CANCUN, Mexico, 12 September 2003 — The WTO ministers groped for consensus here yesterday on key issues holding up a new global trade accord as activists mourned the suicide of a South Korean anti-WTO protester. Delegates from the 146-member World Trade Organization moved ahead with a plenary session and closed door consultations, as well as preparations for welcoming Cambodia and Nepal as new members, undeterred by violent street protests on Wednesday during which a South Korean protester stabbed himself to death.
Around 150 South Korean militants gathered near the barrier where 55-year-old Lee Kyang-hae took his life to protest what he and other militants contend is the damage being done to peasant farmers the world over by the WTO’s corporation-friendly policies. They vowed to commemorate his death through further protest. “It was an act of protest, it was an act of desperation,” said Sohi Jeon, coordinator of South Korean protests here of the suicide.
“His death is not a personal accident but reflects the desperate fighting of 3.5 million Korean farmers,” said Song Nan-sou, president of the Farmers Management Association, one of several South Korean groups taking part in demonstrations at this upmarket Mexican seaside resort.
“We all regret this sad incident,” World Trade Organization Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi said after Lee died in a Cancun hospital. “This self-inflicted wound has resulted in his death, so we do regret it,” he said.
Lee stabbed himself on the sidelines of a protest by several thousand people that ended in clashes between police and a few hundred demonstrators. Several people were injured as police used tear gas and batons to disperse militants who hurled rocks and other projectiles at security forces and tried to force their way through a barrier blocking the route from downtown Cancun to the conference venue.
Demonstrators threw chunks of paving stones, sticks, metal bars and bottles at police, who fought back with batons and tear gas. More than a dozen people were inured as police held off the protesters.
Violent protests have become a staple of international trade and finance meetings since rioting at a WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999. Italian police shot dead a protester at a summit of industrialized nations in Genoa in 2001.
The 146-nation WTO opened its five-day meeting in Cancun with serious divisions on a host of disputes, topped by agricultural subsidies in the United States and Europe.
British development charity Oxfam yesterday called on political leaders at the WTO talks to commit themselves to changing Europe’s agricultural subsidy regime, which it said was biased toward helping the bloc’s richest producers most.
Under heavy police security measures, delegates embarked on a second day of contacts aimed at moving the Doha Development Agenda for free trade, adopted in the Qatari capital Doha, off dead center.
While there are several roadblocks here, the most intensive debate has focused on agriculture and in particular the pace and scope of proposed measures to reduce government assistance to farmers.
Trade distorting agricultural subsidies in rich nations, which cripple the ability of developing country farmers to compete on world markets, cost poor nations an estimated $350 billion a year, according to the World Bank.
Delegations were yesterday conferring with Singapore Trade and Industry Minister George Yeo Yong Bong, the designated “facilitator” for agriculture here. It will be his job to propose a text encompassing - as far as possible - the disparate positions of the WTO membership.
The debate has split the conference into several camps. While the United States and the European Union have pledged to work for the reduction of subsidies, they are still far apart on how quickly such measures should be implemented.
Two other alliances, the 17-member Cairns group of agricultural exporters led by Australia and the Group of 21 developing countries headed by Brazil, China and India, are pressing for deeper and faster cuts in subsidies.