Repression in Oaxaca: One Year Anniversary of State’s Bloody Attack on Popular Movements

There's an Aztec legend of a warrior who was in love with a princess. When he left to go into battle, the lovers promised each other eternal love. The warrior died in battle, but to fulfill his promise to the princess, he came back as a brilliant orange flower. That flower now graces Flamboyan trees throughout Latin America. Another Flamboyan legend speaks of the struggle of the Puerto Rican people against colonial domination.

On Sunday, June, 10, 2007, under a Flamboyan tree, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) held a press conference to announce the liberation of one of the leaders of the year-long popular struggle for social and economic justice in Oaxaca. Marcelino Coache Verano, secretary general of the free union of Oaxaca municipal workers, had been arrested, severely beaten, and held for six months in prison before he was released on May 31, with all charges against him dismissed.

The press conference kicked off a week of actions to commemorate the brutal June 14, 2006 attack by 1,000 armed police against people peacefully demonstrating in support of the demands of some 70,000 teachers for higher wages, improvement of school buildings, and better resources for children. A teacher typically earns the equivalent of $220 every two weeks, and must purchase school supplies herself. Although the Mexican constitution guarantees free education, mothers have to pay registration fees.

State governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz sent in state police, accompanied by dogs, who viciously attacked the sleeping teachers and supporters. They tear-gassed everyone in the vicinity, including pregnant women and children; one woman miscarried as a result. Ninety-two people were wounded. Members of the community reacted with outrage, fighting back with anything they could find. They chased the police from the square, and re-established the camp.

On June 17, several hundred local organizations came together to form the APPO, comprising almost 350 different civil organizations working in areas of indigenous issues, sustainable community development, human rights, and social justice. APPO demanded that Governor Ulises Ruiz step down. Meanwhile, the movement continued to grow, with large but peaceful demonstrations. On August 1, hundreds of women marched, and when denied air time by the government radio station, occupied the station and broadcast their position themselves.

Throughout this period, police raids, beatings, and shooting continued. On October 28, four people were killed, including indymedia journalist and U.S. citizen Brad Will and a Mexican teacher, Emilio Alonso Fabian.

The Mexican government sent in the Federal Preventive Police. On November 25, they appeared in full riot gear and encircled the entire area, firing tear gas. As people fled, many were arrested and beaten. Among the prisoners were some simply on their way to work or to the market place that morning. One hundred seventy people were arrested that day, and most were taken to the far away prison of Nayarit. Thirty four were women, and five were minors.

At various times during the seven month period, nearly 1,500,000 teachers, workers, professors and artists, many of them Indigenous people, occupied Oaxaca's main plaza. Although the movement crystallized to support the striking teachers, the frustration of the people resulted from deep economic and social problems the government has aggravated and allowed to fester. These problems that have harmed workers were exacerbated by NAFTA and the Bush administration's neoliberal policies. The majority of the population of Oaxaca is Indigenous, most of whom live in extreme poverty.

Last week, I participated in a human rights delegation of lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the National Association of Democratic Lawyers in Mexico to investigate alleged violations of international law by police against the people of Oaxaca during the past year. We met with lawyers, workers and prisoners.

Coache Verano related how he and three other activists had been arrested in Mexico City, on their way to meet with government officials to negotiate an end to the strife. They were stripped naked, beaten, and guards walked on their backs. Coache Verano's finger was broken. One of the other men was released with Coache Verano. The other two, including APPO leader Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, remain in custody. Coache Verano's wife and young children told us how they were terrorized for months with death threats and shots fired at their home.

The two prisoners we interviewed at the Tlacolula prison, about 20 miles outside of Oaxaca, also described how they were beaten by police. Flabiano Juárez Hernández was not part of the demonstration. He was working in the market near the plaza when he was arrested on November 20 and charged with auto theft, a crime considered so serious, there is no possibility of bail. The blows to his head required several stitches and left a scar. Juárez Hernández is indigenous and doesn't speak fluent Spanish; yet he was denied the services of an interpreter.

Wilbert Ramon Aquino Aragón is a worker who participated in the demonstrations on November 20 and 25. On January 10, he was arrested for the attempted murder of a taxi driver he never met. He was told he would be released if he identified people in police photographs. Since he refused, he continues to be held at Tlacolula. The police beat Aquino Aragón so badly he is scheduled for surgery next week. His head bears scars from the blows the police dealt.

