CORDILLERA
PEASANTS, INDIGENOUS LEADERS, JOIN WTO PROTESTS IN HONG KONG
BAGUIO CITY
(December 9) — Peasant delegates and indigenous leaders here in
the Cordillera region will join the Hongkong protests to the World Trade
Organization’s 6th Ministerial Meeting this week amid the pending
negotiations on key issues on agriculture, natural resources, services
and industrial goods which deadlocked in the 5th Ministerial Meeting in
Cancun, Mexico, especially with the protests from developing countries.
Representatives
of the Alyansa dagiti Pesante iti Taeng Kordilyera (APIT-TAKO) or Peasant
Alliance in the Cordillera Homeland and the Cordillera Peoples Alliance
(CPA) will join other delegates worldwide to protest the WTO policies.
In an interview,
CPA Secretary General Windel Bolinget said that the WTO’s policies
have done more harm than good to the country, especially to agricultural
sector with the liberalization of agriculture.
APIT TAKO’s Fernando Mangili added that the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
government’s subservience to the WTO’s policies has made her
all the more unpopular among the Cordillera peasants.
“Both
the WTO and the GMA should both be junked”, he added. WTO policies
have brought about the influx of cheap agricultural products, which has
especially affected Cordillera peasants, who cannot compete with the cheap
products from abroad, especially with the lack of government subsidy to
agriculture.
Cordillera
women’s group Innabuyog-Gabriela, along with other women’s
organizations worldwide, will also join the protests.
The
Doha Agreement
Also up for discussion at the Ministerial is the Doha Development Agenda
which includes the mandated review of the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPS), the renegotiation of the Agreement on Agriculture
(AoA) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), as well as
negotiations on non-agricultural market access (NAMA).
Protests against
the WTO already took place in some parts of the globe prior to the Ministerial,
as past WTO agreements only served to strengthen the monopoly power of
the world largest corporations, many of which are based in the US.
No benefits
A report by the IBON Databank states that trade liberalization has not
benefited the world poorest people, but has driven them deeper into poverty.
IBON research
show that labor conditions and job insecurity have worsened since the
country’s membership to the WTO. From 1995 to 2004, 6 firms closed
per day, displacing some 164 workers
Workers face
growing joblessness, job insecurity and worsening labor conditions under
the country’s trade liberalization regime and membership to the
World Trade Organization (WTO).
A Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI) survery reports that among
its members, 56 firms closed, displacing 80,319 workers while 29 firms
were forced to downsize their workforce resulting in 4,019 jobs lost from
1995 to April 2001. This means that during the first seven years of the
country’s WTO membership, 32 FPI workers a day lost their jobs because
of trade liberalization.
It can be recalled
that The 4th and 5th Ministerials in Seattle and Cancun collapsed due
to massive protest from developing countries.*** AT Bengwayan |