BY SEAN HEALY
Undeterred by an unprecedented crackdown by Swiss police, several thousand anti-capitalist demonstrators have descended on the up-market ski resort town of Davos to protest the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) of top business leaders, which began on January 25.
Authorities have totally banned all demonstrations in the town, sealing it off with barbed wire and checkpoints, patrolling it with between 1000 and 2000 police and turning away anyone coming to town who they believe is not either a forum attendee or a snowboarder. Three hundred protesters have reportedly been turned back at the Swiss border while others have been hauled off trains and sent back to Zurich.
Police even admit that they have considered spraying liquid manure at any protesters who defy the ban on demonstrations.
The military-style operation, believed to be the first in Switzerland for decades, was able to prevent large-scale protests on the first two days of the January 25-30 annual meeting. However, several thousand activists were able to protest on January 27 in a show of defiance organised by the Anti-WTO Coordination, a coalition of trade unions, radical activists and political groups.
The WEF's meetings have become a focus for the international anti-capitalist movement. Several thousand people protested the WEF's last annual meeting in Davos, while 20,000 blockaded its Asia-Pacific summit in Melbourne from September 11-13.
This year's meeting attracted 3200 business and political leaders from around the world, including chief executive officers of the largest multinationals such as Microsoft's Bill Gates (a regular guest at WEF events), trade bureaucrats such as World Trade Organisation director-general Mike Moore, and senior politicians such as Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Australia's foreign minister Alexander Downer.
No high-ranking officials of the new US administration of George Bush junior are in attendance. Last year, US President Bill Clinton was the star attraction.
The police operation was a result of months of insistent and heavy lobbying by summit organisers desperate to avoid the disruption which occurred in Melbourne and, to a lesser extent, at last year's annual meeting.
Arguing for greater police protection, the forum's managing director Claude Smadja said, "What is absolutely striking is the extent to which today ... every high-profile international event like bees to honey attracts activists and professional troublemakers of all kinds who want to use these events as platforms to attract media attention."
Alongside police measures, the WEF has also sought to promote itself as being interested in dialogue with those it sees as more reasonable and less inclined to protest. Thirty six representatives of non-government organisations have been invited to attend the forum, two more than last year, including the ACTU's Sharan Burrow who also crossed picket lines to address the Melbourne WEF summit.
However, NGOs critical of the forum, including Friends of the Earth International, the Third World Network, the World Development Movement and Focus on the Global South, organised a public counter-conference, Public Eye on Davos, in the town as a "challenge" to the WEF's neo-liberal economic nostrums. The conference condemned the police actions as "a violation of human rights and of Switzerland's democratic traditions".
Friends of the Earth's Tony Juniper told the conference, "Business leaders go to Davos to set out their agenda for neo-liberal economic globalisation. Friends of the Earth is going to expose their unaccountable dealings. We will also be planning how to change the course of the global economy towards a sustainable future. The WEF fat cats might have the wealth and the ears of the powerful. But we have public sympathy and justice on our side."
Meanwhile, at the same time on the other side of the world, in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, more than 10,000 activists and grassroots political leaders gathered for the counterposed World Social Forum, to discuss pro-people alternatives to neo-liberal globalisation.
The conference was organised by a coalition of European anti-corporate groups, such as ATTAC which campaigns for a tax on international financial transactions, and Latin American left-wing parties.
Porto Alegre is a model of how a radical democracy can work: its government, led by the radical Workers' Party of Brazil, has carried out a huge experiment in devolving power, even over budget policy, to local communities.
[Next week's issue will feature on-the-spot coverage of the World Social Forum.]