Twenty year-old Pedro Garibo Pérez was not involved in the demonstration. Yet on November 20, he was arrested and kept face down for 6 hours with his leg on a hot muffler. The 20 centimeter burn on his leg was left unattended for more than two and a half months. When lawyers finally were able to visit him, they saw a large areas of exposed raw flesh on his leg. As a result of their demands, he finally received medical attention. Garibo Pérez spent 10 days in the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a hematoma and received a skin graft.

A 50-year-old widow named Aurelia was working as a maid inside a house on November 25, and didn't know what was happening outside. She had just left work when they arrested her a half a block away. She was walking down the street and saw people running all over the place. The police started firing tear gas at everyone. She said, "I felt myself asphyxiating and my eyes filled with tears. I couldn't move. I was so scared."

The police grabbed Aurelia by the hair, cursed at her and kicked her. They forced her and several other women to kneel for two hours on the cobblestone. Then they were thrown into a truck in a pile, "like animals, with their hands and feet tied." Many were crying out that they could not feel their legs. The police officers responded, "You may as well die you old hags."

Aurelia had to sleep on a cement block in a cold room with no blanket. "Later that night," Aurelia said, "you could hear the men screaming nearby. I thought about my family members who were there yelling, beaten." Many of the women were beaten; some had head injuries.

They were flown to Nayarit and held there for 21 days. During that time, the women heard nothing about the men or the rest of their families.

The treatment to which these people were subjected violates the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which I explain in my book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. Three of the techniques used by the police in Oaxaca apparently originated in the United States. They include terrorizing people with ferocious dogs, threats to throw prisoners from helicopters into the sea, and a humiliation technique of denying toilet privileges, leaving people to defecate in their pants.

Nine men remain in custody. There are only 13 lawyers representing the 350 people who still have charges pending against them. Many of the lawyers have suffered some form of harassment, including threats, beatings, and sexual harassment. Five inmates were made to sign statements denouncing lawyer Yésica Sánchez Maya, president of the Mexican League for Defense of Human Rights (LIMEDDH), in exchange for their release from prison. The 29-year-old Sánchez Maya, a passionate and effective leader of the movement, told us she knows she might be arrested at any moment. She remains unbowed.

The International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights concluded that 20 people have been illegally executed in the past few months. APPO has documented 29 who have been assassinated and 100 tortured throughout this struggle. The murders have been carried out by paramilitary or parapolice groups presumably linked to the state government.

On March 14, 2007 Mexico's National Human Rights Commission reported that 12 people had been killed and documented 1,600 rights violations. The Commission demanded that the Senate punish the killings and other human rights abuses in Oaxaca. APPO criticized the report for overlooking killings and failing to implicate Ruiz.

Mexican Supreme Court Justice minister Juan Silva Meza said on May 28 that federal, state and municipal authorities committed grave civil rights violations during the Oaxaca conflict. Silva Meza recommended that the Court create a committee to investigate the responsible public officials.

Lawyers for LIMEDDH and APPO have filed deununcias against Ruiz, the president of Mexico, and the attorney general, seeking to remove Ruiz and hold them criminally accountable. The charges include assassination, torture, forced disappearance, and denial of justice. These requests have not been acted upon although a special prosecutor was named, (who is not independent) and the Supreme Court has indicated its intention to form a committee to investigate.

Marcelino Coache Verano has his freedom for now. But, he told the reporters, "there is no freedom for us if there isn't freedom for our comrades. There is no justice until those responsible for the assassinations and torture are brought to justice."

The government has criminalized the social movement. And the problems underlying the struggle remain unsolved. But like the Flamboyan tree, the movement in Oaxaca will continue to flower. "I never went to the marches before," Aurelia said, "but now after what the government has done to me, I'll be there to show my support. I don't know what the APPO is because I've never been to anything that has to do with APPO, but now I'm going to support them. I've heard of the teachers and I'll support them too, now, because it hurt so much what the government did to me."

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The New Civil Rights Movement

In a wave of mass protest not seen since the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand justice for the undocumented. An unprecedented alliance between labor unions, immigrant support groups, churches, and Spanish-language radio and television has fueled the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The demonstrations were triggered by the confluence of a draconian House bill that would make felons out of undocumented immigrants and HBO's broadcast of Edward James Olmos's film, "Walkout." But the depth of discontent reflects a history of discrimination against those who are branded "illegal aliens."

