By IPS Correspondents
SANTIAGO, Nov 18 2004 (IPS)

The other face of this weekend’s summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in the capital of this South American country will be the Chilean Social Forum, which is calling for "globalisation with solidarity" as an alternative to a global economic order based on the predominance of the free-market "neo-liberal" model.

A network of 200 civil society groups are organising the Social Forum, which will coincide with the presence in Chile of U.S. President George W. Bush, the most prominent of the leaders who will be attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

The Social Forum will kick off at noon Friday with a march that organisers hope will draw at least 10,000 demonstrators.

The agreement allowing the protest march to pass through downtown Santiago required lengthy negotiations with the centre-left coalition government of socialist President Ricardo Lagos.

"The government is very concerned about presenting the image of a safe country during the summit. The authorities are overacting with respect to security," Perla Wilson, director of the Radio Tierra station run by the Corporación La Morada women’s group, told IPS Thursday.

Also taking part in the APEC gathering Saturday and Sunday will be presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hu Jintao of China, and prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, John Howard of Australia and Paul Martin of Canada.

APEC’s 21 members represent 55 percent of world trade and 57 percent of global GDP. Together, they are home to 40 percent of the world’s population – roughly 2.5 billion people – and accounted for 70 percent of global economic growth over the last decade.

This weekend, the APEC leaders are expected to reach an agreement to turn the powerful 21-member multinational association into a massive free trade treaty.

"The strengthening of democracy and respect for human rights is not on the APEC agenda," Alicia Sánchez, head of communications in Acción, an NGO umbrella group, remarked to IPS.

For her part, Wilson said "Our objective is to raise these other issues. We aren’t interested in challenging APEC, but in bringing up alternative views that differ from the neo-liberal, free-market model underlying the summit."

Under the theme "Another World Is Possible – and Another Chile Is Too", the first social forum to be held in this country will follow the formula of the World Social Forum (WSF), the fifth annual edition of which will take place next January in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.

The WSF slogan is "Another World Is Possible".

The Chilean Social Forum seminars, workshops, panels and artistic performances will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, a local university in Santiago. The activities are planned and organised by the 200 participating social groups.

The international guests will include Bernard Cassen, director general of the Le Monde Diplomatique newspaper, who will offer a conference on "Communication and Globalisation".

"Citizen Mobilisation for Participatory Democracy" will be the theme of a speech by Brazilian sociologist Emir Sader, an adviser to Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement and a member of the WSF International Council.

Another Brazilian, Regina Festa, will be a keynote speaker in the tent set up by women’s groups under the slogan "With Women, Another World Is Possible – and Another Chile Is Too".

The purpose of the Chilean Social Forum is not to "generate consensus agreements or resolutions, but to come up with common actions and thinking among those of us opposed to the neo-liberal model of globalisation," said Wilson.

The organisers will publish a summary of what occurred at the gathering after it is finished.

An international network of radio stations will broadcast coverage of the meeting in Spanish, Portuguese and English, said Pía Matta, the head of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) in Latin America.

Friday’s march and the rest of the Social Forum activities will be peaceful events held to stimulate debate and the exchange of ideas, while at the same time expressing opposition to the visit by Bush, who is seen as representing an unjust world order, the organisers stress.

Wilson said an agreement was reached with the government according to which the police keeping order during Friday’s protest march will not wear riot gear, and will keep their trucks armed with mechanical fire hoses and tear gas equipment far away from the demonstrators, to avoid any gestures that might look like provocations to the protesters.

On Wednesday, the Carabineros militarised police arrested some 300 young people who were holding an unauthorised protest in downtown Santiago called by the "anti-APEC student coordinating group".

Among those who were detained and held in custody for several hours was university Professor Rodrigo Soto, the president of the Chilean branch of Amnesty International, one of the world’s leading human rights watchdogs.

According to Wilson and Sánchez, the exaggerated emphasis on security surrounding the APEC summit has awakened fear among Chileans. They said there have been attempts at creating a sense of polarisation that has actually favoured radical or extremist groups prepared to stage violent actions to draw attention and appear in the media.

"The government is greatly interested in APEC, in order to seek trade treaties, especially with China, and it has invested a lot of money in this summit – spending that is not justified, given the poverty that exists in this country," said Wilson.

The "extreme" security measures, which will include no-flight zones during the summit, are designed to project a false image of Chile, argued Sánchez, "because the real image of a country lies in the diversity in the streets and public viewpoints," including critical opinions.

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