Batam, 18 September — It doesn’t take much genius to understand why legions of advocates and activists have gathered for three days and three nights at the tranquil Asrama Haji Batam Center.

 

Despite the accumulation of grievances and stories of suffering, no one is mourning at the Asrama Haji.  There is only anger mixed with determination and laughter

 

The skepticism regarding recycled ‘new’ world orders is muted.  What is apparent in the Batam gathering is the atmosphere of anger mixed with stoicism and laughter — grounded reckless optimism, if there was ever such a thing — that delegates to the international citizens event had inadvertently brought with them to the Indonesian island.

 

During the day the activists debate and discuss the pathologies of social destitution and the ecological crisis.  As dusk takes over, as the day slowly fades, from the rubble of ills the advocates swap plans and proposals regarding the future that each of them desires to build. By the time night fully arrives, they will be dancing and singing together, in celebration of the spirit of solidarity that has brought each of them to Batam.

 

They are delegates to the International Peoples Forum vs. the IMF and the World Bank, or IPF.  Hundreds of delegates from dozens of countries, carrying disparate beliefs and cultures, bearing witness to the burden shouldered by the peoples they represent — the weight of worsening poverty, deteriorating ecosystems and disempowerment imposed by global financial institutions led by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whose pampered bureaucracy is working feverishly with officials of the despotic Singapore government forty minutes away by ferry to hold what they hope will be a trouble-free annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

 

But hope is a more abundant product in Batam.  In Singapore, the most traded commodity is fear, and as far as the intention to thwart the goals of the Batam conference from being held is concerned, by now it is evidently clear that the Singaporean commerce of scare tactics and bullying have failed.

 

No amount of street protests in Singapore could have generated the amount of international focus on the criticisms leveled at the IMF and the Bank the way the Singaporean government’s display of its iron fist has accomplished.  That and the inevitable comparison between the authoritarian impulse of Singapore’s ruling party and the leadership of the IMF and the Bank.  For, what, after all, are the devastating structural adjustment programs of the Bank and the IMF but impositions on the populace of the developing world?  Economic prescriptions that have caused the rapid decay of social services, and thus, unimaginable anguish on the part of poor in Asia, for instance, were never popularly selected.  Neither were dirty energy projects that have displaced whole villages and subjected communities to horrendous amounts of hazardous pollution.  Like the Singaporean leadership, only a handful of nations in the Bank and the IMF — all of them robust from feeding on the fat of the developing world — make decisions, notwithstanding the propagated lie that a myriad of countries comprise the membership of the two institutions.

 

Perhaps, in hindsight, the Singapore government had little choice but to employ heavy-handed measures.  What sentiment, after all, does one expect from citizens of countries that have reeled from the spectacularly flawed medicine that they have been forced to take?  Medicine in the form of loans and conditionalities and fundamental policy changes, which have resulted everywhere these have been imposed in increased suffering and a massive hemorrhage of resources away from needy families and towards the pockets of thieves and technocrats.

 

Did not the Bank provide the family and cronies of the butcher Suharto with an estimated $10 billion from the $30 billion that it funneled as so-called “development aid” to Indonesia? [1]  Did not the Bank provide the financial backing for paper mill projects in the country that have contributed to wiping out ancient Indonesian forests?

 

Wasn’t it the World Bank that extended loan after loan for polluting large-scale power projects in the Philippines, which have produced enormously onerous contracts that have resulted in higher electricity prices, substandard energy services, horrifying amounts of hazardous emissions that have plagued communities and towns unlucky enough to live in proximity of the dirty power plants, and a surge in the country’s crippling debt problem?

 

In 1998, nearly two tonnes of cyanide and sodium hypochloride from the Kumtor mine poisoned the Barskoon river in Kyrgyzstan and left several people dead and hundreds seeking medical treatment.  In the same year, 70 litres of nitric acid was spilt and a Kyrgyz worker was buried when a 200 metre-high pit wall of the mine collapsed.  Despite the terrible situation, the deadly mine continued to benefit from $40 million in loans and equity investments from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private arm of the World Bank Group.  The IFC eventually sold in 2004 its holdings in the Kumtor mine, “earning a substantial profit and distancing itself from liability for the social and environmental damage” it inflicted on Kyrgyzstan. [2]

 

Of hypocrisy, there is much to cite.  Each year, the Bank issues increasingly strident rhetoric regarding the need to globally combat the menace of climate change, which is due largely to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal.  And yet, from the 1992 Earth Summit to 2004, “the World Bank Group approved $11 billion in financing for 128 fossil fuel extraction projects in 45 countries — all of which will contribute over 43 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.”  According to environmental groups monitoring the activities of global financial institutions, “nearly half of these Bank-supported oil, gas and coal projects (and over 80 percent of oil projects alone) are designed for export to the global marketplace — mainly Northern countries.” [3]

 

These form a tiny number of examples cited during the course of the three-day event.  Perhaps the Singapore government had good reason to fear the Batam gathering.

 

The substance of what has been discussed in Batam demonstrated not only the perverse realities on the ground that institutions such as the IMF and the Bank have created; the Batam discussions have also shown how vibrant, vital and global dissent continues to be.

 

When the IMF and World Bank chose Singapore as the venue for its annual conference, both institutions knew perfectly what to expect.  The political tyranny prevailing in Singapore is no secret. In the wake of social, economic, environmental and political disasters it has been sponsoring, it seems telling and fitting, actually, that Singapore occupies one of the top rungs among countries cited by the World Bank as shining global models of governance.