Since September 11, 2001, immigrants have become the whipping boys for the "war on terror." Calls for enhanced militarization of the southern US border - including a 700-mile-long Sisyphean fence - reached a crescendo in the bill passed by the House of Representatives.

Under its terms, three million US-citizen children could be separated from their parents, who would be declared felons and be subject to immediate detention and deportation. Those who employ them, and churches and nonprofits that support them, could face fines or even prison.

Cardinal Roger Mahony called it a "blameful, vicious" bill, and vowed to continue serving the undocumented even if it were outlawed.

Immigrants comprise one-third of California's labor force. But claims that immigrants take jobs away from Americans are overblown. Last summer, California suffered from labor shortages in spite of the high percentage of undocumented workers who labor in the fields.

As a likely result of pressure from business dependent on cheap labor and the escalating protests around the country, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that strikes a more reasonable balance. It would legalize the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants, and provide them with the opportunity to become citizens. They would have to remain employed, pass criminal background checks, learn English and civics, and pay fines and back taxes. A temporary worker program would allow about 400,000 foreign nationals to enter the United States each year; they too could be granted citizenship.

The current debate in the full Senate has focused on accusations and denials of "amnesty" and threats to national security. But the "immigration problem" is more complex than the sound bytes that proliferate. Seventy-eight percent of the 11 million undocumented immigrants are from Mexico or other Latin American countries.

According to Michael Lettieri, a Research Fellow with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, "The free trade accords that the Bush administration so tirelessly promotes do little to remedy such maladies, as both NAFTA and CAFTA-DR leave regional agricultural sectors profoundly vulnerable, as well as disadvantaged, in the face of robustly subsidized US agribusiness that enables Iowa to undersell Mexico when it comes to corn."

The US was instrumental in the passage of NAFTA, which protects the rights of employers and investors but not workers. As a result of NAFTA, wages in Mexico, Canada and the United States have fallen. US food exports have driven millions of poor Mexican peasants from their communities. They come north to find work.

Seventeen-year-old Carlos Moreno was among the thousands of students in Los Angeles who walked out of their high schools to protest the attack on immigrants. "I was born here," he said, "but I'm doing it for my parents, and for my family, and for all the Latinos, because I know what the struggle is."

Sergio, an undocumented tenth grader from San Diego High School, attended a rally in San Diego's historic Chicano Park. "My parents are proud of me," he said. "They told me that I should help every time I can."

A few years ago, San Diego filmmakers Issac and Judith Artenstein released "A Day Without a Mexican." In the film, all of the Mexicans in California disappeared one day. Gone were the cooks, gardeners, nannies, policemen, doctors, farm and construction workers, entertainers, athletes, as well as the largest growing market of consumers. The world's fifth largest economy was paralyzed.

Today we celebrate the birthday of César Chávez, one of the most influential labor leaders this country has ever known. In the 1970s, when undocumented workers crossed the border and went to work in California's fields for lower wages than employers had to pay union members, the United Farm Workers began to call the migra to have them deported. Eventually, César realized that a much better solution was to organize those immigrants into the union.

The answer is not to shut out those who work for less than minimum wage, without workers' compensation, occupational safety protections, and overtime pay. "It is a common-sense solution to bring an underground economy above ground," Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, "with strong labor protections to improve working conditions for all."

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Negroponte: Director of Intelligence Manipulation

With much fanfare, Bush announced on Thursday his nomination of John D. Negroponte as the director of national intelligence. "John's nomination comes in an historic moment for our intelligence services," Bush proclaimed ceremoniously. Intelligence, he said, is now "the first line of defense" in the war on terrorism.

Bush failed to mention that when Negroponte was United States ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, he provided false intelligence to Congress about the Honduran "death squads."

In those days, the Reagan administration was using Honduras as its base for covert military operations against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Negroponte oversaw the buildup of military positions and training of the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels inside the Honduran border.

As a gesture of appreciation for the use of its territory, the U.S. gave Honduras generous military aid. On Negroponte's watch, that aid rose from $4 million to $77.4 million. In order to keep the aid coming, Congress required annual reassurances from the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa that Honduras was respecting the human rights of its people.

Negroponte's embassy provided annual reports to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Those reports sugar-coated Honduras's human rights record, which Negroponte knew to be atrocious.

The 1983 report, for example, said the "Honduran government neither condones nor knowingly permits killings of a political or nonpolitical nature" and reassured the Committee that there were "no political prisoners in Honduras."

