Antitrade activists face tough sell

Lively salsa tunes blared from a flatbed truck outside the Paris stock exchange, concession stands did brisk business in spicy sausage sandwiches, and thousands of people milled around in the bright autumn sunshine as they unfurled their banners.

"WTO - global pillage" read one. "We are not a commodity" declared another.

But despite the glorious weather, turnout for Saturday's demonstration here against the World Trade Organization meeting in Doha, Qatar, was disappointing. Similar protests across Europe over the weekend also drew only a few thousand people each.

In the wake of Sept. 11, these are difficult days for the anti-globalization movement. Calls that inspired hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Genoa last July, at a summit of rich country leaders, are today less widely heeded.

"We have to fight the same battle for public attention as anyone else," says George Monbiot, an English anthropologist and author who has become a leading light of the movement in Europe. "It is very hard to focus public attention on anything except the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan."

Anti-globalizers, however, are putting a brave face on what they say is only a temporary eclipse. In the long run, they insist, the attacks on New York and Washington only point up the need to create a more just and equitable world.

"The struggle for a fairer, more united world, more respectful of human beings, is one of the surest defenses against the blind hatred and fanaticism of the terrorists," argued a flyer handed out at the protest.

They are not the only ones who believe that the events of Sept. 11 should work to their advantage. Supporters of globalization, who want the WTO's 142 members to launch a new round of negotiations to liberalize world trade in Doha, see the meeting as their response to terrorism.

"By promoting the WTO's agenda," US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said in a recent speech, "these 142 nations can counter the revulsive destructionism of terrorism."

Mr. Zoellick is leading the US delegation to the Doha conference, which closes this evening, in a bid to recover from the disaster that befell the WTO at its last summit in Seattle in December 1999.

At that meeting, an attempt to launch a new round of trade negotiations collapsed - victim of acrimonious disputes between rich and poor countries and tumultuous demonstrations outside.

This time, such demonstrations are impossible: The Qatari authorities - pleading lack of hotel space - have allowed only 300 or so nongovernmental organizations to send one representative each. However, the talks themselves, are no less contentious. The European Union yesterday refused to accept an end to farming export subsidies, putting the 15-nation bloc at odd with the US.

At the same time, a new mood is abroad in the anti-globalization movement, that mass protests, especially violent ones, are no longer appropriate.

Page: 1 | 2