ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE - NI 342 - Chronicle 2001: June

New Internationalist 342Jan / Feb 2002

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.

SWEDEN Police open fire with live ammunition on protesters outside a European Union summit in Gothenberg.

BRITAIN New Labour are given a second term of office in a general election, but with a turn-out of less than 60 per cent of the electorate, one of the lowest on record.

ECUADOR A mud-slide kills 36 people; at least 41 people die in several days of heavy rains in the Andes; 2,500 are forced to flee their homes due to flooding; a landslide ruptures the country’s main oil pipeline.

COLOMBIA Eleven members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), all with health problems, are released form a maximum-security prison. In return, the rebels release 43 sick troops and police agents. The exchange is one of the few advances since the current peace effort began two years ago.

UNITED STATES Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City six years ago, is executed.

INDIA Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever agrees to close its
mercury-thermometer factory – the largest in the world – in Kodaikanal. It also agrees to clean up 5.3 tons of mercury waste dumped illegally at a local scrap yard.

NEPAL Crown Prince Dipendra kills most members of the royal family and then attempts to kill himself. He survives for two days – as King of Nepal – and is succeeded by his uncle, Gyanendra. There are protests against the new king and his much-disliked son.

Floored: Saharawis were betrayed by a UN policy reversal on autonomy.

Chris Tordai / Panos Pictures

BELGIUM Two Rwandan nuns are sentenced to long prison terms by a Belgian court after being found guilty of direct complicity in the slaughter of up to 7,000 Tutsis in 1994. This is the first case in which a jury has sentenced foreign nationals for war crimes committed in another country.

PAKISTAN General Pervez Musharraf, the military chief of Pakistan, dismisses the country’s President and has himself sworn in to the post.

ITALY Silvio Berlusconi takes office as Italy’s Prime Minister. He appoints several extreme right-wing allies to cabinet posts. Accusations surface immediately that his main aim is to change legislation that affects his business interests.

PERU Alejandro Toledo, former shoeshine boy turned economist, takes office as the country’s first elected President to have significant indigenous ancestry.

IRAN The reformist Mohammad Khatami is re-elected President in a landslide victory.

CHINA More than 50 people are executed for drug crimes. The most severe drought since 1990 spreads. More than a million people are affected in Hunan province. A climatologist at Beijing University warns that the Chinese people must be ‘prepared psychologically’ for a new era of shortages due to falling water tables.

WESTERN SAHARA The UN reneges on its former policy. On the recommendation of former US Secretary of State, James Baker, it decides to advocate autonomy for Western Sahara within Morocco, rather than a self-rule referendum. The Polisario Front, which represents the Saharawi people of Western Sahara, is enraged.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA At least three students are killed and dozens of others are injured during student-led demonstrations in the capital, Port Moresby, against the World Bank and its economic policies.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC Fighting continues after a failed coup, dividing the country along ethnic lines between southerners, loyal to General André Kolingba, and northerners, who support President Ange-Félix Patassé.

INDONESIA The Washington-based International Labour Rights Fund brings a lawsuit against ExxonMobil – the world’s largest oil company – on behalf of 11 Indonesian villagers. The company is accused of complicity in the Indonesian military’s brutal attempts to suppress separatist insurgency in the impoverished Aceh region.

After the fiasco in Seattle in 1999, the WTO made off to Doha, Qatar, for a ‘ministerial’ meeting that began on 9 November. Nervous trade ministers from 142 countries were reluctantly pitched into the strategic epicentre of the ‘war on terrorism’. They accepted China as a member and endorsed a new ‘round’ of trade-liberalizing negotiations that are due to conclude in 2005.

Meanwhile resistance movements of all kinds responded to the call for an ‘N9’ Day of Global Action. Little was reported in the mainstream media, yet many thousands participated in protests. In the rich world there were actions in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Australia, Finland, Italy, US and Japan. Here’s a sample of what people got up to in the Majority World:

India Half a million people took to the streets of Delhi to as part of the Indian People’s Campaign Against the WTO. Demonstrations also took place in Bangalore and the Narmada Valley.

Brazil In São Paulo 400 demonstrators, dressed as tourists and corporate executives, conducted a tour of the Stock Exchange, Banco de Boston, Shopping Light and McDonald’s. There were demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza and Porto Alegre.

Indonesia The West Java Peasant Union combined its birthday celebration with a protest against the WTO and the World Bank-funded Jatigede dam.

Philippines Three separate demonstrations took place in Manila around the themes ‘Agriculture out of WTO’ and ‘WTO out of Philippines’.

Malaysia A Culture of Resistance Festival Against Globalization was staged in Kuala Lumpur.

Iran 500 trade unionists marched to the weekly Friday prayers at Tehran University, describing the WTO as ‘a drunkard bloodsucker devil’.

South Africa 500 people marched through central Johannesburg to protest at their government’s involvement in the WTO and ‘neoliberal’ economic policies.

Thailand Farmers, women workers, HIV-positive people and others held an all-day rally in Bangkok under the general theme ‘WTO out of our life’.

Tunisia Teach-ins on globalization took place in over 100 of the largest workplaces in the country.

Other, similar protests took place in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Nigeria and Turkey.