In fact, the Honduran government was "disappearing," torturing, and killing hundreds of political opponents.

This was confirmed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the famous Velásquez Rodríguez Case. It concluded that "a practice of disappearances carried out or tolerated by Honduran officials existed between 1981 and 1984." The court found, "The kidnappers blindfolded the victims, took them to secret, unofficial detention centers and moved them from one center to another. They interrogated the victims and subjected them to cruel and humiliating treatment and torture. Some were ultimately murdered and their bodies were buried in clandestine cemeteries."

"It was public and notorious knowledge in Honduras," added the court, "that the kidnappings were carried out by military personnel or the police, or persons acting under their orders."

The Baltimore Sun conducted an 14-month investigation into the Honduran atrocities. The findings were published in a 1995 Pulitzer prize-winning series of articles by Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson. They wrote, "The Honduran press was full of reports about military abuses, including hundreds of newspaper stories in 1982. There were also direct pleas from Honduran officials to U.S. officials, including Negroponte."

"Time and again during his tour of duty in Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was confronted with evidence that a Honduran army intelligence unit, trained by the CIA, was stalking, kidnapping, torturing and killing suspected subversives," according to the Sun.

Jaime Rosenthal, former vice president of Honduras and owner of the newspaper El Tiempo, said, "There is no way United States officials in Honduras during the early 1980s can deny they knew about the disappearances. There were stories about it in our newspaper and most other newspapers almost every day."

Negroponte's predecessor, Ambassador Jack Binns, had been profoundly troubled by the actions of the Honduran military when he served as U.S. ambassador from 1980-1981. "I reported these abuses repeatedly, and urged that we take action to try and turn it around," Binns said.

Binns warned in a 1981 cable, "I am deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations of political and criminal targets, which clearly indicate [that Honduran government] repression has built up a head of steam much faster than we anticipated."

How was Binns rewarded for his candor? He was summoned to Washington. "I was told to stop human rights reporting except in back channel. The fear was that if it came into the State Department, it will leak," Binns told the Sun. "They wanted to keep assistance flowing. Increased violations by the Honduran military would prejudice that."

Binns was replaced by John Negroponte, to manipulate the flow of information.

What did Negroponte, our newly nominated intelligence czar, do in response to reports of these atrocities in Honduras on his watch? He covered them up, and lied to Congress by sending it false intelligence.

A junior political officer in the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa was ordered to delete from the State Department's annual human rights report to Congress substantial evidence of the abuses by the Honduran military in 1982, according to the Sun.

"Under my leadership," Negroponte said disingenuously, "the embassy worked to promote the restoration and consolidation of democracy in Honduras, including the advancement of human rights."

In 1982, former Honduran military intelligence chief Col. Leonidas Torres Arias told reporters at a news conference in Mexico City about a "death squad operating in Honduras led by armed forces chief General Gustavo Alvarez." (Alvarez was trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas.) Negroponte wrote in an Oct. 16, 1982 article, "I have a lot of difficulty taking those kinds of accusations seriously."

United States support of Honduran aid to the Contras violated the 1982 Boland amendment, which prohibited the use of U.S. funds for "military equipment, military training or advice, or other support for military activities, to any group or individual not part of a country's armed forces, for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua or provoking a military exchange between Nicaragua and Honduras."

In the now infamous Iran-Contra scandal, the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iran in violation of an embargo on those sales. It also covertly and illegally transferred money, through Honduras, to the Contras in their efforts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.

Not only did Negroponte's embassy reports cover up the human rights violations being committed by the Honduran government; they also falsely stated that the Nicaraguan Sandinista government was committing myriad atrocities, in order to galvanize U.S. public opinion against the Sandinistas.

In fact, it was the U.S.-backed Contras who were wreaking terrorism. Former Contra PR official Edgar Chamorro wrote in a 1986 letter to the New York Times: "During my four years as a 'contra' director, it was premeditated policy to terrorize civilian noncombatants to prevent them from cooperating with the [Sandinista] government." Chamorro admitted, "Hundreds of civilian murders, tortures and rapes were committed in pursuit of this policy, of which the contra leaders and their CIA superiors were well aware."

The U.S. government, in the 1980s, supported vicious dictatorships in several Latin American countries which engaged in the disappearances, torture and murder of thousands of people who questioned their policies.

"I think it's extremely important that the State Department be right on human rights," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said in an interview with the Sun. "If we told the truth about Honduras and the whole Central American policy, … billions of dollars of American tax dollars would have been saved, a large number of lives would have been saved, and the governments would have moved toward democracy quicker."

