On Monday night inside the Washington State Stadium Exhibition Center, the WTO ministers, lobbyists and VIPs circled the wagons for their opening reception and found themselves both surrounded and outnumbered. Police estimated that about 14,000 supporters of Jubilee 2000, a campaign to forgive the debt of the world’s poorest countries, surrounded the center despite heavy rains.

Currently, $127 billion is owed by 33 poor nations to the world’s most powerful lending institutions, including International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and multinational banking corporations.

The human chain began at the First United Methodist Church with a rousing rally and interfaith service of Native American, Jewish, Unitarian, Muslim, Buddhist, Baha’i, Hindu and Christian representatives. Music by Sweet Honey in the Rock stirred the packed church, as did powerful addresses by Vandana Shiva, of India’s Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

International lending institutions force debtor nations to undertake "structural adjustments." This often means changing a poor country’s economy to promote export trade, either of raw materials such as fish, logs or minerals or agricultural crops on land that is no longer available to feed local populations. Not only are banking corporations such as Citicorp, Chase Manhattan, Lloyds, Deutsche Banke, Bank of America, First Boston, Morgan Guaranty, and Manufacturers Hanover (which have all been involved in Third World lending) the benefactors of these interest-bearing loans to debtor countries, too often corrupt governmental officials in these countries and corporations steal and squander the funds, leaving the debt and interest payments to the people.

The WTO talks about international trade as the roadmap to global prosperity, without acknowledging that many countries are so far in debt to the rich countries they can not even afford to buy the roadmap.

For more information: www.jubilee2000uk.org

David E. Ortman

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