南華早報 2005-11-22
by Laurence Brahm - a political economist and lawyer who based in Beijing.
As Hong Kong braces for protests against the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting next month, it is useful to know why so many will be on the streets. Certainly, the mainstream western media will not tell you.
Ironically, those in the so-called anti-globalisation movement are all for the globalisation of information. Mobile phones and the internet are their most critical tools, forming an underground media that people globally must now turn to in order to understand what is really happening.
In the mainstream, multinational corporate media realm, actual events are edited, watered down and misconstrued. News readers and commentators who sing the praises of globalisation dismiss what is becoming a global, people's free democratic movement with the crude label anti-globalisation.
Why is this movement awakening under everyone's noses, particularly at meetings of the WTO, the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations and the World Economic Forum? Is it possible that certain democratic government mechanisms are not allowing for full democratic participation?
Such thoughts would be heretical for the western mainstream media to discuss. But, because of their refusal to provide balanced coverage, these groups have no other choice but to come out en masse to draw attention to their positions.
Amid massive populist protests during the 2001 G8 meetings in Genoa, Italy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called on the international media to stop their coverage, saying: To give in to the protesters would be to turn democracy on its head. Sure enough, cameras turned away from the crowds and back to Mr Blair and US President George W. Bush. Who was telling the truth?
John Bunzi, founder and director of the NGO International Simultaneous Policy Organisation, says anti-globalisation protests are just the festering tip of a very large iceberg. For, underlying these high-profile protests lies a widespread and deepening public disengagement from party politics, as evidenced by the ever-lower voter turnouts in elections around the world. As such, those voters to the left of centre are today effectively deprived of political expression of their democratic rights. So is it any wonder they take to the streets in protest?
After Genoa, a viewer named Kaka Tim wrote an open letter to the BBC, saying: I found your reporting of the recent demonstrations against the G8 in Genoa extremely unbalanced, distorted, inaccurate and selective with the facts...The fact that I have to consult what is effectively the 'underground' media in order to discover the truth about what happens on political demonstrations is a disturbing development...
He said that while the protesters came from a wide variety of backgrounds, they agreed that the free-market policies of the multinational corporations and the wealthy western governments are overwhelmingly self-serving and are driving increasing global poverty, worker exploitation, social breakdown and environmental destruction. This is a moral crusade that drove thousands to the streets of Genoa ... the largest protest movement in history and a welcome rebirth of political idealism.
Will Hong Kong become a platform for such a rebirth of idealism next month? It would be a refreshing twist. So maybe, in Mr Blair's words, democracy is being turned on its head. Maybe it is time for new forms of representative government to come into being. Certainly, the WTO meeting will not represent those on the streets.
Anger expressed by the so-called anti-globalisation movement in Seattle, Prague and Genoa becomes violent and radical because normal outlets for these concerns are not provided among mainstream media. The New York-Washington elite set parameters of what is fair discussion in the media. But the rest of the world does not have to follow. Next month, in Hong Kong, we should not.
