SUNS  4329 Monday 23 November 1998



DEVELOPMENT: ACTIVISTS BLAME GLOBALISATION FOR PEOPLE'S WOES

Kuala Lumpur, Nov 19 (IPS/Kalinga Seneviratne) -- While U.S. Vice-President Al Gore called here for greater political reforms in Malaysia, activists in the country and elsewhere say a more serious
problem is the impact of globalisation on people's individual and economic rights.

In a dinner speech that infuriated government officials, Gore on Monday backed the nascent reform movement in Malaysia and called its leaders and supporters "the brave people of Malaysia".

He said democracy, not authoritarian rule, can help countries weather economic storms and spark growth.

"Citizens who gain democracy also gain the opportunity and the obligation to root out corruption and cronyism; to support fair regulations that protect consumers and business; to press for sustainable development that protects the environment; to gain access to education and health care; to uphold impartial justice and rule of law," Gore added.

However, local activists and representatives from non-government organisations here and outside Malaysia claim that it is the process of globalisation that is marginalising millions of people in the Asia Pacific region and taking away their basic human rights on a massive scale.

And they say industrialised countries like the United States are to blame for this.

The Asia-Pacific People's Assembly (APPA), which convened prior to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the capital, warned that the emergence of non-state entities as important centres of political and economic power as a result of economic globalisation, has devastating effects on human rights across the region.

"These new centres of power, which includes transnational corporations, multi-lateral financial institutions and state institutions, have both resulted in the deprivation of basic human rights as well as providing new opportunities for increased activities by governing elites to pursue their own interests," said the APPA statement.

"Decisions on the economy of countries are more and more determined by transnational corporations, with local elites and governments as part of the process of promoting globalistaion. It benefits all of them, but contributes to the erosion of democratic rights," said Malaysian activist Irene Fernandez, who's also involved in the 'reformasi' movement.

Though she represents those "brave people of Malaysia" of whom Gore spoke very warmly about, Fernandez is keen to emphasise that their campaign is not merely a battle against the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

"We're resisting globalisation. We struggle for equality and people's rights. The struggle in the region in each country is to reaffirm our democratic rights," she says.

"The state has been redesigned and its role manipulated in order to meet the demands of monopoly capital and the local ruling elites of big landowners and big business and divesting the state of its social responsibility," says the APPA statement.

It is for these reasons that a political crisis has developed in many countries across the region and intensified popular uprisings from all sectors, it argues.

One of the hallmarks of the push for globalisation in the region is increasing landlessness in rural areas, the activists say. Peasants are pushed into poverty as a result of the loss of their farming land and food source to industrial development, tourists resorts, golf courses, and housing projects.

Furthermore, the drive to find the cheapest production base for TNCs is undermining workers' rights and labour conditions right across the region.

"Because of APEC's policy of privatisation, de-regulation and trade liberalisation, most workers in Asia Pacific have literally lost their jobs," notes Nanette Miranda, secretary general of the Movement of Women Workers in the Philippines.

Hilmar Farid of the Institute of Policy Research and Advocacy in Indonesia says the globalistion process is not only affecting the livelihood of people, but also the way they organise workers.
"Deregulation of labour has made existing unions irrelevant."

"It is important to strengthen regulatory frameworks. Governments have to provide protection and guarantees to the unions," he adds.

The Philippine government's policy of encouraging transnational investments at any cost has driven peasant families from their land, says Teresita Vistro of the National Alliance of Women's Organisations of the Philippines. As TNCs convert peasant farming lands to growing export crops, many peasant women are driven into prostitution.

"Peasant families have no skills. They only know farming. When they are forced to go into the cities they don't know any work, so prostitution becomes an option," she points out.

Labour migration, prostitution and trafficking of women, are all closely related in Indonesia, argues Tina Suprihatin of the Coalition of Community Organisations of Migrant Workers.

"We have asked our government to make migrant workers as part of the agenda (of APEC), because migrant workers benefit both countries. But the government doesn't feel the need for it, because they see the migrant workers as a commodity," she says.

While world leaders like Gore and Mahatir may trade rhetorics on the efficacy of human rights, under their own noses is a global trading system which pays scant respect to the ordinary people's right to a livelihood and dignity.

As Dr Vandana Shiva, the director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology points out, "globalisation is making people go hungry, but the irony of it is, that it is the same people who are capable of growing their own food".

"Today's totalitarian corporate-controlled food system doesn't allow this. So small farmers, fisherfolks and indigenous people are all affected. Yet, the only people who could work the land for food are the landless people," she notes.

Shiva wants food to be taken out of world trade agreements and seeds out of the intellectual property rights system. Food rights, she argues, must be at the centre of the world's human rights concerns. Otherwise, "all trade agreements merely legitimise organised greed", she argues.