More than 10,000 people are expected to turn out to protest trade issues in Hong Kong

By Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


BRUSSELS -(Dow Jones)- Six years ago, trade unionists led 40,000 protesters out onto the streets of Seattle, confronting tear gas-wielding riot police and torpedoing World Trade Organization talks.


This month as the WTO reconvenes in Hong Kong, many of the same trade unionists will be fighting again - but for trade talks to succeed. They are among a number of organizations that are waging their arguments about free trade inside the halls of the talks, rather than outside on the streets.


"I don't believe in throwing stones at the World Trade Organization," says Guy Ryder, the soft spoken secretary general of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Before Ryder took his current job, members of the confederation helped lead the 1999 Seattle protests.


Now, he says, his group's position is that international organizations should deal with trade issues in "a rational way."


Plenty of vehement anti-free-trade protesters remain. More than 10,000 people are expected to turn out to protest trade issues in Hong Kong.


Many international organizations, however, have moved toward trying to shape trade rules to meet their priorities, rather than disrupt the talks.


A number of onetime opposition groups now see trade talks, and the WTO itself, as a means to tackle poverty in developing countries. If they are angry these days, it's at the rich countries for not doing enough to open up their markets, rather than for pursuing more open market at all. Many groups say their message is being listened to by a growing number of WTO members.


The conservation group the World Wide Fund for Nature, once a vocal opponent of global trade, says its work with members of the WTO has brought it some of its biggest successes.


By lobbying the WTO's members, the WWF says it has secured a text that means trade deals must take into account environmental concerns. By working within the WTO, it is also hoping to rush debate about cutting funds paid to fishermen around the world - a leading cause, according to the WWF, of overfishing.


"We used perhaps to be more aggressive about publicizing our concerns and using that as a bat to beat the WTO," says Gordon Shepherd, director of international policy at the WWF. "Fair trade and market access will always be on the agenda. Trade is linked to the development pattern in the developing countries. If that doesn't happen, then everyone is going to suffer," he said.


Environmental lobby group Greenpeace has also become adept at working within the corridors. Even as the group prepares a stinging critique of trade talks that favor money over environmental concerns, their tactic is to "work within existing power dynamics and start discussions with countries such as Brazil, which are moving to the front of the talks," said Daniel Mittler, trade policy advisor for Greenpeace International.


Such pro-trade activists fear a collapse of talks in Hong Kong similar to that of Seattle. That would discredit the WTO, they warn, and open the way to alternatives that could be bad news for poor countries and workers. "We are not in the anti-globalization movement today," says Ryder of his group.


As a result, activist groups who work with rather than against the WTO say they want protests to be peaceful.


"There will be some who want violence but there will be a lot of pressure from us to not take that road," said Phil Bloomer, campaign director at Oxfam, one of the most established activist groups lobbying for developing countries.


Seattle's protests aimed at the WTO were followed by riots during the World Bank meeting in Prague in September 2000. In July 2001, police killed a protester during marches on a meeting of the G-8 group of leading economic countries in Genoa, Italy. Anti-globalization riots ransacked London's financial center and spread to Nice, Quebec and Gothenburg in late 2000 and early 2001.


When trade negotiators meet again in Hong Kong, water privatization will still be on the table, and deforestation in Brazil is likelier than ever as the country readies to farm and export beef and soybeans on a massive scale. But the original protest movement has forced trading nations to promise they will consider the needs of poor countries, also diminishing the incentive for protests by some organizations.


"Most of us either got older and got kids and jobs, or woke up and realized that this was a completely woolly philosophical agenda and that we needed to get real and figure out what to do to actually achieve anything," said Mark Lynas, a 32-year-old British climate change expert and author based in Oxford.


He had previously participated in anti-capitalism street battles in London around the time of the Seattle riots. Now, he says, "We'd come across so extreme that we were alienating all the people who could have been on our side."


Groups trying to affect global economic issues - especially poverty - also have found more sophisticated media strategies.


Oxfam now has Hollywood stars, music icons and sports legends tour the world with its message pressing rich countries to give up their trade barriers to help poorer countries. Actors Minnie Driver and Antonio Banderas, rock singer Alanis Morissette and pop group REM draw crowds when they promote Oxfam's trade agenda.


Ryder's trade union movement insists labor rights such as minimum wages and retraining should be enshrined in trade deals. And while Ryder's umbrella organization preaches cooperation and lobbying in the corridors of power rather than confrontation, some trade unions are still expected to take a hard line against global trade.


"We are proud to be protectionist. Our message to our government negotiators is, don't give away our trade laws that protect us," says Gary Hubbard, a Washington-based spokesman for United Steel Workers, the largest industrial trade union in North America.


But while the USW was among the most vocal in Seattle, tipping Chinese-made bicycles into the harbor and launching street marches, the union will not travel to Hong Kong, Hubbard said.


Activists such as Ryder and Oxfam who fundamentally support the existence of the WTO have fierce critics among anti-globalization die-hards such as the international farmers' movement, Via Campesina (the Peasant Way).


Via Campesina's icon and spokesman on trade is Frenchman Jose Bove, who rose to fame after ransacking a McDonald's restaurant in 1999 near his farm in southern France in protest against globalization. Via Campesina argues for the right of countries to feed themselves and block off imports as they see fit. "We have our differences with Oxfam. We want the WTO to drop any mention of trade in agriculture and food," the 52-year old farmer said in a telephone interview as he was heading to anti-farm trade protests in Korea and Hong Kong.


But protesters such as Bove are becoming rarer. Bernard Kuiten, a 40-year-old Dutch WTO official who started working with NGOs after Seattle, says activist groups have found that influencing the WTO's delegates is more effective than seeking to end the WTO. "The NGOs realized that if you continue your line that the WTO kills people and find that no one is listening to you anymore, you may want to change your line," he said.


-By Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck, Dow Jones Newswires; +32-2-741-1487; [email protected]


(Gordon Fairclough in Seoul contributed to this report.)





(END) Dow Jones Newswires


December 12, 2005 13:48 ET (18:48 GMT)


Copyright (c) 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.


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