News APP

NewsApp (Free)

Read news as it happens
Download NewsApp
Home  » Business » Don't mess with our lives: Farmers at WTO

Don't mess with our lives: Farmers at WTO

Source: PTI
December 13, 2005 14:59 IST
Get Rediff News in your Inbox:
Anti-globalisation protestors from all over the world, including farmers' organisations from Korea, on Tuesday held a protest rally, alleging that the multilateral trading system was "anti-poor" and "anti-development".

Over 1,000 protestors, who were allowed to demonstrate in the notified area of Victoria Park near the conference venue amid unprecedented security, carried placards with slogans saying "Stop WTO", "Don't mess with our lives" and a coffin symbolising the World Trade Organisation, shouting it should be "dead and buried".

Radical Korean farmers' group, two members of which had committed suicides so far in protest against the organisation earlier, did not rule out suicides in the city, whose administration has heightened security to prevent any such happenings.

A Korean farmer Lee Kyung-Hae had stabbed himself to death at the last WTO Ministerial meeting at Cancun.

The NGOs sang songs, shouted slogans and held aloft caricatures of US President George Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and WTO Director General Pascal Lamy and asked developing countries to abandon WTO, warning of the "serious consequences" the multilateral trade was having on millions of farmers and fishermen.

They said despite the fact that current trade talks were started to supposedly help the poorest countries "develop", these nations were being put under heavy pressure to open up their markets in vast range of goods and services.

Leading civil society organisation Oxfam also raised its pitch and carried a demonstration asking developed countries to make trade fair for developing nations.

Get Rediff News in your Inbox:
Source: PTI© Copyright 2024 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.
 

Moneywiz Live!