BOMBAY, 22 January 2004 — Drums rolled as thousands of people, from Tibetan monks in maroon robes to tribespeople with feathers in their hair, gathered for an anti-war march in Bombay as a huge anti-globalization meeting wound down yesterday.
Punching their fists in the air, the screaming protesters vented their fury against the war in Iraq with slogans such as “No war, George Bush terrorist” and placards saying “US/UK troops out of Iraq now” and “Bush, Blair Butchers.”
“It was an unjust war. I am very angry with the US. So many people died in Iraq and I believe this rally will make a difference. It will drive out the US and UK troops from Iraq,” said South Korean anti-war activist Moon Myung-joo.
The fourth World Social Forum, designed to steal some thunder from the World Economic Forum, wrapped up just as business and political leaders began their talks in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
But all the sound and fury from the forum delegates did not produce any declaration or action plan after a six-day meeting that discussed an alphabet soup of issues from AIDS to WTO.
“We are against the occupation in Iraq, we are against war, we are for freedom for all the people in the world,” Vittorio Agnoletto, a member of the organizing committee, told a news conference.
Anti-globalization protests have been gathering steam since violent demonstrations in Seattle in 1999, with protesters challenging mainstream politicians on everything from genetically modified food to free trade and immigration — issues that have bedeviled the World Trade Organization.
The World Social Forum delegates brought traffic to a halt in Bombay as the march wound through narrow roads, carrying a black effigy of US President George W. Bush that they stomped on at the end of the march.
“Live and let live. That is my motto,” said Indian gay rights activist Ganesh. “We’re asking for peace. We condemn war,” he said as tribespeople in sarongs danced behind him. The protest capped almost a week of discussions at the forum where about 100,000 people, from trade unionists and Buddhist nuns to lower caste Indians and French farmers, mobilized opinion on global trade, caste and alternative sexuality. Bush-bashing was a recurring theme of the carnival-like event. Garbage bins were plastered with photographs of Bush and T-shirts with rude messages about the US leader being sold.
Apart from war, big business also came under attack from French sheep farmer Jose Bove, who has become a standard-bearer in the challenge to “economic imperialism”, as well as South Korean labor leaders and former bonded laborers from India.
Organizers banned global brands, including Coke and Pepsi from the conference to make a statement about multinationals and the conference’s computers ran on Linux, a free operating system. Among the star attractions at the forum were Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, a leading critic of globalization. “This was a tremendous gathering,” said Talat Ahmed, a socialist worker from Britain. “The central principle of this rally is to oppose war, neo-liberalism and imperialism.”
