Bank meeting sees diminishing riot threat
| • | ILWU joins in lawsuit for march at Ala Wai |
By Yasmin Anwar
Advertiser Staff Writer
The anti-globalization forces behind the demonstrations in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Quebec City say they have no plans to descend on Honolulu's upcoming Asian Development Bank summit.
For the most part, Hawai'i appears to be off the protest circuit for key Mainland-based eco-warriors, human-rights activists and anarchists who were involved in mass rallies against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Summit of the Americas.
But law enforcement officials here aren't ready to let down their guard after allotting millions of dollars to security, including more than $500,000 on riot gear.
"With this type of activity, you never let your guard down because things can turn around so quickly," said Deputy Public Safety Director Sidney Hayakawa, who is overseeing state security for the ADB event.
He said he's not ready to rule out the possibility that demonstrators at Quebec City's Summit of the Americas will head for Hawai'i after stopping at the spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington.
The May 7-11 conference at the Hawai'i Convention Center in Waikiki was originally to be held in Seattle, but was moved to Honolulu to avoid a replay of the clashes between police and protesters during the 1999 WTO meeting.
"There's no mystery as to why they moved it to such a remote place that's quite expensive to get to," said Susanne Wong, a Southeast Asian campaigner for the International Rivers Network in Berkeley, Calif.
Wong is among a few Mainland delegates headed for Honolulu to raise awareness of the ADB and fallout of its programs and loan conditions on impoverished nations.
Other Mainland groups such as Rainforest Action Network, the Bank Information Center and Friends of the Earth say they are not participating in the protests and countersummits in Honolulu.
Among them is the Ruckus Society, a California-based group whose civil disobedience bootcamps train activists to scale buildings and form human chains.
Ruckus director John Sellers said his group is swamped with preparations for the Biotechnology Industry Organization's international conference in San Diego at the end of June.
"Rather than chase down multilateral lending institutions, we're focusing on biotech right now," Sellers said.
Indeed, the sheer volume of conferences that raise social and environmental concerns is hitting the pocketbooks of an activist jet set.
"We can't keep flying around the globe for these meetings," said Mara Vanderslice, a spokeswoman for the Jubilee USA Network, a Washington-based group that is calling for a debt cancellation in favor of the most impoverished countries.
ADB senior spokesman Ian Gill said the bank — with a goal to reduce poverty in the Asia-Pacific region by 50 percent — welcomes debate and input from nongovernmental organizations and other critics "as long as it's peaceful."
ADB-financed programs such as mega-hydropower dams have come under fire from some who have condemned the projects, which they say bring increased poverty and undermine local control and indigenous rights.
One such case is the Samut Prakarn Wastewater Management project in Thailand.
"It sounds like a great idea, but there was significant corruption involved, and it was located close to polluting industries," said Stephanie Freed, a senior scientist for Environmental Defense and an adjunct fellow at the East-West Center at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.
Last year's ADB meeting was held in a luxury hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where some 2,000 riot police fended off more than 1,000 Thais who protested bank-financed dams and other projects that they say have devastated their villages.
Here in Hawai'i, the ADB conference has local and federal police girding for the state's largest-ever law enforcement operation, particularly in the event that President Bush decides to attend. There has been no announcement yet as to whether Bush will be here, but that decision may not be made until closer to the start of the conference.
Organizers and law enforcement authorities expect the event to draw anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 activists, from local environmentalists to Hawaiian sovereignty advocates.
The Honolulu City Council has passed measures to ban protesters from using pepper spray and similar repellents, wearing masks and deliberately placing objects on roadways to damage vehicles.
Meanwhile, Honolulu police involved in security planning for the ADB conference are trying to learn lessons from previous riots connected with anti-globalization.
D.C. police last year arrested 1,300 protesters at meetings of the World Bank and IMF. But by using an approach unlike actions taken in Seattle the previous autumn, D.C. police managed to avert a repeat of Seattle's street riots.
No serious injuries and very little vandalism were reported at the Washington rally organized by the Mobilization for Global Justice group.
But two days of violent confrontations between anti-globalization protesters and Canadian police at last week's Summit of the Americas conference in Quebec City have put police here on their guard.
Advertiser staff writer Rod Ohira contributed to this report.
Correction: A group represented by the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking a city permit to stage a protest march in front of the Hawaii Convention Center on Kapiolani Boulevard and Atkinson Drive during the Asian Development Bank conference next month. A previous version of story contained different information.
