BY EVA CHENG
Failing to coopt the activists who were planning to protest at its Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) in Barcelona on June 25-27, the World Bank announced on May 19 that the meeting has been called off.
Mentioning not a word about its long role in helping to maintain the rich countries' domination of the Third World under the cover of "poverty reduction", to which the protesters were to express their objection, the World Bank instead accused the would-be peaceful protesters of "heckling, violence and intimidation".
But if the recent protests against corporate globalisation are anything to go by, any violence and intimidation at those actions had come predominantly from the police or their provocations and not from the protesters.
World Bank spokesperson Caroline Anstey stated, "Despite our efforts to reach out to some of the groups planning demonstrations, and to include them in the conference, the intention of many of the groups who plan to converge on Barcelona is not to join the debate or to contribute constructively to the discussion, but to disrupt it... it's time to take a stand against this kind of threat of free discussion ... [the] debates can now take place on line".
Trying to present the World Bank as the victim of anti-democratic actions (i.e., peaceful public protests), Anstey continued: "Years ago people used to burn books to try to clamp down on academic freedom — now they try to prevent academics from reaching debating halls. This is hardly progress".
Campaign Against the World Bank which has been organising the protest against the Barcelona meeting announced on May 20 that the mobilisation of activists against the World Bank's agenda of screwing wealth out of the Third World for the benefit of First World corporations will be carried out as planned despite the cancellation of the official meeting.
[Check out <http://www.indymedia.org> for the latest updates].