G20 Exludes poor countries and pushes business as usual, Small farmers demand system change
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- Published on Thursday, 18 November 2010 14:55
LA VIA CAMPESINA PRESS RELEASE
(Seoul, NOV 18, 2010) The G20i just concluded its Summit in Seoul, Korea where they professed to discuss solutions to the global financial crisis. Claiming to be the forum for global economic governance, these 20 countries are making decisions that will affect the whole world, while excluding majority of the countries, which also happen to be the poorest.
The G20’s agenda is driven by corporate capital as evidenced by the G20 Seoul Business Summit where around 120 top global CEO’s met with G20 leaders to discuss corporate priorities. In contrast, civil society and social movement representatives voicing people’s demands and priorities were not allowed into Korea. The Korean government effectively prevented the democratic participation of civil society and social movement representatives from abroad by denying visas and by forcibly deporting others.
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CLOC: Solidarity With the People and Their Struggles
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- Published on Thursday, 11 November 2010 15:47
Quito, Ecuador, October 8-16, 2010
Since September 11, 2001, with the fall of the twin towers, the USA has dealt a planetwide blow, and American power has become a global state of domination. It imposes on the planet a strategy of violent repression that employs diverse mechanisms such as open war, the wars on drugs, terror, and crime, paramilitarism, and humanitarian aid for disaster relief. In this way, social struggles and movements are criminalized.
With this end, American military bases have been expanded and cooperative operations between the US, NATO, and the police and armed forces of our countries have been reinforced. At the same time, we see on our continent the resurgence of groups determined to incite coups, who had success in Honduras due to the strong support of the United States, but who were defeated by popular mobilization in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. The organizations of CLOC will remain mobilized and on alert to impede new groups of this kind.
OBAMA INDIA VISIT: Demands Market Access at the Cost of Indian Farmers
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- Published on Tuesday, 09 November 2010 17:36
New Delhi: Mr. Barak Obama is in New Delhi today, to seek greater market access for the American agricultural goods in India. What the US couldn’t achieve through the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, Mr. Obama would try to get that through a bilateral deal with India. Today, the Bhartiya Kissan Unions staged a massive demonstration at the Parliament Street in Delhi protesting against Obama’s visit to India and his agenda to sign bilateral agricultural and trade deals to facilitate takeover of Indian agriculture by the US multinationals.
The United States is pushing India for removing all barriers in the way of US exports to India and we are quite sure that Mr. Obama’s would secure this today, without making any commitment towards reduction in US farm subsidies, especially in cotton, which India has been demanding during the 9 years of Doha negotiations. The increased market access to agricultural goods of the United States would be disastrous for the Indian farmers who had suffered a lot in the last 15 years of WTO regime due to the dumping of subsidized cotton from US which resulted in sharp fall in cotton prices and increased farmers suicide in the cotton belt of India
Civil society not welcomed in G20 Seoul
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- Published on Monday, 08 November 2010 14:41
Press Release
(Seoul, 8 November 2010) International civil society organisations, members of Our World is not for Sale1, trade unions and the international peasant movement La Via Campesina2 condemn the deportation by the Korean government of seven activists from the Philippines3 who had been granted visas. Furthermore, other progressive activists from Asian and African countries were unjustifiably denied visas.
The list of individuals, mostly civil society leaders from developing countries, prohibited from entry, was based not on concrete evidence of actual threat or histories of dangerous acts, but instead on the goal of preventing their participation in civil society events critical of the G20, particularly the International Conference organized by Put People First!-Korean People's G20 Response Action.