When Bush nominated Negroponte for intelligence director, the president noted, "He understands the power centers in Washington." Indeed, Negroponte has been around for 40 years. He was political officer at the U.S. embassy in Vietnam from 1964-1968, during a period of extra-judicial executions and gross human rights abuses, including massacres by the notorious "Tiger Force" of the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

After his stint in Honduras, Negroponte served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, where he shepherded the signing of NAFTA. As a result, one million Mexican farmers have lost their land and livelihoods, and NAFTA has undermined labor and environmental protections in Mexico, the United States and Canada.

From September 2001 during the run-up to the Iraq war, Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He avoided a withering interrogation at his confirmation hearing about his record in Honduras, in a Senate stunned by the 9/11 attacks. During his tenure, Negroponte lied to the UN about the justifications for the war, and successfully pressured Mexico and Chile to fire their UN ambassadors for not supporting the war.

Negroponte's last stepping stone to intelligence czar was his appointment as U.S. ambassador to Iraq in June of last year, on the day "sovereignty" was transferred to the Iraqis. The last seven months have seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war, as well as continued reports of torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces.

The position Negroponte will hold was created in response to intelligence failures perceived to have enabled the September 11 attacks. Negroponte's sordid past does not inspire confidence in his qualifications for that post. In fact, Negroponte was likely chosen because he will tell Bush & Co. exactly what they want to hear. And that won't make us any safer.

Former CIA official Melvin Goodman summed it up nicely: "I think of the Negroponte of the 1980s covering up human rights abuses, and then I think of the role of intelligence in telling truth to power, and it doesn't fit."

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The WTO: A New World Government Dedicated to the Principle That Property Interests Are More Sacred Than Human Rights

What brought more than 50,000 trade unionists, environmentalists, human rights and social justice activists from all over the world into the streets of Seattle in late November and early December of last year to protest the World Trade Organization? They all understood: "Economic globalization is the number one threat to the survival of the natural world." The global transfer of economic and political power from national governments to multinational corporations is a disaster for human rights, the environment, social welfare, agriculture, food safety, workers' rights, national sovereignty and democracy.

This article analyzes the role and function of the World Trade Organization, which is dedicated to 'free trade' for trans-national corporations. It seeks to unveil the WTO's myth that everyone's interests will be protected if trade is allowed to flourish unfettered. In contrast to the National Lawyers Guild's unifying principle - that human rights are more sacred than property interests - the WTO's raison d'etre is the elevation of property interests above the protection of human rights.


THE BENEFITS OF GLOBALIZATION DON'T TRICKLE DOWN

In a 1999 human development report, the United Nations found that even though globalization has resulted in skyrocketing net capital flows in countries such as Indonesia, prosperity has not trickled down. The gap between rich and poor has increased geometrically because of the global trading system.

As a result of globalization, wages of low-income workers in the United States have dropped, while corporate profits have soared to record heights. The affected workers include large numbers of women and people of color. In developing countries, poverty has increased as governments have slashed funding for food and social programs in order to promote export-oriented agriculture.

In the six years since the enactment of NAFTA, poverty in Mexico has increased as wages have dropped. The United States trade deficit with Mexico has mushroomed. Most NAFTA-related job losses have occurred in the apparel and electronics industries, prime employers of women and people of color. A study by the International Labor Organization reported a "widening earnings gap between TCF [textile, clothing and footwear] workers in higher and lower-income countries."


THE WTO: ACCOUNTABLE TO WHOM?

Globalization has been a boon to the multinational corporations - at the expense of of us all. Ironically, the states that have joined the WTO have ceded it the power to prevent them from protecting their own people because they are economically beholden to the multinational corporations.

Who runs the WTO? A self-anointed group of security-cleared trade advisors to the WTO, it is a veritable "Who's Who" of representatives of global corporations and industrial interests, including several Fortune 500 corporations. Further, representatives of the 135 WTO member countries meet in secret, excluding non-governmental organizations representing labor, environmental, human rights and social justice interests.

