Asia,
was the participation of thousands of low-caste Hindus in the
movement, which is spearheaded by educated Europeans and Latin
Americans.
"After
Mumbai (Bombay), this is our aim, to involve poor people,"
Agnoletto said.
But
many Bombay residents stared dumbfounded at the colorful
seven-kilometer (four-mile) parade, which led to an unusually large
traffic jam in India's financial capital.
Organizers
put the size of the marchers at 30,000.
"I
don't know who they are, but if they're doing anything to help the
poor I wouldn't mind joining them," said Abdul Karim, who was
selling coconut slices on the roadside.
Minar
Pimple, an Indian organizer, said 73,000 people registered to attend
the full forum, but at least 48,000 others could have been at the
wooded exhibition grounds at any given time for specific events.
Africa
Host
Brazil
hosted the first three World Social Forums from 2001 to 2003 at Porto
Alegre to provide a civil society counterweight to the World Economic
Forum in Davos, which began its annual discussion Wednesday.
Next
year, organizers say, the WSF will return to Brazil - but they hope to
take it to Africa in 2006.
African
delegates said that since Africa as a continent was one of the worst
affected by globalisation, U.S.-style capitalism and conflict, such a
decision was appropriate, the BBC News Online said.
"The
Americas have hosted it, Asia has hosted it," said Demba Diop, a
Malian and the deputy secretary general of the Congress of the African
Trade Union Organization.
"We
think it's our time," said Diop.
An
African WSF - held in a country such as Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia or
South Africa - could tackle the "criminal debt" that African
countries owe their creditors, he said.
It
could also focus on the Aids epidemic, given that two in three of the
world's estimated 40 million HIV-positive population live in
sub-Saharan Africa.
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