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Anti-globalisation Indian farmers' caravan reaches Germany, eyes Europe

A caravan of 400 farmers from India is setting off from Germany this week on a tour of 11 European countries to denounce the ''devastating'' effects of globalisation on the economy.

The intercontinental caravan will protest the ''so-called 'free' trade imposed by the World Trade Organisation and the powers that support this world order,'' said Swiss activist Olivier de Marcellus, one of the organisers of the march.

During a nearly 30-day tour of Europe, the caravan will forge contacts with organisations of farmers and other grassroots groups in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.

Prior to the march, the farmers will gather in the German city of Salswedel to meet European movements ''also struggling against the effects of globalisation''.

The Indian farmers, who have paid their plane tickets out of their own pockets, ''are coming to testify in person, at the price of a tremendous financial effort...about the dramatic situation in which farmers of the south are caught,'' de Marcellus told a media conference at the United Nations offices in Geneva.

The farmers belong to organisations of the Indian Peasant Union from ten Indian states, the largest of which is the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (Karnataka State Farmers Association), with ten million members.

The president of the KRRS, M D Nanjundaswamy, said, ''We wish to bring to the north the point of view from the south about the system of exploitation and genocide imposed by governments, by the international institutions such as the WTO and by multinationals.''

The caravan ''is more an act of solidarity of the south with the north, than the contrary,'' said de Marcellus.

''The caravan is representative of the current struggle of rural India against 're-colonisation' by transnationals and international institutions (the IMF, the WB and the WTO),'' he added.

The caravan was organised by the Peoples' Global Action against free trade, an intercontinental league of social and political groups which emerged on the scene last year, with violent protests in Geneva against the WTO and the liberalisation of trade.

The PGA is planning new protests during the WTO's third ministerial conference, to be held in late November in the US city of Seattle, Washington.

The rural Indian groups that back the caravan follow the pacifist philosophy of the founder of modern India, Mahatma Gandhi, and announced that all their actions would be governed by the principle of non-violence.

A statement released by the caravan said that free trade ''has put the peoples of the world -- north and south -- at the mercy of the transnational economic and financial powers.

''The fatal competition with highly productive (and highly subsidised) agri-businesses of the north is ruining the small farmers of the south with cheap imports.''

The outlook is worsening for peasants in the south because the prices of their export crops are steadily sinking on the saturated world markets, said the declaration.

The globalisation of agricultural markets is destroying self- sufficiency in food production, and reducing food crop production in favour of export crops used for intensive livestock feeding, or flowers and other luxury exports to be shipped north.

The document states that in India, as well as in Africa and Latin America, free trade has led to an alarming fall in per capita food consumption.

During their stay in Switzerland, the members of the caravan will be hosted by Swiss farmers associations, said de Marcellus.

The caravan will first head to Berne, the Swiss capital, and will later hold protests outside the headquarters of the transnational corporations Novartis, in Basel, and Nestle, in Vevey.

''We will also participate in actions of civil disobedience against centres of power such as TNCs, international institutions and national governments,'' the caravan statement announced.

But these actions are conceived ''primarily as one more communication tool -- a particularly important one, since it is our conviction that only civil disobedience and non-violent direct action can bring about the fundamental shift in the political and economic order that we are aiming at,'' it concluded.

UNI

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