Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 21:15:15 +1000
Subject: AUT: 2/2 (en)[caravan99] SECOND NEWS BULLETIN of the Inter-Continental Caravan	  (fwd)


Bangladesh. The process of globalisation, on the other hand, has increased
the economic and sexual exploitation of women.
After greeting her revolutionary sisters, Shamsun Nahar Khan (Bangladesh)
explains that women in her country do not possess the economic means to
fight. Women sometimes even have to ask permission from their husband or
mother-in-law to get a glass of water or some food! They can be chucked out
of the house by their husbands, being forced to leave the village without
her clothes, without money. However, she said, the harshness of the
oppression caused the harshness of the resistance; in this respect, the
colonial period is an inspiration for this struggle.
Diana Damian (Mexico) told about how the participation of women in the
Zapatista Movement brought them more respect from men. These are only the
first steps however; women who first fought for democracy are now fighting
for equal rights between men and women. She made a special remark about the
situation of lesbian women, that they should not be pushed back in closed
rooms to live the way they want to live, but should be able to express
themselves and move around freely.
In between the talks had been music, indian dances and a great vocal
contri-bution from 3 Karnataka women!
The Caravan reaches Italy!
This report we received from Guiliano:
The busses arrived at 4 PM, so the day started pretty late. Just the time
to have a shower and some food -- something that takes hours if you
multiply everything by 270 -- and there where two important deadlines: the
presentation meeting and an anti-war demonstration, one of the many going
on every day in the whole Italian peninsula, from North to South.
The presentation meeting went pretty smooth -- the various movements
parti-cipating to the Caravan presented them-selves, and there was also some
practical issue like giving a map of the city to all indians, together with
some reference phone numbers, money change and phone cards distribution.
At the end, we presented the peace demon-stration and asked if people were
not too tired after such a long travel -- from Paris to Milan by bus -- to
participate in it. At 18.30  there was the demonstration organized in
Piazza Castello by the "Women in Black", a mainly female-based peace
movement, focusing very much on the human side of war, e.g. WHAT IT COST TO
HUMANITY!!! The Caravaneers who felt like participating in it gathered in
Leonca's yard and -surprise - it was almost all of them!! We took a free
subway because the bus drivers were tired, till the center =F1 the Castle --
where the demonstration was called. At 7 PM a couple of thousand people
moved around the park surrounding the castle. After some walk they planted
350 white crosses next to the Arena, to symbolize the children killed in
the last days by the folly of  NATO bombing and Serbian nationalism.
Everything went perfect, but relaxed as everybody was, it got late. So,
back again to the Leoncavallo for dinner, then public meeting with the
Madres de Plaza de Mayo. This was quite crowded but it was kept to a
minimum, so to end by midnight and allow people to rest -- altough some
Caravaneers hanged around with us till 3 AM.
 The Caravaneers who arrived here are fan-tastic. I really don't know where
they got all that energy. They showed an enthusi-asm really unexpected
partici-pating to all our initiatives and really communicating with people
till late at night, after the meeting. Also, it was a very warm day, so
even more tiring. Really, the first italian days start at the best.
However, tomorrow it might be more difficult. This caravan is not really
loved by the power and by many others, and there are difficulties with the
special train we organized for the visit to Rome. Yesterday, the police
said we can't have it, although a few days ago they said precisely the
oppo-site. Such a fast change of mind is quite strange: maybe some hidden
power powered some lever?

Demonstration at the Stock Exchange
After breakfast, about 500 people gather-ed outside the Leoncavallo for
another visit to the center of the city. This time we went to the Stock
Echange, one of the largest in Europe and headquarter -- right in these
last weeks-- of a huge speculative opera-tion: the supposed merger between
Telecom Italia and the Deutsche Telekom, a typical financial operation that
stole hundreds of millions dollars from the pockets of the "sheeps" making
the "herd" of globalization: the so-called "savers".
The demonstration -- authorized by the police like the demo on wednesday --
started at 11.30. Initially the police would not allow us to demonstrate
right in front of the S.E. -- but then all demonstrators (about 500) raised
their hands and pushed their way trough. After some talking, the police
stepped back and let us pass. So, till brunch-break the square in front of
the S.E., namely called "Piazza Affari", i.e. "Business square", was filled
with the green scarves of KRRS, with coloured vests of indian women, with
turbans of the Sikh and -- of course -- with black protest music from the
Social Centre Leoncavallo.
To bring the Caravan in a typical City is an exciting experience. People
are used to demonstrations, but not to 300 indian caravaneers with their
special dresses, scarves, and slogans. So the demo raised a lot of
curiosity, with people asking, people talking, lots of white collars
watch-ing and so on.

