Anti-Globalisation Movement
June 17, 2004
The tragic death of a South Korean farmer at a demonstration against World Trade Organisation talks in Cancun last year shocked the world and made the international media sit up and pay attention to the seemingly mundane trade talks.
According to some it was the protest movement itself that really put the issue of Globalisation onto the media spotlight. The protests that shut down the WTO talks in Seattle in 1999 were unique in that people from a broad spectrum of society including students, environmentalists, trade unionists and farmers protested against what they saw was the unequal and unfair practices of the global trading body.
Some of the street demonstrations are violent like those seen during the G8 summit in the Italian city of Genoa in 2001 but many are not. And a trail of demonstrators follow the circus of international financial summits around the world to ensure that global attention is brought to the issues being discussed by world economic leaders.