ECONOMY: Some Anti-IMF Activists Talk, As Others Taunt Police

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

WASHINGTON, Sep 27 2002 (IPS) - As security guards dashed in and out of downtown buildings trying to watch the progress of small bands of hit-and-run protesters Friday, about 100 activists gathered in a church to learn more about the World Bank and other international institutions.

They were attending the third day of a “teach-in”, one of many events organised by activists in the lead-up to Saturday’s demonstration against the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which hold their annual meetings on Sunday.

Some demonstrators got an early start Friday. A group of protesters chained themselves together and blocked an intersection, others lit tires on fire, while a group of about 65 threw smoke bombs and clashed with police after breaking a bank window.

By early afternoon about 600 protesters had been arrested, police said. One was slightly injured.

Occasional sirens could be heard inside the downtown church where the teach-in took place, and where speakers at times seemed inspired by their surroundings.

“When you hear these things I know there can come a righteous anger, but I’d like you to channel that anger not only into action but into love,” said Marie Clarke of the Jubilee USA Network, “because when you love someone you don’t suffer them to suffer.”

“If we have that kind of love in our movement it will last longer, because anger burns out,” she added, her voice echoing in the chuch.

One activist said she was inspired. “At 81 years old I believe I have a short time left, but I want to be involved in saving the lives of poor people,” said Sister Joanette Nitz, a member of the Dominican Order, from Detroit.

“I am sick and tired of our country spending money on rich people through tax breaks,” she added, when through policies of the World Bank and other bodies, “we are killing people daily”.

Medical doctor Vineeta Gupta said those policies have made it harder for her to help people. “I feel hurt. I feel frustrated,” said Gupta from Punjab, India, who says she studied for a law degree so she could further her activism.

User fees mandated by the Bank mean that doctors no longer simply write ‘free’ on a patient’s chart, she said. “Now it’s not that – you have to show some form of identity card to get the exemption. And it’s so hard to get; you have to be rich to be able to get it.”

Other former clinic patients go to ‘quacks’, who give them bad advice or poor treatment. Some might make it as far as her office. “I could give them a prescription, but where would they get the money for the medicine?” Gupta asks.

While activists have increasingly berated the Bank and other financial bodies for “putting profits before people”, the institutions have largely rebuffed the criticism.

But on Wednesday, the IMF’s new independent evaluation office (IEO) released its first report.

It found that the Fund attaches too many conditions to its loans, needlessly pressuring borrowing countries; does not permit those countries to design their own recovery programmes; and has drifted from its original mission of giving short-term assistance and now prolongs too many of its loans.

The Philippines, for example, has had obligations outstanding to the IMF since 1967, the report said.

The teach-in heard that the Bank does respond to pressure.

“We would go to the U.S. Congress and talk about structural adjustment and people would start to nod off,” said Joanne Carter of Results, a U.S. group working to end poverty and hunger. “So we started to talk about specific policies” such as user fees, she added.

The lobbying worked and Congress passed a law that U.S. board members of international financial institutions could not vote to approve a loan or project that included user fees as a condition.

Carter said that “started to shift a bit what was happening in the World Bank itself. There was a kind of nervousness there that they wouldn’t get their money” from the United States if they were still imposing the fees.

Since then, she said, the Bank has completed a survey on the effect of school fees in borrowing countries. And in 2001 it pushed Tanzania to eliminate user fees, after extolling them to implement the charges in the first place.

“Even with a modest amount of pressure,” said Carter, “there’s been progress, but we’ve got to be more aggressive and public.”