Any WTO member country can challenge rules or laws of another country as "trade barriers." Moreover, the WTO has the power to levy huge fines against offenders. Its enforcement mechanism emanates from a structure encompassing all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial - and aspiring to wield more power than the United Nations. Indeed, the U.S. has committed itself to abide by WTO rulings while it has routinely ignored UN resolutions opposing its actions. In a 1994 speech promoting United States approval of the WTO, GATT Director General Peter Sutherland said, "Governments should interfere in the conduct of trade as little as possible." Not surprisingly, WTO rulings have upheld the interests of trans-national corporations in every instance that an environmental, labor, health and safety, or human rights protection has been challenged as a 'trade barrier."

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS = 'TRADE BARRIERS'

The WTO contains no specific agreement on the protection of the environment. Articles I, III, XI and XX, which are derived from GATT, actually militate against protecting the environment.

Article I - Most Favored Nation Treatment - prohibits governments and citizens from setting standards that favor goods produced under more environmentally sustainable conditions. For example, the WTO ruled in 1998 that a country cannot place restrictions on the importation of products such as shrimp, based on the way they are produced. In that case, the restriction was aimed at protecting endangered sea turtles.

Article III - National Treatment - restricts nations from giving more favorable treatment to domestic goods that may be produced in a safer, more humane or environmentally friendly manner. A pre-WTO GATT ruling struck down a United States law that banned the importation of tuna caught in nets lethal to dolphins. The Acourt said that no distinction could be made between the process and the product. In other words, the end justified the means.

Article XI - Elimination of Import and Export Controls - specifies that WTO members cannot limit imports or exports of resources or produce across their borders, effectively eliminating a nation=s right to allocate its own natural resources. This provision nullifies the prohibition against trade in endangered species. Hundreds of species are becoming endangered each year, drastically upsetting the balance of nature.

Article XX - General Exceptions - provides that nothing in the WTO agreement shall prevent measures necessary to protect human, animal or plant life, or health or natural resources. WTO apologists frequently cite this article as evidence that human and environmental concerns are protected. But whenever it has been invoked, a trade dispute panel found a rationalization to avoid its application. Thus far, the WTO study group on trade and the environment has focused more on avoiding environmental impediments to trade than on protecting the environment. The WTO struck down an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule requiring gasoline refineries to produce cleaner gas in order to reduce air pollution. As a result, the EPA, which administers the Clean Air Act, was forced to lower its standards to allow dirtier gasoline.

In each and every environmental case that has come before it, the WTO has ruled against protecting the environment and in favor of protecting the interests of big business.


FOOD HEALTH AND SAFETY PROTECTIONS = 'TRADE BARRIERS'

The World Health Organization reported in 1996 that the globalization of the food supply was a growing cause of illness worldwide. Under its rules, countries are not required to maintain minimum health and safety standards, but can be penalized for setting higher standards than those set by the WTO. The WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures restricts what governments can do to regulate food and agriculture for the protection of the environment, human, animal and plant health and the food supply.

Many countries base their health and food safety regulations on the Aprecautionary principle, where the substance stays off the market until proven safe. Two WTO rulings turn the precautionary principle on its head. In one case, the European Union banned the non-therapeutic use of artificial beef hormones, citing several studies showing that these hormones could cause cancer. The United States successfully challenged Canada and the European Union. The ruling demanded a showing of scientific certainty that hormones cause cancer and thereby voided the ban. The European Union refused to cave in to U.S. pressure and was hit with $115 million in WTO-authorized trade sanctions.

The United States also successfully challenged Japan=s health-related pesticide residue testing regulations for agricultural imports. Because Japan=s standards exceeded those of the WTO, Japanese people must now accept produce with higher levels of toxic pesticides than their own government deems safe.

The WTO threatens the health and safety of everyone but the global corporations.

HUMAN RIGHTS = 'TRADE BARRIERS'

In Burma (Myanmar), Asoldiers committed serious human rights abuses, including extra judicial killing and rape, according to a U.S. State Department report. The Special Rapporteur to the UN Commission on Human Rights reported Aextrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and enforced disappearances, torture, abuse of women and children by government agents.@ Violations of the rights of women - particularly Aforced labor, sexual violence and exploitation, including rape@ - were also documented. The International Labor Organization found that the civilian population, especially women and children, was being used for forced labor.

In 1966, Massachusetts enacted a law barring companies that do business with Burma from bidding on large public contracts in the state. But the European Union and Japan challenged the Massachusetts law as unfair Ato the trade and investment community. They cited the WTO 1994 Agreement on Government Procurement, which prohibits consideration of non-commercial factors, such as human rights, in governmental purchasing decisions.