 

The IMF and the Bank knew what they were getting when they chose Singapore.  A directive posted by in the designated IMF/World Bank Civil Society Centre reminds passersby and reporters that “Journalists are free to enter the CSO [civil society organization] centre for briefings and interviews,” as if the room were a zoo where gawking and cooing and petting strange beings was permitted.

 

“Please do not leaflet in the Press Centre,” the IMF/World Bank Civil Society Team exhorts civil society members in its posted missives.  However, said the same team, civil society participants “may discreetly hand out your materials to interested journalists.”  Yes, that’s what you read.  You are forbidden to leaflet.  But you can “discreetly” hand out flyers.  And of course, big Singapore brother — and big IMF/Bank brother — determine in the end if you acted discreetly or not.

 

There is even a posting announcing the “Host Government-designated Demonstration Space” — an announcement, mind you, of how delighted the Bank and the IMF must have been in choosing Singapore as the venue of their annual meeting.  It says:  “There is a designated area within the Suntec Centre where CSOs will be permitted to peacefully demonstrate between the hours of 9AM — 6PM…. This space is NOT [capitalized in original] controlled by the IMF and the WB; it will be regulated by the Singapore authorities and they will make all decisions regarding what activities and messaging will be deemed acceptable inside that space,” with the last portion of the sentence from the word “decisions” underlined in the posting.

 

And so it cannot be anything but a farce when World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz denounces the Singapore government’s heavy-handedness in handling civil society criticism.  The IMF and the Bank’s complicity cannot be hidden with regard to the violations of the rights of 54 people — a minimum/; more may not have been documented — who were all either detained, interrogated or deported based on a list that neither the Bank nor the IMF nor the Singapore government has furnished any organization in Batam or the media.  Of the 54, at least 17 were held and isolated and deported, some for as long as 38 hours with any outside contact and in many instances without food.  A tally of the cases of the 54 also shows racial profiling — only one was of Caucasian ethnicity.

 

There is even a dose of the surreal during the whole affair, which stems from the apparent information agonies of the Bank and the IMF.

 

A confidential copy of the official manual of the IMF/World Bank 2006 Singapore Conference called “The Participant’s Handbook” was acquired by this snoop from the intrepid Stephanie Fried, detailing what can now be regarded as one of the most tightly guarded secrets of the Bank and the IMF.  Now, this is NOT a Singapore government document that we are referring to; it is the real thing — an official IMF/World Bank document.

 

So controversial are its contents that the IMF and the Bank even conspicuously printed a threatening reminder on the very cover of the said Handbook:  “Not for public dissemination.  Please destroy or hand to security at the conclusion of the Annual meetings.”

 

You are wondering, of course, what the contents are of this Official Delegate’s Handbook.  You will not be disappointed at the extent of what the Bank and the IMF wish to hide.  Inside the classified manual is shocking confidential information showing “how to effectively hail a taxi in Singapore” and how to join “Exclusive Shopping Expeditions” which include “give-away cookbooks with spice blends” and free cooking manuals showing how “to practice newly acquired cooking skills back home.”

 

Please keep out of the public’s reach, the IMF/World Bank booklet demands.  It is almost as if an audio recording somewhere is about to whisper, “This manual will self-destruct in five seconds…”

 

Nothing else can speak more eloquently about the IMF and the World Bank’s commitment to transparency.

 

When the final night of the Batam international citizens conference on global financial institutions was held, it was only fitting for its delegates to bring out a candle and from a single flame light the vast hall that fell into darkness when the lights were extinguished during a final song.  People whooped, cheered, sang together and pranced about and the flickering lights across the now lighted hall sent the subtle message that probably, solutions to the problems besieging the world were held by those who had gathered in Batam and not by those in Singapore, where the very creators of the said problems were congregating.

 

In the beginning, the activist and advocate groups were divided between those who wanted to engage the IMF and the World Bank in order to show the consequences of their lending operations and the policies the two institutions were pushing, and those who wished to engage the Bank and the IMF to exploit contradictions and subvert and undermine operations and processes from inside the two financial organizations, and those who opted to stay outside to criticize the activities and very existence of the Fund and the Bank in the harshest ways that peaceful protests would permit.

 

When Singaporean officials turned to its iron hand and fell down on community members, economists, activists and academics on their way to Batam — passing through or staying in Singapore — the global civil society community did not falter and immediately united to support a boycott of the Singapore IMF/World Bank meetings.  It was a display of solidarity that not only further eroded the rapidly disintegrating legitimacy of the two financial institutions.  It was also a window that showed the enormous strength that the global movement for justice and real sustainable development can count on if only it is able to sustain such a collectively held zeal, during times of adversity and during periods of advance.

 

The closing press conference of Batam was held on the morning of September 18.  It augured once more another beginning.

 

Notes

 

1.  “Statement on the ban on civil society organizations entering Singapore,” Focus on the Global South, 15 September 2006.

             

2.  “The IFC at fifty:  All that glitters is too much gold,” Bretton Woods Update, September/October 2006.  See www.BrettonWoordsProject.org.

                   

3.   “How the World Bank’s Energy Framework Sells the Climate and Poor People Short,” a civil society critique to the World Bank’s Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development collectively authored by diverse groups such as Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale, CEE Bankwatch Network, Bank Information Center, Urgewald, and the Institute for Policy Studies, September 2006.

 

Ibrahim Rojo is the nom de guerre of a Paras Indonesia writer covering the International Peoples Forum vs the IMF and the World Bank conference in Batam, Indonesia.

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