by Ranee Hassarungsee*
Every time I walk past the roadside lines of policemen and military men placed there to deal directly with protesters, I feel a stirring of anxiety and apprehension. Many of my NGO friends who shared my experience in marching and demonstrating against national dictators in the past 20 years have the same feelings. Our generation shares a painful history and we simply do not want any more violence. Yet, we have to continue to struggle against recurring injustice.
The street protests during the UNCTAD X conference over a month ago were not so worrisome. We were there to raise our voices in order to let the general public and representatives of governments attending the conference know how ordinary people were adversely affected by the dealings of supranational organizations, the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF, in the name of globalization.
The rally called by 38 people’s organizations in Chiang Mai this time, however, was altogether a different ball game. It resembled a declaration of war against the forces of world domination by all capitalist multilateral institutions, with the Asian Development Bank as a concrete manifestation of such forces. The rallying cries were aimed at exposing to the Thai public and the world community the hypocritical manner in which such institutions interfere in the national decision-making processes to serve their own interests. By attaching particular types of economic and social reforms as conditionalities to their loans which, ostensibly, were extended to alleviate the hardships faced by the people in a time of economic crisis, they have effectively barred the people from putting forward their own national policy options. There is no way out of this situation except confrontation and retaliation.
I can thoroughly understand the people’s sentiment. At the rally in Chiang Mai, I met villagers from all over the country, those who were directly affected by the various dams in the Northeast, small coastal fishers from the South struggling against state support for large commercial fishing fleets, alternative agriculture farmers’ groups from all four regions who were keen to protect their natural resource base. I had met them before in their own home villages, but this time they all gathered here in one place. It could have been a great get- together party and it would be a lot of fun if only we had something to celebrate.
In reality, I had to hide my tears while listening to heart-rending stories told by HIV-positive people who were there in force from neighbouring provinces of the North. Their own hardships could not compare with their deep concerns for their children’s future who would sooner or later be orphaned. Their lives were so precarious and fragile, especially when access to appropriate medical care was a constant struggle.
It was indeed not surprising to me that these HIV-positive groups of people volunteered themselves as frontliners in this war. They joined the students in directly blocking the entrance to the ADB Annual Meeting venue.
The students, on the other hand, represented to me a newly revived force for social struggle. My friends and I were once like them, young and innocent but sincerely committed to changing the world and truly believing that they could.
As one who had experienced blood and tears in the streets before and learned some painful lessons, I could only look for ways to minimize the potential damage of such a struggle when the all powerful resort to violent means to suppress the demands from the powerless. Legitimacy must be removed from such action by the state.
Coordination with the representatives of the international NGO Forum on the ADB who were on the inside of the meeting venue was one such initiative to relieve rising tensions in the streets. Many NGO friends from Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries came out to offer their support to the thousands of the Thai people waiting outside for the ADB’s response to their demands. Their voices blended with the chorus of the people’s voices; the many coloured roses they carried were pressed into the hands of the people’s representatives. A warm feeling of solidarity was created and a sense of desperation thus lessened. More importantly, the protesters on the outside of the fence gained greater legitimacy for their action.
The ADB executives have now gone home in the comfort of their limousines and first class airline seats, having managed to extend the deadline for responding to the people’s demands for a little longer. For the Thai people, Chiang Mai is just the beginning of a struggle of the people’s movement against the dominating global institutions.
* Ranee Hassarungsee is a staff member of the Micro-Macro Issues Linking Programme at Focus on the Global South. She works specifically on development policy issues in Thailand.