Back to the Scene of the Crime: The WTO after Hong Kong
29/06/2006
- Opinión
Most TV murder mysteries end with the arrest (or elaborately justified
killing) of the perpetrators of the crime. The criminals are caught. The
truth is revealed. And justice (revised, modified, and adapted for
commercial viewing) prevails. There's always a neat ending to every
terrible (yet entertaining) crime spree. But what if the criminal always
gets away? What if the perpetrators depart the scene of the crime in
first-class comfort, while the people trying to stop them are arrested?
And what if these crimes are real -- inflicted daily on millions of
people? This particular criminal organization has already escaped justice
for more than a decade. Truth was an early victim and hope is missing,
presumed dead. So where does that leave us? We're all witnesses to these
crimes. We saw it happen. And we saw them leave the scene of the crime --
again and again. So how do we stop them? How do change the ending?
Post-Hong Kong Autopsy
The most recent crime scene: the Sixth WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong. For
five days members of the WTO triad (technocrats, government negotiators
and big business) strike a series of deals, while covering their tracks in
false promises and blatant lies. Then they make their escape under the
full glare of the media, flying first class. They're free. Meanwhile,
after a week of police violence to break up street protests, dozens of
arrested protestors are released, but criminal charges are filed against
14 protestors, mostly Korean farmers. What was their crime? They were
attempting to stop the WTO triad from making trade deals that threaten the
livelihoods of farmers and their communities, deepen global inequality and
poverty, and wreak more havoc on our ravaged and fragile planet. In other
words, they were arrested for trying to stop crimes committed in the name
of corporate profit (a.k.a. global capitalism). So the police intervened
to protect the criminals and helped them get away. Again.
In the weeks leading up to the Sixth Ministerial there was hope that the
WTO -- having suffered a near-fatal blow in Cancun two years earlier --
would be DOA (dead on arrival) in Hong Kong. But the WTO had recovered and
was pursuing the neoliberal agenda with renewed aggression. WTO officials,
government negotiators and their corporate bosses were determined to
engineer "major breakthroughs" in Hong Kong, securing a "consensus" among
149 governments through backroom deals and trade-offs. Food sovereignty
sacrificed for financial services, water rights for more Wal-Marts, and
the right to access to essential treatment dropped in return for more
economic aid (a.k.a. bribery and debt). As always, the details are quietly
sorted out later, in a series of "mini-ministerials" and bilateral
meetings. Meanwhile the nationalist and Third Worldist rhetoric of
governments from the global South vanishes in the face of these side-deals
and counter-offers. Concern for small farmers and rural communities,
protecting scarce natural resources, and noises about reducing poverty --
nothing but casino chips cast down on the table and gambled away. Result:
the populist nationalism threatening to deadlock the WTO talks emerges as
little more than a bargaining chip for securing better deals for the
capitalists back home. And so the deal's done and yet another crime is
committed.
Corporate Crime Wave
What crimes are we talking about? There's evidence of everything from
criminal negligence, theft, fraud and breaking and entering, to treason
and second-degree murder. The evidence of criminal negligence is abundant.
One of the goals of the WTO triad is to force open agricultural export
markets, expanding the global trade in agricultural products. But this
doesn't mean alleviating hunger or fulfilling the right to adequate,
nutritious and safe food. It means commercializing staple food crops (the
basis of life) or replacing them with cash crops for exports. It means
targeting growth in the US$545 billion annual trade in agricultural
products while a fifth of the world's population lives in hunger --
including the farmers and agricultural workers who produce the food that
feeds the world. During the five days that the WTO triad met in Hong Kong
an estimated 120,000 people died of hunger and hunger-related illness
around the world. Criminal neglect is also evident in the protracted
discussions on the primacy of pharmaceutical conglomerates' property
rights over the right to essential treatment. Despite the extreme urgency
of the global humanitarian crisis we're facing, the WTO triad fine-tunes
its proposals and plans, letting people die in their tens of thousands
until a commercially viable (that is, profitable) compromise is reached.
There are similar examples concerning public health, water and the
environment, all involving criminal neglect. But the WTO triad not only
fails to address these problems, it systematically prevents governments
from taking appropriate action. In the case of hunger, for example,
governments in the poorest countries are banned from subsidizing local
food production to achieve food self-sufficiency. Instead, food shortages
can only be met through government-financed food imports -- purchasing
"surplus" food on the global market. In other words, governments are
restricted to buying food that's produced, processed and transported by
transnational food conglomerates like Cargill (whose executives'
fingerprints are all over the WTO Agreement on Agriculture). Doesn't that
sound like a criminal racket? It's just one of numerous schemes that
exploit people's vulnerability and insecurity to generate corporate
profit.
