Batam, 16 September — It is the conclusion of the second day of the International Peoples Forum vs. the IMF and the World Bank in Batam, Indonesia. As I type this, the sound of bongo drums and guitars and raucous singing is bouncing off the walls of inside the Asrama Haji and everywhere, persistence and humor and determination are co-mingling to create a festive atmosphere — one that is surely the opposite of what officials of a government and two global financial institutions intended.

The mood is merry and spirited and many are dancing or swaying to music being played by a bare bones band, notwithstanding the ordeal that the event itself along with its delegates was forced to go through due to the machinations of the authoritarian Singapore government, a Batam administration and Jakarta leadership initially cowed into submission by Singaporean officials, and the hypocritical helm of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Titi Soentoro, who called the events of the last few days “an atrocious, ugly display of tyrannical tendencies,” is bobbing her head while talking animatedly to a colleague about future plans. Romil Hernandez, a delegate to the Batam event typing away a press statement detailing the proceedings of today’s many workshops, is being pulled to the main hall to watch the performance by musician-participants to the Batam conference. Debayani Kar has stuck the sheaf of reports and position papers she has been holding almost all day inside her knapsack to join the crowd singing together inside the hall. They represent the mood of most, if not all, who have gathered on this Indonesian island just 40 minutes away by ferry from their spectacularly wealthier and more powerful adversaries.

Who would have though that such a small, ragtag international gathering of working people, activists, community leaders and intellectuals mostly from developing countries, would cause the nasty bully called the Government of Singapore to blink? Because blink it did, notwithstanding the thoroughly duplicitous and belated response it gave on late on the first day of the Batam citizens conference boycott of the official IMF-World Bank meet in Singapore.

“The S2006 Organising Committee has decided to allow the entry of 22 of the 27 civil society organization representatives,” announced the press statement of the Singapore 2006 Organising Committee in reaction to the global uproar generated by the Singapore government’s blacklisting of accredited delegates to the IMF and Bank conference and participants to the Batam meet. This was supposed to be the mollifying response, and yet it falls far too short and tremendously too late. And whatever misguided modicum of sincere intent it may have carried initially — and the word “may” constitutes a gigantic favor granted to the undeserving — was immediately negated by the continued harassment of members of non-government organizations who continued to fly in to Singapore in order to take the ferry that would take them to the Batam conference.

The most recent report detailed the continued abuse by the Singapore government — the lie of having supposedly granted permission to enter tolerated by the Bank and IMF leadership — of civil society organization representatives who were detained and isolated, fingerprinted and interrogated — some held and harassed for over 38 hours — before finally being deported back to their countries of origin.

Last count tallied two more delegates from India, two from Sri Lanka, two from South Korea, a Brazilian and an American — all of whom were deported. And the number has probably grown.

The Singapore government — and do note that neither the World Bank nor the IMF has seen it fit to demand an explanation from the totalitarian regime — has not bothered to explain the reasons behind its blacklist, the choices it made to form the roster of people it had banned, the full list of organizations and delegates it had actually included in its blacklist, much less issue an apology to those who whose rights it had willfully shamelessly violated.

During the peak of the clash, it wasn’t all anger and brimstone in truth. There were hilarious moments. Most of the treasured sound bites had come from World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, once upon a time the US ambassador to Indonesia during the dark days of the thug named Suharto and after that the deputy secretary to the warmonger Donald Rumsfeld.

In delivering what some media outlets have called “a stinging rebuke” to the Singaporean government, Wolfowitz had warned Singapore the other day not to use authoritarian means to control its critics and to allow a more transparent and open exchange of ideas to take place between the two financial institutions and critical civil society members.

This cannot be anything but a case of a filthy pot calling a filthy kettle black. Wolfowitz, the Bank and the IMF carry no moral authority criticizing Singapore for exercising authoritarianism. Each of the three have a long tradition of supporting, nay, of embracing dictators. Think Soeharto, think Ferdinand Marcos, and think of the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharaff of Pakistan, a regime which continues to receive IMF and World Bank financing.

Today painful yet vital questions were asked. Questions about the rapid deterioration of social services. About the privatization of the commons — of rivers and land and forests. Questions regarding the complicity of the IMF and the Bank in fostering and exacerbating what is considered today as the most serious environmental threat confronting the planet — climate change. Questions about the inhuman debt that has been forced on the backs of impoverished peoples across the world — all because of the promotion of economic models that place profit over people and quick monetary gain over the sustained well-being of the planet.

Questions that have led the legion of participants to the Batam meet forge greater ties between their networks and to scheme — to organization not just common platforms but collective actions.

It is only the second day of the Batam conference, but clearly, where the Singapore government and the institutions championed by Wolfowitz and his ilk have failed miserably, the ragtag meeting of activists and advocates have succeeded. Gloriously.

Not only have they made the Singapore government blink. Not only have they focused global attention on what they call “the criminal operations and financing of the IMF and the World Bank.” Right now, they are singing and dancing together, and not a battalion of Singapore and Indonesian police and Bank officials can make them stop.

 

 

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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