About two hundred people filled the Upper Hall of the University of London
Union on Saturday 10 November for a public meeting with the theme "World
Trade = International Finance Fraud, Terrorism and Genocide". It was
organised by the IMF & World Bank Wanted For Fraud Campaign to coincide
with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Summit in Qatar. The
meeting was preceded by a picket of the Qatar Embassy in London on 9
November, the opening day of the WTO Summit.

Explo Nani-Kofi, the co-ordinator of the Campaign, noted that the
anti-globalisation movement in the north is on the upsurge, as seen in
demonstrations in Seattle, Prague, Genoa and the one scheduled for Brussels
in December. However, we need to move beyond anger and link the
anti-globalisation movement with the real resistance in the south in order
to build a mechanism for transforming the world.

Mukhtar Rana of the Peace and Human Rights Trust pointed out that the IMF
and World Bank are the financial weapons of neo-colonialism responsible for
fraud, corruption and genocide. He illustrated this with the way they were
used by the west to instal Suharto in Indonesia where millions of activists
were then murdered.

Tony Benn, former MP and founding member of the Movement For Colonial
Freedom, drew attention to how capitalism in its early stages in Britain
tried out all that is being done on a global scale - for example, land
privatisation. He expressed his excitement at remembering no time in
Britain when there have been so many meetings for justice, peace and social
progress. On the IMF and World Bank, he is alarmed by the danger they pose
globally and referred to how in the 1970s they brought down the Labour
government of which he was a member.

A trade unionist Pat Budu, who looked at the IMF and World Bank with regard
to Africa, said that African governments manage the debt instead of
national economies. She noted that IMF programmes make African economies
vulnerable to exploitation by multinational companies. She illustrated the
example of the marginalisation of the state with the case of Sudan where
the Sudanese government has only 5% shares in the Greater Nile Petroleum
Operating Company, while a Canadian company has 25%, an Indonesian group
30%, and a Chinese outfit 40%.

Taking on the issue of building the movement against global injustice,
Selma James of the International Wages for Housework Campaign described
some problems the movement faces: there is no State or party to defend
grassroots people; NGOs everywhere take funding in our name and use it
against us; the left wants to be in charge of the movement rather than
accountable to it. She stressed the role of grassroots women throughout
her speech and noted the IMF and World Bank Wanted For Fraud's
acknowledgement of that role. As women do 2/3 of the world's work, most of
it unwaged, it is women who suffer from the poverty and overwork imposed by
the IMF and World Bank, and it is women's struggle against them which is
most invisible. She spoke about the Global Women's Strike whose theme is
"Invest In Caring Not Killing", as a strategy against the war and
globalisation.

The main pillar of the Campaign's objectives, international debt fraud, was
taken up by George Monbiot, an author and campaigning journalist. In
illustrating 3rd World debt fraud, he looked at the case of Ghana where
under pressure from the IMF and Britain's Department for International
Trade and Development, the Ghana government has raised the price of water
two times and three times in some cases. Ghanaians, who cannot pay and will
take water from ditches and streams, will get cholera, bilharzia and guinea
worms. Then the government will have to take loans to buy medicenes from
the multinationals. He explained how the west has been stealing from the
Americas, Asia, and Africa and now claims these nations are in debt, when
the debt is actually the other way round.

The final speaker was Maria Vasquez-Aguilar of the Chilean community in
Sheffield. She treated the audience to the effect of the US intervention in
Chile which overthrew Salvador Allende's government, one committted to
providing social services to the people. She pointed out that it took the
US puppet regime of Pinochet fifteen years to reach the level of production
that the Allende government attained in three years. Enumerating the
effects of IMF policies, she informed the gathering that Chile has the
highest rate of depression in the south, one three children has parasites,
and 46% of the soil has eroded.

Members of the audience commented on how inspiring they found the meeting,
and felt that it was a break-through in addressing the question of
focussing the movement on issues which are often sidelined in general
debate and media coverage. The general discussion noted the destructive
role of NGOs which are manipulated by the west, western govenments'
criminalisation of liberation movements and communities under the guise of
fighting terrorism, and the marginalisation of activists from the south by
groupings in the north and by the media. In response to praise for Mandela
of South Africa, it was pointed out that he suppled arms to Suharto of
Indonesia. There was also a solidarity message from Gary Younge, a
journalist on the Guardian.