Press Statement

November 27, 2005

HK People’s Mardi Gras against WTO

A festival for WTO-free and globalization-free world

A better life awaits the people of the world if we junk neoliberal globalization and the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is what the Hong Kong People’s Mardi Gras against the WTO is all about.

Today, migrant workers from the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body (AMCB) lead the march to show to the world the people’s demands and alternatives to the WTO and its policies. These we present with songs, cheers, mascots, dances and colors.

What is a WTO-free and globalization-free world?

• * Workers, including migrant workers, shall be given our rightful wage; our employment shall be protected; services shall be available; and our rights as workers will be promoted. Policies that depress our wages, give life to sweatshops, make contractualization widespread, and fatten up the profit of multinational companies shall have no place.

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• * Liberalization of agriculture that impoverishes peasants from developing and underdeveloped countries shall be stopped.

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• * Respect for the sovereignty and independence of countries shall be respected instead of superpower countries waging wars of aggression and intervention in the name of trade and profit.

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• * Public services such as education, housing and health shall be made available to the people and not offered for bargain sale to big private companies.

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• * Indigenous people’s lands shall not be plundered and wasted by giant mining corporations while their culture and way of life is respected.

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• * The environment will not suffer anymore from abuses. More so, majority of the people will reap the riches of nature and ensure that the environment is taken care of.

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• * Women shall not anymore be treated as second-class citizens, as sex objects and as commodities that are sold to the pleasure of business and of men.

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• * Migrant workers shall finally have the opportunity to live a decent a humane life together with our families in our home country.

These are the reasons why we say "Junk WTO!"

Ten years of WTO are enough for migrants to know and experience that it brings nothing but poverty, unemployment, displacement, war, and grave violations of human rights. Ten years of WTO are enough us to dream and act for a better world.

12/F., Room B, Arthur Commercial Bldg., 33 Arthur St., Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR Tel nos.: (852) 28104379, 23887554 Fax nos.: (852) 25262894, 26269396 E-mail: amcb@migrants.net