CANCUN, Mexico, 11 September 2003 — Thousands of farmers and anti-globalization activists in Asia, Europe and in Cancun itself yesterday staged protests as the World Trade Organization started a five-day meeting in the Mexican seaside resort. About 30 protesters, who managed to gain access to the conference, jeered as officials delivered their opening speeches.

Holding aloft banners that read: “WTO anti-development,” the protesters chanted slogans denouncing the trade body. Another group of about 20 stood outside the convention center where the conference was held, calling for inexpensive medicine to be made available to poor countries.

Mexican authorities mobilized 20,000 security forces and deployed two navy frigates just offshore to prevent protesters from disrupting the ministerial meeting. Thousands of non-governmental organizations, farmers, students and members of the Zapatist National Liberation Army (EZLN) gathered in Cancun for a series of protests, and planned to stage a march outside the barricaded convention center yesterday.

Interior Minister Santiago Creel pledged to respect freedom of expression, but warned at the same time that “we will ensure respect of the law.” Protesters have organized a countersummit in the center of Cancun, about 10 kilometers away from the posh hotel area. Marcos, the elusive, masked leader of the EZLN, a group fighting for indigenous Mexicans’ rights, sent a message from his Chiapas hide-out, claiming that globalization “is nothing but a worldwide machine that is fed with blood and defecates dollars.”

In Bangalore, about 5,000 Indian farmers demanded that rich nations slash their trade-distorting farm subsidies. The protesters, assembled at a park named after Indian freedom champion Mahatma Gandhi, staged a mock hanging to symbolize their plight.

In Manila, riot police used shields and clubs to disperse hundreds of demonstrators marching on the Philippine presidential palace to protest the Cancun conference.

Some 1,000 Bangladeshis took to the streets of Dhaka in at least three separate protests against the WTO, saying rich countries were trying to impose their will on poor ones.

In France, protesters, including anti-corporatist icon Jose Bove who was prevented by a judge from traveling to Cancun, held a counter-summit at a southwestern village that goes by the name of Cancon.

In Athens, Greenpeace activists protested outside the US embassy, to denounce what they called Washington’s determination to impose genetically modified organisms.

Many of the complaints are familiar from previous international gatherings. But with agriculture at the heart of disputes at the summit, activists have been focusing their attention on farm trade.

Deeply divided over the make-or-break issue of farm subsidies, rich and poor countries began five days of talks aimed at preparing the ground for a deal to tear down barriers to global trade. Progress at the meeting in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun would be a shot in the arm for the still-fragile world economy.

Stalemate would encourage governments to strike deals with each other, sapping the strength of the multilateral trading system overseen by the WTO and possibly splitting the world into rival blocs.

“Failure is not an option. It would send a very damaging signal around the world about prospects for economic recovery and would result in more hardship for workers around the globe, particularly in poorer countries,” said Supachai Panitchpakdi, a Thai who is the WTO’s director general.

Supachai has the Herculean task of reconciling the conflicting interests of the WTO’s 146 members so they can meet a self-imposed deadline of agreeing a new round of market-opening measures by the end of 2004.

At the heart of the negotiations is the vexed issue of agriculture, and two days of preliminary skirmishes showed why the talks have crawled along since they were launched in Doha, the Qatari capital, in November 2001.