A U.S. district court in Massachusetts ruled in 1998 that municipalities and states cannot interfere in foreign policy when there is a "great potential for disruption and embarrassment." That ruling was upheld by a federal appellate court in 1999. The case is currently pending in the United States Supreme Court, so the WTO challenge is on hold.

China will soon join the WTO. Human rights violations by China created controversy within the United States Congress before it granted China Amost-favored nation trading status. The contradiction was aptly described by Lhadon Tethong, a Canadian-born Tibetan who represents Students For A Free Tibet:
The idea that the world trade organization can supersede sovereign countries laws is really terrifying when you think of it from the aspect of human rights.

We are insisting that China take some responsibility and deal with the worsening situation in Tibet, in Inner Mongolia, in E. Turkestan, in China itself.

Ideally, we would like to work toward some economic sanctions, like the divestment campaigns that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa.

But once China gets into the WTO - which looks imminent - it can challenge any economic leverage we have and argue that it is a barrier to free trade.

We have a duty and an obligation to press for the idea that yes, trade is not a bad thing, but let=s play at a fair level, a level where trade does not undermine a people=s right to self-determination.


The WTO has consistently chosen the protection of property over the sanctity of human rights.


LABOR PROTECTIONS = 'TRADE BARRIERS'

The WTO has delegated jurisdiction over labor matters to the International Labor Organization (ILO). But the ILO, unlike the WTO, has no enforcement power when it finds violations of labor rights. The United States has ratified only 11 of the 182 conventions of the ILO. Most of the conventions ratified by the U.S. deal with maritime labor. Only two of them deal with fundamental human rights - the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention.
According to the ILO, more than 250 million children between the ages 5 of 15 work full-time or part-time around the world. Although the 1995 Fourth International Conference on Women in Beijing ensured the protection of the Agirl child,@ many millions of girls still work as prostitutes. Children are bonded laborers, welders or rubbish pickers. The only labor protection currently written into WTO rules is that countries may restrict imports of goods produced with prison labor. If a country wished to ban imports on goods produced with child labor or apply a trade sanction on a country that was violently repressing an independent labor union, the WTO could strike it down as a Atrade barrier.

Not coincidentally, the day after the Seattle protesters shut down the WTO, President Bill Clinton suggested that labor rights be enforceable by trade sanctions. But this noble gesture would take decades to implement.


INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE NOT 'TRADE BARRIERS'


Although the economic trading rights of WTO countries trump environmental protections, labor rights, health and safety precautions, and human rights, intellectual property rights are indelibly enshrined in the WTO agreements.

The WTO Multilateral Agreements contain Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property. 'TRIPS' is a bad trip. For centuries, indigenous peoples in many countries have developed herbs, seeds and plants for use as food and medicine. 'TRIPS' gives foreign corporations the right to take traditional indigenous seed varieties developed by small farmers, 'improve' them with slight genetic alteration and patent them. In order to use them, the people who originally developed them must buy them back at exorbitant rates.

Some countries call it biopiracy. India has seen mass demonstrations protesting this practice. New hybrids that have displaced native seeds are vulnerable to pest attacks. Farmers are forced to buy costly pesticides, which often puts them out of business. There has been an epidemic of farmer suicides in parts of India that used to be prosperous agricultural regions before the Aecological and social disaster caused by biopiracy.

But protection of Aintellectual property goes beyond merely bankrupting farmers. It can be deadly. When Thai companies made AIDS drugs available at a cost well below that of United States drug companies, the U.S. - on behalf of the drug companies - threatened a WTO TRIPS challenge for patent infringement. Thailand, which depends on the U.S. for 25% of its exports, was effectively blackmailed into stopping the manufacture of cheaper AIDS drugs.

According to UNICEF, 1.5 million infants die every year, primarily from fatal infant diarrhea caused by the replacement of breast feeding with artificial formulas.

Gerber Food claimed on its packages that its infant formula would insure healthy babies, and bolstered the claim with photographs of fat, healthy babies. Guatemala enacted a law, modeled after the World Health Organization Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes, to protect infant health. It required that formula producers clearly state the superiority of breast feeding on their labels. All of Guatemala=s domestic and foreign suppliers of formula changed their packaging to comply. The country=s infant mortality rates dropped dramatically. Gerber, however, induced the United States State Department to threaten a WTO challenge based on the company's intellectual property claim to its labeling. In response, Guatemala amended its law to exempt imported baby food products.

Intellectual property rights are well protected by the WTO - at the expense of human beings.


