Farmers and students clashed with police on Wednesday as they tried to storm past barricades and march to the WTO meeting site. One protester fatally stabbed himself to show his anger over WTO policy.
The suicide came at the height of an hours-long battle in which protesters fought police with stones and poles, only to be driven back by tear gas and nightsticks.
Police had erected tall, chain-link barricades to keep several thousand protesters away from Cancun's hotel zone, where the WTO representatives opened their meeting on Wednesday.
Protesters ripped down the barricades, and police responded by driving them back with tear gas and rocks. About a half-dozen protesters, a reporter and a police official were slightly injured.
"This was an extreme case of overreaction by police," said Paul Nicholson, a farm activist from Spain nursing a bloody scalp wound he said was caused by a police baton.
One man, South Korean farmer leader and former lawmaker Lee Kyung-Hae, 54, died after he stabbed himself in the chest. His friends called the suicide a ceremonial act.
"Mr. Lee committed suicide after seeing how the WTO was killing peasants around the world," a delegation of about 50 South Korean farmers said in a statement read after the announcement of Lee's death at a Cancun hospital.
Lee stuck a knife into his chest as his Korean comrades scaled barricades, lifting a flaming ceremonial funeral pyre onto their shoulders and ramming it into the police barrier.
Later, a crowd of about 200 protesters gathered at the Cancun hospital where Lee died, chanting: "We are all Lee."
WTO officials said Lee recently spent at least two months camped out in front of the WTO's headquarters in Geneva, holding up signs that accused the trade organization of killing people.
He also attempted suicide in the lobby of the building in 1990, when he pulled out a Swiss army knife and plunged it into his stomach.
At the time, Lee was president of the Korean National Future Farmer's and Fisherman's Association, one of the country's main farming lobby groups.
The protesters say they want to persuade the WTO to drop agriculture from their trade negotiations. They argue that each country has a right to protect its food supply, and that farmers should not be forced to compete on a global level.
The issue has been among the most sensitive the WTO has had to negotiate, and most delegates agree they won't reach any concrete conclusions during their meeting in Cancun.
Protesters have been a force at every major WTO meeting since 1999, when street riots disrupted talks in Seattle. Activists, who include farmers, union leaders and students, argue that free-trade rules benefit big business at the expense of the poor and the environment.
RSS