Alongside these cases of criminal neglect there's evidence that the WTO
triad is creating a global trade and investment regime that exacerbates
the most serious social and environmental crises we face today. That means
conscious decisions are made -- decisions by powerful people -- placing
corporate profit above human life, with full knowledge that people will
die in their tens of thousands as a result. Simply put, that's
second-degree murder.
It's also clear that virtually all of the government delegations
attending the Hong Kong Ministerial should have been arrested on
returning to their home countries. Why? For aiding and abetting the
crimes perpetuated by the WTO regime. For conspiracy to expand the power
and reach of transnational capital by overseeing far-reaching changes to
national laws and regulations that threaten to undermine the collective
social, economic and cultural rights of the people and inflict irreparable
ecological damage. In several countries there may be a real legal basis
for charging government delegations with violating provisions in the
Constitution, for bypassing elected parliaments, breaking laws on public
disclosure, or acting against the public interest. If condemning a large
part of the population to perpetual poverty and insecurity isn't a crime
or isn't a violation of the Constitution, then it should be.
Legalizing Corporate Crime
The reality is that a continuous series of crimes are committed everyday
by politicians and government officials in the name of the WTO. This
involves changes to national and sub-national laws and regulations to
achieve compliance with WTO rules, even if they are blatantly incompatible
with the government's responsibility towards the public. Every day
hundreds of existing laws and regulations are reviewed and modified to
attain WTO compatibility, while newly drafted laws and policies are
subjected to a "risk assessment" review to ensure that there's no risk of
transgressing WTO commitments.
Take food safety laws, for example. These regulations are quietly
revised to allow higher levels of dioxin in milk (higher than WHO
recommended levels), imported apples are no longer inspected thoroughly
(exposing local varieties to imported diseases), restrictions on
genetically-modified organisms are lifted, food labeling requirements are
weakened, and measures to protect biodiversity undergo technical revisions
that make them both WTO compatible and utterly useless.
At the same time labeling requirements for electronic home appliances
containing radioactive material are relaxed, commercial contracts are
tendered on public water distribution services, local content policies
designed to generate local jobs are quietly withdrawn, and literally
hundreds of other regulatory changes are quietly introduced. Visit the WTO
website and you'll see hundreds of notifications that are not even
disputed in high-profile trade conflicts. They are quietly incorporated
into national and sub-national laws and policies, every single day. In
less than a decade there have been well over 1,500 changes to national
laws to permit greater freedom for foreign capital. Each one of those
changes involves a criminal act -- a conscious decision to violate the
social, economic and cultural rights of the people in the name of
transnational corporate profit.
It's also critical to understand that these crimes have become
institutionalized. Legal changes imposed through WTO commitments are
designed to outlive current governments, locking into place any
government that follows. So while corporate power is transnational, the
commitment of governments to protect this power becomes
trans-generational. Moreover, the changes in national and international
laws imposed under the WTO regime serve to de-criminalize corporate crimes
and grant these criminals perpetual immunity.
Stopping the WTO Crime Spree
Put down the phone. Don't call the cops. This is clearly one problem
that can't be outsourced. It needs direct action -- organized, sustained
and collective. It needs, for example, mass "citizen's arrests" of
delegations returning from WTO negotiations. It needs "arrest warrants" to
be issued for all government officials and corporate executives involved
in these trade deals, with charges of criminal negligence, aiding and
abetting or murder filed against each and every one of them. They must be
put on trial in community-organized "corporate crimes" tribunals or
people's courts. Evidence should be presented, witnesses called. Together
with the WTO Ministerial Declaration, all official documents issued by
governments in support of the WTO must be stamped "Illegal" and collected
and displayed in "Evidence" bags. All laws and regulations changed in the
name of WTO compliance must undergo forensic examination to see if a crime
has been committed, and if so then the "fingerprints" of government
officials and their corporate bosses need to be documented and made
public.
This isn't about imposing law and order or a new kind of community
policing. It's about raising public awareness of the criminality of what
is being done in the name of profit. It's about justice in its true sense
-- freedom from exploitation and oppression. It's about stopping those who
are violating this freedom. It's about giving up the role of passive
witness or victim, and taking action. It's about changing how this story
ends.
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- Hidayat Greenfield is a labour research activist and union organizer
working in East and Southeast Asia.
Source: Znet (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=10475)
https://www.alainet.org/de/node/115796
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- Back to the Scene of the Crime: The WTO after Hong Kong 29/06/2006
- Disneylandia, Doha y la OMC en Hong Kong 08/12/2005
- Disneyland, Doha and the WTO in Hong Kong 03/12/2005
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