THE WTO VIOLATES INTERNATIONAL AND U.S. DOMESTIC LAW

Both the Charter of the United Nations and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) memorialize human rights and fundamental freedoms that must be respected by state parties. Treaties ratified by the United States become part of the supreme law of the land under the U.S. Constitution and are thus binding domestic law.

The UN Charter was ratified by the United States in 1945. By signing and ratifying the Charter, the U.S. and other UN member countries pledge to respect the principles of "equal rights and self-determination of peoples," and agree to promote "higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development."

Further, the ICCPR, which the U.S. ratified in 1992, guarantees to all people the right to freedom of association, including the right to form and join trade unions. Also ensured under the ICCPR is the right to self-determination of all peoples, to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and for their own ends, to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources.

The Charter on Economic Rights and Duties of States, passed by the UN General Assembly in 1974, recognizes the political sovereignty of nation states to protect their public interest by regulating foreign investment. Member nations are granted the authority to supervise the operations of trans-national corporations within their jurisdictions, by establishing performance requirements to ensure foreign investments serve the economic and social and priorities of national development.

Trans-national corporations have social obligations, since the formation of capital is a social process which depends on the labor of others. The Charter on Economic Rights and Duties of States requires all developed countries to cooperate with developing countries - establishing, strengthening and developing their scientific and technological infrastructures and scientific research and technological activities - in order to help expand and transform the economies of the developing countries. Under the Charter, every state has the duty to cooperate in promoting the steady and increasing expansion and liberalization of world trade. However, the Charter creates the corresponding duty of states to cooperate in improving the welfare and living standards of all peoples, particularly those of the developing countries.

The WTO - which serves the interests of trans-national corporations, including many U.S. corporations - systematically violates these international laws. WTO's defenders advocate 'free trade' but, in practice, free trade does not result in fair trade. Free trade theorists claim that the rising tide of trade will 'lift all boats,' providing economic benefits to all sectors of society. The only boats, however, that have been lifted so far are yachts. Former Canadian agricultural minister Eugene Whelan observed, AThese deals aren=t about free trade. They're about the right of these guys [corporate agribusinesses] to do business the way they want, wherever they want.

As detailed above, the UN Charter establishes the primacy of human rights and equality for all nations. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to form and join trade unions as well as the right of all peoples to self-determination. Finally, the Charter on Economic Rights and Duties of States obligates developed countries to help developing countries transform their economies and improve their welfare and standards of living.

In stark contrast, under the WTO, any national, state or municipal law that may protect labor, the environment, health and safety or human rights, may be struck down if considered a barrier to trade by the faceless bureaucrats and corporate hustlers who are now empowered to decide these matters.


THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

The anti-WTO demonstration in Seattle followed a tradition of protest in the United States. A century ago, working people organized sit down strikes aimed at the bosses who exploited their labor. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activists marched and demonstrated against the pernicious system of racism in the U.S. And close on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, masses of people from all walks of life joined together to stop the War in Southeast Asia. In each instance, these struggles for justice and dignity have resulted in social change. Because they fought and died for labor rights, workers gained the 8-hour day and the minimum wage. Because masses of people marched on Washington and Memphis, and because of sacrifices of people like Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights Act was born. Because hundreds of thousands of students at campuses across the country demonstrated, and masses of GI's refused their orders, the killing in Southeast Asia was stopped. And because people demonstrated in Seattle, the delegates to the secret meeting of the World Trade Organization were forced to consider labor, environmental, health and human rights protections as more than simply "trade barriers ." Because people were in the streets, the media was forced to broadcast their demands for "Fair Trade, Not Free Trade."

Perhaps the most unique feature of the Seattle protests was the international diversity of the demonstrators. People from all over the world - many from countries where struggles for human rights and freedoms have persisted for centuries - joined together for common humanitarian goals. They were saying that it must be the people, not the WTO, who control our lives.
The WTO establishes the primacy of property interests over human rights. It also threatens the peace and security of the world, in direct violation of the UN Charter. There is no limitation placed by the WTO on trade in weapons, which may pose a major threat to international peace and security. The survival of our global community is at stake.

Since 1937, members of the National Lawyers Guild have been instrumental in providing legal support for those struggling for human rights and fundamental freedoms. That tradition continued with our legal defense for the protesters in Seattle and Washington D.C. In keeping with our motto that human rights shall be more sacred than property interests, "the Guild will continue to work Ain the service of the people."

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