Radical protesters smashing shop windows and club-wielding police often grab the spotlight at WTO summits, and -- with 10,000 demonstrators expected -- fears are that similar violence will bedevil next week's WTO meeting in Hong Kong.
It will be the first time this orderly global financial capital has had to deal with so many international protesters, though most of them will likely push for their diverse causes in more peaceful, creative ways, such as street theater or workshops.
They will be coming for the summit that runs next Tuesday through Sunday from around the world -- Pakistani fishermen, South Korean farmers and Argentine environmentalists.
PHOTO: AFP
Despite their diversity, the protesters have a unifying complaint: that WTO's goal of reducing trade barriers brings pain and ruin by threatening livelihoods, land and ways of life.
One group known for fierce battles with police and dramatic gestures to highlight its cause, the Korean Peasants League, plans to send 1,400 farmers.
Last month, two league activists committed suicide by drinking herbicide to protest legislation opening South Korea's rice market, and one stabbed himself to death the WTO summit in Cancun, Mexico, in 2003.
The group is fighting to derail the WTO's aim to lower barriers for agricultural imports, which league officials say will flood the South Korean market with cheap rice and other food and bankrupt them.
"We believe there shouldn't be talks on agriculture at WTO at all. We demand an end to WTO talks," Kim Hwang Kyeong-san, a league spokeswoman, told reporters.
She said the group is planning a peaceful march in Hong Kong but added, "We will try to block the meeting, using our whole bodies."
Diverse groups are coordinating three major marches throughout the week outside the conference hall, said Mabel Au of the Hong Kong Peoples Alliance, a coalition of 33 local grassroots groups that has been liaising with about 5,000 overseas protesters who plan to come here.
The first march -- to be held on Monday, the eve of the talks -- will focus on local concerns: the Hong Kong government's position on trade agendas like services and industrial goods, Au said. The other two will be more open to diverse international interests, like fair trade for farming goods.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver