May 2000
Making waves inside and outside the ADB Meeting in Chiang Mai Thailand.
By Philip Cunningham

Article is here
 

PREFACE BY PAUL

I include this article for several reasons:

(1) As I write this the summit in Okinawa is just a month away.
The even
(2) Even if you read this afterward, the THAI ADB meeting
was about one month ago.

(3) Compared to Thailand, Japan has a very low and
disorganized level of political activism. It would be
nice if there was more discourse here in Japan
on the evils of globalization.  The Okinawa (and Japanese
as a whole) American base probelm is directly related to
the issue of globalisation.  The American government is
NOT here to protect Japan from some imaginary enemy..it is here
to protest American interests.

The reason the Chlean mass murder and would-be "Hitler"
Augusto Pinochet was allowed to return home
to Chile from the UK was because his murders
were committed in defense of Chilean-US business interests,
and there is a lot of evidence that the US may have been directly involved
in his political assasinations.   The US is said
to have pressured the UK to send him back to avoid
the future of possibility of its own former leaders
being arrested (for example, Henry Kissenger)

There is no conflict between what crimes the US committed
or supported to protect its interests in propping up right wing death regimes
in Chile, Guatemala, Turkey, etc. and what the Okinawan bases
are there to protect:  global capitalism and exploitation.

(4) American interests translate as big business interests.  Sometimes
Japanese and American interests converge; sometimes they conpete.
But these interests are NOT the people's interests.

(5) The Japanese goivernment will likely do all it can to prevent
dissent in Okinawa or around Japan during the summit.  This
would be a direct affront to democracy in this suppoesly
democratic country.

(6) I hope the Thai model of creative, non-violent protest will serve as an inspiration
for some activists and progressive-minded people in Japan.

That said, here is the article on what happened in Thailand in May 2000
 

ADB protests
By Philip Cunningham
ÅgGlobalization is killing poor people!Åh
 

That was one of the many protest banners in English held at the anti-ADB
rally in Chiang Mai Thailand a couple of weeks ago, though the use of Thai
writing and Thai slogans apparently irritated some foreign dignitaries.
 

According to the Sunday Nation, one Hong Kong-based western banker who
happened upon the crowd on his way into the hotel complained, ÅgI donÅft
understand what they are protesting about. It would be better if they spoke
English.Åh At least one protester had an answer for that. ÅgFuck you, ADB!Åh
 

There in a nutshell, the clash of cultures in Chiang Mai, as AsiaÅfs banking
elite jetted in for three days of talk at the Westin Hotel while local
protesters representing impoverished farmers and victims of environmental
destruction baked in the hot sun outside.
 

On Sunday, May 7, about 4,000 protesters representing NGOÅfs and poor Thai
villagers marched to the venue where ADB officials met on Sunday. Although
there was pushing and shoving at police blockades, the protests were
peaceful. Key topics included a call to drop irrigation taxes that will
break the back of poor farmers, to stop supporting privatization of health
and education which favors the rich, and to halt environmentally harmful
dams and water treatment projects.
 

Before the conference began, there had been warnings in the local media
about the necessity of police action in response to alleged terrorist
threats, such as the headline ÅgSecurity Alert as CIA Warns of Terrorism.Åh
Although the wagging finger was vaguely pointed at the Burma border, which
is indeed the scene of fierce armed struggle between the Rangoon junta and
student and minority rebels in the forest, the unduly negative spin about
protests in general was quickly perceived by Thai activists as an act of
psychological warfare.
 

Equating protest with violence and terrorism is time-honored tactic to trump
up public feeling against protest and to pre-emptorily justify police abuse.
The Thai protesters ignored the CIA warning and convened any way, though
much time was diverted from the issue of poverty and injustice by having to
negotiate helmeted police lines, road blockades and changing rules of
engagement.
 

Then again, the security men for the powerful bankers had some reason to
nervous about meeting in Thailand, despite the fact that the country is at
peace. After all, former IMF director Michel Camdessus got creamed in the
face with a pie by anti-globalization protesters in Bangkok just last
February. This, despite his comment that Thailand was well on its way Ågto
graduating IMF University Summa Cum Laude.Åh
 

Founded in 1966, the Manila-based ADB, an Asian cousin of the IMF and World
Bank, has a record of funding big projects with dubious benefits to poor
people and the environment. But in the eyes of some Thai bankers, the ADB is
a welcome force because domestic banks are even worse.
 

ÅgCorrupt, inefficient, unable to alleviate povertyÅh Aswin Kongsiri of Thai
Commercial said he supported the ADB because Thai bankers, mostly old family
style cartel banks, failed the country and are too tied up with non
performing loans to serve needs. He has a point there, non performing loans
accounted for 45% of Thai bank borrowing a short time ago. Prime Minister
Chuan Leekpai has lent his support to the conference, as has his finance
minister, Tarrin Nimmananhaemanda, who is a native of Chiang Mai (there is a
street by the university named for his family) and lobbied to have the
conference held in his hometown.
 

But there are Thais, including many natives of the fair city of Chiang Mai,
who beg to differ. The University of Chiang Mai has long been an important
intellectual meeting place in northern Thailand and has a long history of
student activism that ranges from campus protest to active support of
communist guerillas in the jungle. In addition, Universtiy of Chiang Mai
professors include top Thai scholars, many of whom got advanced degrees at
places like Cornell and Berkeley in the late sixties.
Although Thai students today may appear more materialistic compared to the
1970Åfs activists who risked their lives to overthrow a military junta on
October 14, 1973 and joined the armed struggle of the Communist Party of
Thailand in the jungle after the bloody right wing crackdown of October 6,
1976, the spirit of defiance, nationalism and concern for the poor lives on
among ThailandÅfs idealistic youth.
 

ThailandÅfs 1970Åfs generation (which was in effect, ThailandÅfs ÅgsixtiesÅh) has
gradually worked its way into the system, after rejecting the same during
their youth. Many former student activities, even former communist
guerillas, now work for NGOÅfs or work as lawyers, judges, journalists and
academics. ThailandÅfs radical generation experienced up-close the cruelty of
military dictatorship, but then thrust themselves into the arms of the
ineffective CPT which exposed them to the bloody madness of armed struggle,
especially those unlucky enough to have been assigned to Khmer Rouge bases
near the Thai-Cambodian border.
 

Even those who stayed away from the worst of the violence at rear bases in
ChinaÅfs Yunnan Province and Laos, eventually got disenchanted with the
guerilla life not so much for the hardships as they got tired of taking
directives from Beijing and Hanoi. As 1973 student leader Seksan Prasertkul
has aptly said, his generation of student idealists fled the Bangkok
dictatorship only to find another dictatorship in the jungle.
 

Bashed about by the fierce currents of Sino-Soviet rivalry, (echoed most
cruelly in the Cambodian split with Vietnam) the CPT collapsed. Around the
same time, with President CarterÅfs urging, Thai military strongman Kriangsak
released student activists from prison and the Bangkok government started to
entice the best and brightest to return home from the jungle under various
amnesty plans.
In the twenty years since, the word NGO has replaced CPT as a model of
social change, and as a result, Thailand has some of the most impressive and
active NGOÅfs that can be found anywhere, with groups formed to defend the
rights of the disenfranchised ranging from paddy farmers to prostitutes to
AIDs patients.
 

The patient, peaceful struggle to root out social injustice, a glimpse of
which we can see in spirited protests in Chiang Mai today, is alive and
kicking. Many of the 38 organizations gathered to oppose the pro-elite
policies of the ADB have been quietly trying to make Thailand a better place
despite the onslaught of global capitalism and domestic disparities in power
and wealth. Educating ordinary folks about health, consumer issues, the
protection of law, preservation of the environment is an uphill struggle in
a political culture, not unlike that of Mexico, where power, abetted by
violence, often rules. The decades long struggle to make Thailand more
democratic likewise faces stiff opposition from a moneyed and landed elite
that clings to feudal privileges.
 

The student and NGO activists are clearly encouraged by the protests held
against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and the recent World
Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. So there is, in
loose terms, encouragement to be found in global currents of dissent and
grassroots anger at the amoral behavior of big money and its backers.
 

The suits in Washington and New York, anxious to forget the recent American
grassroots challenge to their air-conditioned, board-room worldview will pay
scant attention to the protests outside because the American media is not
doing its job in covering this important event. Apparently CNNÅfs idea of
international coverage is to avoid using the term ÅgforeignÅh and hire
announcers with British or foreign accents. (There was a fleeting report
about Chiang Mai done with an Anglo accent from a studio in Bangkok. BBC,
which restricts itself to British accents, had nothing on Chiang Mai at the
time of writing.) But even if the global media is asleep at the wheel, US
politico-financers will surely take note of the Chiang Mai Initiative,
because the real terror they face is not the spectre of suffering on the
part of faraway farmers or fishermen, but Japan.
 

Tokyo has sent itÅfs A-team to Chiang Mai to persuade other Asian nations
that the time for an Asian Monetary Fund has come, a move the US thwarted in
1997 when the Asian financial crisis hit. On Sunday May 7, American
displeasure notwithstanding, the Chiang Mai Initiative was announced. This
pan-Asian currency swap plan, heavily lobbied for by Minister Kiichi
Miyazawa and JapanÅfs unsuccessful candidate for the International Monetary
Fund leadership, Mr. Yen or Eisuke Sakakibara, threatens US hegemony and IMF
clout in a way that no angry farmer or dispossessed fisher can.
This rift among the worldÅfs big money elite was not lost on the protesters,
who deftly captured the dance of big finance from Tokyo and Washington in a
skit with Uncle Sam and a man in kimono engaged in a tug of war with three
big letters reading ADB. They pulled back and forth to the roar of the crowd
and then everyone fell down.
 

Over the weekend, ADB President Tadao Chino was presented with a list of
protester demands, though Thai protesters did not get close enough to their
own prime minister, Chuan Leekpai, to give him a letter as well. The
alliance of protesters called on the ADB to reduce the indebtedness of poor
nations, reduce support of governments that exploit the poor and halt the
environmentally unsound Klongdan wastewater treatment project in Samut
Prakan on the Gulf of Siam.
 

ADBÅfs directive to privatize health care is being opposed by representatives
of ThailandÅfs huge HIV-aids infected community, an estimated 800,000 of whom
are surviving with state medical aid. Several hundred Aids patients joined
the protests, forming a so-called Ågliving cemeteryÅh to bring attention to
their plight. Other privatization projects, such as charging poor farmers
for irrigation water are also being met with fierce opposition at the
grass-roots level.
 

The 200 kilometer long Samut Prakan wastewater pipe funded by ADB before
environmental laws were in effect will ÅgserveÅh some 4000 factories in the
province by dumping the waste in the ocean near a mangrove swamp in
Klongdan. Supporters of the project say it is too late to comply with new
environmental regulations now that the plant is partly built and the land
has been acquired. (Among the unanswered questions about the dubious
wastewater plant is its unlikely location which was acquired at suspiciously
high prices from regional landlords) Asked about the environmental damage,
Science and Technology Minister Athit Urairat said he had nothing to do with
the deal and plead bureaucratic powerlessness saying, ÅgI cannot get the
money back.Åh
 

NGOs such as Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance are not
satisfied with the governmentÅfs unwillingness to correct its mistakes and
see impact of huge wastewater treatment facility as damaging to environment,
fishing and coastal residents.
 

One serious concern is that even if wastewater is adequately treated for
biological wastes, chemical and heavy metal pollutants will flow into the
mangrove swamp and the sea unguarded. This is serious in a country with lax
law enforcement and few consumer safeguards. One heartbreaking story in
press recently tracks fate of poor kids and scrap metal collectors who came
across a case of illegally dumped cobalt 60, a substance so toxic that it
has led to one death and several lingering radiation injuries without
adequate medical care while the fat cats responsible continue to attend gala
society functions.
 

ThailandÅfs English daily The Nation quotes ADB Environment Manager Warren
Evans as saying Ågthe process of wastewater treatment in Samut Prakan is the
most cost effective, most technologically effectiveÅh approach. Typical of
the top-down thinking behind the project is the argument that piping in a
huge volume of effluent from upriver factories makes sense because Klongdan
is relatively underpopulated. Or to put it another way, until recently, the
poor fishing folk of Klongdan had no voice on the national stage. If ADB
continues to fund this controversial project and give it its blessings of
"foreign expert wisdom", some 30,000 residents who depend on fishing for
main and secondary income will see the fresh water channels and brackish
waters teeming with shrimp, cockleshells, striped mussels, sea crabs and
squid hit with 500,000 cubic meters of wastewater containing toxic sludge.