Switzerland: Activists targeted
01 September 1998
In September 700 people demonstrated outside a meeting of the "Geneva Business Dialogue" (GBD), organised by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), in Switzerland. The "Geneva Business Dialogue" was a meeting of 450 business leaders from around the world intent on furthering globalisation and the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment). Around the main meeting a series of private lunch meetings for those attending the GBD were held with UNCTAD (on the theme: "can trade transform less developed countries?"), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Meteorological Organisation ("trading in emissions: a solution for climate change?"), the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The demonstration was organised by "People's Global Action" (PGA), a loose international network of movements opposed to the "imposition of neoliberal economic policies".
Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) managed to put out a detailed report on what the GDB discussed. The organiser of the "Geneva Business Dialogue", and the Chair of the ICC, Mr Helmut Maucher of Nestl apparently had harsh words for the demonstrators, and for those opposed to the effects of globalisation. They reported that Mr Maucher complained about: "exaggerations and irrational arguments in environmental politics, due to single issue groups that know nothing and have no responsibilities". On the colourful and musical demonstrators Mr Maucher said to journalists: "How are they financed and who do they stand for? We will insist on answers, and that they follow the normal democratic process and stick to the rules".
CEO comment that his emphasis on "the difference between "responsible NGOs" and "activist pressure groups"" echoes the ICC statement to the G8 Summit in Birmingham, UK in May. This said it:
"would be useful for the UN and other intergovernmental bodies to establish rules to clarify the legitimacy and accountability of many new non-governmental organisations engaged in the public policy dialogue which proclaim themselves to represent particular interests or significant sections of civil society" ("Business and the Global Economy", ICC statement to G8 Summit, 15-17 May 1998)
The CEO reports that the "Geneva Business Declaration" says that:
"the emergence of activist pressure groups risks weakening the effectiveness of public rules, legitimate institutions and democratic processes. These organisations should place emphasis on legitimising themselves.. Where this does not take place, rules establishing their rights and responsibilities should be considered.
Business is accustomed to working with trade unions, consumer organisations and other representative groups that are responsible, credible, transparent and accountable and consequently command respect. What we question is the proliferation of activist groups that do not accept these self-disciplinary criteria."
Crackdown on anti-globalisation activists
In May the People's Global Action (PGA) organised a big demonstration of around 8,000 people in Geneva on the 50th anniversary of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). A number of people were arrested, detained and questioned. Some of these were stopped and questioned again at the German border with Switzerland. On 25 August the PGA announced that it would demonstrate outside the planned "Geneva Business Dialogue" meeting in September. Two days later forty police raided a seminar on "Globalisation and Resistance" in Geneva. The fifty participants were woken in a dawn raid, ordered from their tents, searched, detained and subjected to lengthy "Interpol" identity checks. One of those detained, a British woman, was detained for three days and only released after signing a form agreeing not to go back to Geneva for five years. A week later the Swiss police raided the Geneva-based PGA press office, questioned six people, seized eight computers and all PGA-related documents. A similar raid, also with computers seized, was carried out in Aache