Another world is possible / CHRONICLE 2001

.WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON THE MAJORITY WORLD

JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC
Click a month above to read an alternative view of the key events of that month.

MEXICO A peaceful march on Mexico City by the Zapatista National Liberation Army ends with an address to the Senate by the Zapatista leadership. But negotiations to establish the rights of Mexico’s ten million indigenous peoples fail once more and the Zapatistas withdraw from the city.

QUEBEC CITY 34 countries (excluding Cuba) meet at the Summit of the Americas to discuss a proposed Free-Trade Agreement of the Americas. Thousands of activists protest outside the talks – more than 400 are arrested.

WORLD Andorra becomes the 30th country to ratify the Rome Statute, bringing the international community halfway to the 60 ratifications needed to establish an International Criminal Court.

CANADA The Government of British Columbia endorses a proposal to protect 20 critical and untouched valleys in the Great Bear Rainforest. It also endorses a substantial reform which will end destructive logging practices in this, the world’s largest remaining ancient temperate rainforest.

UKRAINE Victor Yushchenko is forced to resign as Prime Minister after losing a parliamentary no-confidence vote. The news leads to renewed street protests.

INDIA Measures to reduce pollution come into effect in New Delhi. All commercial vehicles are ordered to change to cleaner fuels or keep off the road. The poorly executed scheme leads to riots in the city, with mobs setting fire to buses and hijacking private cars.

YUGOSLAVIA Following financial pressure on the Government from the West, former President Slobodan Milosevic is arrested.

CHINA After a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter plane, a US spy plane lands on Hainan Island severely damaged, but with all 24 crew members alive. The Chinese pilot is killed. A tense stand-off develops between the two countries as China keeps both crew and plane for several weeks.

THAILAND The Government decides not to allow any more field trials of genetically modified crops and to halt ongoing field trials on cotton and corn by Monsanto, the second-largest seed provider in Thailand. The decision follows a ban on all commercial growing of GM crops on Thai territory.

JORDAN A major conference in Amman on the use of children as soldiers asserts that 300,000 children are actively engaged in armed conflict in the world and that the ‘culture of militarization’ must be remedied.

MALAYSIA The ‘Abolish ISA Movement’ is formed to oppose the Internal Security Act – a legacy from the colonial period, which allows for detention without trial for two years, renewable indefinitely. The arrest of seven activists under the Act has drawn renewed attention to it.

MACEDONIA Renewed fighting occurs between Albanian nationalist rebels and government forces. Slav Macedonians launch a counter-attack against the Albanians. The conflict spreads from northern hillsides to southern towns.

WEST AFRICA The Etireno, a ship whose cargo includes children from Benin intended for the slave trade, is turned away from Gabon and Cameroon. Officials and aid agencies meet the ship when it returns to Benin and the children are placed in care.

AFGHANISTAN The Taliban reject UN calls for a ceasefire between them and the Northern Alliance to deal with the problem of the 800,000 displaced people who are living in appalling conditions. Hindus are forced to wear a distinctive sign on their clothing.

ARGENTINA Greenpeace asserts – and the Government admits – that the agribusiness giant, Monsanto, planted substantial amounts of its ‘Roundup Ready’ corn, GA 21, in Argentina’s three main corn-growing areas, despite being refused permission to do so.

The political establishment in rich countries has taken to exploiting ‘populist’ – if not overtly racist – attitudes towards people fleeing from oppression or destitution elsewhere. At least three elections were fought and won in this way. In Australia, Prime Minister John Howard’s governing Liberal-National coalition was flagging badly in opinion polls until August. Then the Norwegian container ship, the Tampa, was refused permission to land 434 rescued asylum seekers – mainly from Afghanistan – on Australian soil. Howard introduced a new law to legitimize his action and prevent a recurrence. The opposition Labour Party adopted a broadly similar stance. Howard went on to claim that ‘boat people’ might be terrorists and that some had deliberately thrown their children overboard to force their rescue – a claim contradicted by naval-officer eyewitnesses. In November Howard was re-elected with an increased majority. Trygve Sorvaag / Panos Pictures In Italy, where the ruling centre-left ‘Olive Tree’ coalition disintegrated, media magnate Silvio Berlusconi returned to office, six years after he had been expelled from it engulfed in scandals. With him he brought the National Alliance – heir to Mussolini’s blackshirts – and the Northern League leader, Umberto Bossi, a xenophobic federalist. Their 25-point manifesto included a proposal for coastguards to shoot at boats smuggling illegal immigrants. In Denmark, the ruling Social Democrats ceased to be the country’s largest political party for the first time since 1924, giving way to a coalition led by the Danish People’s Party (DPP) which has been likened to Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, notorious for exploiting the issue of immigration. The DPP promised to crack down on asylum seekers . In Norway, the resignation of the Labour-led Government in October allowed the far-right Progress Party to enter a coalition with Christian Democrat Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik. Elsewhere in Europe, German Chancellor Schröder called for a seven-year ban on the movement of labour from Central European countries. In Britain, asylum seekers continued to be vilified as ‘bogus’ and detained in ‘reception centres’ indistinguishable from prisons. Xenophobia was equally evident in France – where the National Front regularly collects a tenth of the votes. Very little happened during the year to alleviate a calamity of human displacement that has all but doubled in size since 1990, and now affects more than 25 million people worldwide, two-thirds of them still accommodated in the South. In February the UN launched an initiative to double the funds available to ‘internally displaced’ people, who constitute double the number of refugees but receive even less help.