26 April - 2 May 2001
Issue No.531
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 April - 2 May 2001 Issue No.531 |
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From Seattle to Quebec
At the FTAA summit, while Washington preached democracy, the right to freedom of expression was drowned out by tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets, writes Faiza Rady
Dreading a replay of the 1999 Seattle summit demonstrations, Jean-Paul L'Allier -- mayor of the charming historical city of Quebec, this most French of Canadian towns -- engineered extraordinary security measures to shield heads of state attending the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) summit from the fury of anti-globalisation protesters. Notwithstanding unprecedented police deployment -- the largest and most expensive ($35 million) security mobilisation in Canadian history -- L'Allier's efforts proved to be futile. Despite the high-powered security, reinforced by what activists derisively dismissed as the "wall of shame" -- a ten-foot-high chain-link fence nearly six miles long that was to separate the conference venue from the rest of the city -- thousands of demonstrators broke into the no-go zone. Venting their outrage at being denied access to the summit and demanding their constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression, the protesters confronted the police and partially destroyed the sophisticated high-tech fence on Friday.
While the fence was quickly mended and duly reinforced with additional concrete blocks on Saturday, street battles continued to rage. "It seems crazy that to voice your opinion you've got to come out with a gas mask," fumed a British protester.
In scenes highly reminiscent of the Seattle protests, riot police in heavy combat gear attacked the demonstrators with the usual arsenal of rubber bullets, tear-gas, clubs and high-powered water cannons. But the activists were undeterred. Notwithstanding the heavy-handed methods of the police, the crowd fought back, blocking traffic and delaying the summit opening on Saturday.
As echoes of the street battles reverberated in the conference halls and the pungent odour of tear gas hung in the air, US President George W Bush waxed lyrical about the virtues of free trade in the Americas -- North, South and Central (excluding US nemesis Cuba), home to 825 million people with an aggregate economic weight of some $11 trillion. Although Bush reverted to the conventional neo-liberal rhetoric associating free trade with a grand vision of "freedom," "prosperity" and "democracy," his keynote address included some discordant notes. In an attempt to subvert the activists' vision of a different kind of democracy and freedom -- and aiming a shot at Cuban leader Fidel Castro -- Bush quoted Cuban independence hero Jose Marti. "La libertad no es nogociable," Bush said in Spanish -- "liberty is not negotiable." Promoting his specific brand of "market liberty" -- read "liberalisation" -- the US President pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a successful model for the FTAA. "NAFTA has created high-quality, high-wage jobs from the Yukon to the Yucatan," stressed Bush.
The irony was not lost on Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who expressed his solidarity with the anti-globalisation protesters in Quebec City and denounced the violent suppression of "democracy" and "liberty" unfolding on the Canadian evening news. "We have just seen the brutal way in which Canadian authorities repress peaceful demonstrations," said Castro. He complained that activists were merely exercising their right to protest "against the crime being perpetrated against the political and economic rights of Latin American and Caribbean nations in Quebec City."
The Cuban leader's and the anti-globalisation protesters' vision of economic rights includes the right to a decently paid job, which the International Labour Organisation defines as a human right. Contrary to the FTAA summit's facile sloganeering, the much-touted NAFTA model, in fact, compromised hundreds of thousands of jobs in Canada and the US. According to the latest study, jointly published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Canada, the US-based Economic Policy Institute and the Mexican Institute of Labour Studies and Investigation, "NAFTA has largely failed the North American working people." The report describes stagnant and falling wages in the three countries and, in Canada and the US, an increase in the threat effect in collective bargaining.
Since NAFTA, US- and Canada-based multinationals typically threaten to move production to Mexico if workers refuse to accept draconian wage and benefit cutbacks. A corporate safe haven, Mexico is ideal for swift and cost-effective relocation deals. Moving just across the border, US-based multinationals pay Mexican workers a minimum daily wage of $3.40, which grossly undercuts the $5.30 hourly minimum in the US. As a direct result of NAFTA-facilitated corporate relocation schemes, the US manufacturing sector reported a loss of 766,000 jobs since the signing of the treaty in 1994 and there was a net loss of 276,000 jobs in Canada.
While total employment in Mexico actually grew by 1.2 per cent, the increase has been in low-paying, highly exploitative jobs, with no recourse to unionisation. Moreover, following the 1994 stock market crash and the free-fall of the peso against the dollar, the minimum wage has lost almost 50 per cent of its purchasing power over the last decade. As a result, eight million Mexicans have been pushed out of the middle class into poverty.
The US-promoted maquiladoras regimen, the tax-free zone which hugs the US-Mexican border area, has compromised workers' rights countrywide -- serving as a blueprint for effective corporate practices and auguring more of the same under the FTAA. A fortified version of NAFTA, the FTAA will further strengthen the clout and bargaining power of multinationals and reinforce the downward pressure on workers' living standards throughout the continent, warns the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Delegates of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Quebec City agreed, somberly predicting that things are likely to go from bad to worse. Under the FTAA, exploited workers in Mexico could be leveraged against even more desperate workers in Haiti, Guatemala and Brazil.
Within the context of this dismal record, suppression of the anti-globalisation protest movement becomes imperative for the representatives of "free trade."
"This isn't security. It's decontamination. It's the political equivalent of ethnic cleansing, sweeping away anyone who dares to criticise the complicity of governments in corporate globalisation," said Toronto-based daily The Financial Post. Despite "decontamination" tactics and political cleansing strategies, the anti-globalisation movement will not be crushed. In the words of one activist: "It didn't start with Seattle and it won't end with Quebec."
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