WTO protesters, police clash
HONG KONG – Protesters opposed to lowering trade barriers swung bamboo sticks at police Saturday and tried to storm a convention center where World Trade Organization delegates were negotiating a global accord on farming, manufacturing and services. At least 70 people were injured.
Security forces scattered the crowd with tear gas and pepper spray, and 900 people were detained after the worst street violence in Hong Kong in decades. The injured included 10 police officers.
The protesters included South Korean farmers, Southeast Asian groups and activists from the United States and Europe. They are concerned that WTO efforts to open up global markets will enrich wealthy nations at the expense of poor and developing countries.
By early today, police ordered demonstrators staging a sit-in on a major road near the site to disperse and began dragging them away and loading them in buses.
“Police have now settled all these disturbances, and will continue this resolve action,” said Hong Kong Police Commissioner Lee Ming Kwai.
Negotiations between the WTO’s 149 member nations and territories continued inside the convention hall largely uninterrupted, chief WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said.
Leading delegates met through the night in hopes of reaching an agreement on a text that showed only incremental progress after nearly a week of largely fruitless talks on how to reduce trade barriers in services, manufacturing and farming.
“Today is the day,” Fernando de Mateo y Venturini, Mexico’s ambassador to the WTO, said early today. “At least I hope there is going to be a result. That’s my expectation.”
The Hong Kong meeting was originally meant to produce a detailed outline for a global free trade agreement by Dec. 31, 2006. However, the European Union is refusing to open its agricultural markets any further until developing nations offer to lower their trade barriers to industrial goods and services.
Overnight talks focused on the contentious proposal to end export subsidies by 2010 – an issue that could make or break the entire gathering. Delegates discussed possibly pushing that date back to 2013, Venturini said.
“I think the time for brinkmanship is over,” Rockwell said Saturday. “I think people realize now that we are in the end game and people will hopefully come forward with their bottom-line positions so that we can wrap this up.”
Outside the convention center on Saturday, police fired tear gas to quell hundreds of rioters, some wearing helmets and covering their faces with kerchiefs to ease the effects of the tear gas. Demonstrators bashed police with bamboo poles and used a metal barrier to ram a line of police armed with riot shields.
At one point, activists broke through police lines and came close to storming the WTO’s harbor-side meeting venue. The police fought back with clubs, pepper spray and water cannons that sprayed a chemical mixture that burned the skin and eyes.