Protesters form human chain at ADB meet

Protesters form human chain at ADB meet

CHIANG MAI, Thailand (AFP): Anti-capitalism protesters mounted more rowdy protests here Monday, unimpressed by the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) pledge to intensify its war against poverty.

More than 1,500 demonstrators, who had slept rough outside a luxury hotel housing delegates at the bank's annual meeting, formed a human chain and chanted anti-ADB slogans.

"ADB go away," "ADB is destroying Thailand," they shouted as protest leaders threatened to storm the hotel if demands issued on Sunday for a rethink of bank policies in Thailand were not met.

Waves of demonstrators pushed up against police barriers and shook them until an ADB representative presented a reply to their demands.

But the bank pledged to do little more than issue a written report on the complaints and expressed regret that protesters saw the bank as a dangerous organization, demonstration leaders said.

Disappointed with the response, protesters then started to slip away from the hotel. Some even presented riot police, with whom they had been locked in confrontation for two days, with flowers.

Sources close to protest leaders told AFP they had concluded that there were not enough demonstrators to break police lines.

The demonstration swept to the threshold of the hotel on Sunday, crashing through three police road blocks during an angry day of protests.

Bank president Tadao Chino said in a speech closing the three- day annual meeting that ADB governors had endorsed a plan to tackle the scourge of poverty in Asia, home to 70 percent of the world's poor.

The strategy sketched last year is designed to promote economic growth, social development and economic reform in a double-pronged attack on the causes and impact of the crisis which devastated regional economies in 1997.

"Governors agreed that it is essential that economic recovery be sustained. They encouraged countries in the region to continue their reform efforts and to establish an enabling environment for private sector development," Chino said.

"I am pleased to note that governors have strongly endorsed ADB's poverty reduction strategy.

"I look forward to governors' continued support and cooperation as the ADB dedicates itself to achieving its vision: a region free of poverty and moves strongly and swiftly from vision to action."

Thai Finance Minister Tarrin Nimmanahaeminda, one of the top regional finance chiefs attending the talks, told reporters Monday that although the meeting had whipped up protests, the bank was determined to help the poor.

"While there are clamors outside (we) are fully sensitive to the plight of the poor," he said, adding that the bank was "fully cognizant" of the fact that the benefits of globalization must be shared equally.

Activists, many wearing brightly colored headbands and carrying flags and banners, belonged to 38 non-governmental organizations and student groups, organizers said.

Their numbers were swelled by poor farmers from around Chiang Mai, a northern city in Thailand's agricultural heartland, plus activists opposed to Myanmar's military junta and environmental campaigners.

Demonstrators claim that ADB policies have exacerbated poverty rather than loosened its grip on Asia -- which is home to 70 percent of the world's poor.

The demonstrations were the latest in a growing trend of protests at the perceived iniquities of global capitalism which included action at the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in Seattle last year and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.