The Green Trains
In the evening, after a press conference in the afternoon and a general
briefing after dinner, 250 caravaneers left for Central Station, where they
would demonstrate to state the right to free transportation for political
reasons. Again, the police was there, but there was no confrontation. At
the end we reached an agreement, e.g. the pay of a symbolic price. OK for
the sym-bolic price, we said, but for couchettes. The caravaneers were
tired (see below), and they needed a rest also yesterday night. More
bargaining, and at the end the issue was solved: couchettes for everybody
for 3.100 marks. The Caravan left thus for Rome at about 11 PM.
(NB. What we heard is that the action at the FAO in Rome was great, but
we=EDre waiting for a report on that.)
Biotech debates in Irun/Iru=D2a
40 representatives of peasant, fisherfolk, and women=A5s groups participated
in an intense day of protest in Iru=D2a (basque: Irun), as part of the tour
which they are performing throughout Europe during the InterContinental
Caravan for Solidarity and Resistance. In the morning, there was a press
event in the central Castillo Square, with a big array of media, including
various TV stations. During this, they exposed the threat which
globalisation and free trade agreements imposed by the World Trade
Organisation (WTO), multina-tionals, and genetically mani-pulated seeds
pose towards India and the whole of humanity. In addition, they denounced
the situation of women, and the worsening of this situation in the front of
the new neoliberal economic order, the situation of traditional
fisher-folk, and the megaloma-niac dam projects in the Narmada River Valley
in India.
Afterwards, a group left to the Public University, and with the support of
the =C7Navarra Platform Against Transgenic=EB, they ran to the university with
the happy music from trikitixa, carrying out a first "occupation" of the
library, in which an Indian peasants told his doubts about the myth of
"scientific progress" and denoun-ced those who impose transgenics on us,
telling us that peasants already know that transgenics will not solve the
pro-blem of world hunger, because hunger is a problem of distribution.
Certain acade-mics were indignant, but the vast majority gave a huge
ovation. From there they went to the centre of Biotechnology Research which
is connected to the university and where experiments with genetically
mani-pulated Navarro pepper are being carried out. The centre was occupied
and in the end the director agreed to hear the protests of the Indian
delegation, and welcome them in his office. A placard which said
"trans-genics stop!" was hanged on the wall and the Indian delegation made
a sit-in inside the building.
>From there they went to the Gaztetxe (Occupied Social Centre) to eat. Every
single Caravan participant was invited to eat together with someone else as
the Gaztetxe filled up with people wanting to get to know them.
Different media (mainly alternative ones) interviewed 5 of the
representative in the Casa de la Solidaridad-Elkartasunaren Etxea
(Zabaldi), before joining more than 200 of us again in the Castillo Place
to denounce this international economic dis-order, and with the will to
create a genuine globalisation, that of the people opposed to this system
here, in India, or anyother part of the planet. They ran through several
streets until arriving at the Taconera park where there was a symbolic act
with the planting of a local species and another from India, there was an
exchange of gifts, and more denuncia-tions of the themes already adressed
several times before. We ended with a dinner and a party with Basque &
Indian songs and dance in the school-farm Illundain in which they were
accomodated.
Tuesday the 1st June, they left for Tafalla to visit an organic farm and
later they took part in an act of denunciation in the central square of
Tudela (Navarra) again, before leaving for Gallur. In parallel to this, 3
other Indians left for Rioja for the whole day.
Action at Max Planck Institute in Cologne
On Friday morning a group of 50 people from the ICC, including Diana from
Mexico, Shamsun from Bangladesh, many people from the Cologne action camp
along with people from a local anti-gen group paid a vist to the Max Planck
Institute in Cologne.
The MPI institute is to 80% funded by public money and does not directly
research for the industry, however they provide a lot of basic technique
and know-how that is picked up by the industry. It is one of the worlds
leading institutes in terms of scientific research. It has been researching
the use of GE in agriculture as well.
So we gathered outside of the insitute with our banners. There was hardly
any police there. Remember there are 12.000 police-men in the city these
days. After some talk with the MPI, the indians accepted an invitation to
come and discuss inside in a big auditorium. The represenant of the MPI
started a classic lecture on how the use of Genetic Engeneering in
agriculture is going to feed the world.
Eventually the microphone was handed over to the ICC. Two farmers said that
they were happy that the MPI people were worried about the problem of the
world food situation, but that with their traditional agricultural methods
indian farmers were more than able to feed their population and that the
use of GE in agriculture was totally unnecessary. He compared GE to the
experiences with the Green Revolution, giving concrete example in their
life, highlighting the dependency created on pesticides, the salinity of
the soil, the polluted water and the fact that we had to listen to nature
and pre-vail the traditional farming knowledge. There were many verbal
exchanges. Shamsun from Bangladesh gave a nice statement as well.

Whose responsibility??
The MPI people insisted on the fact that they didn't have any
responsibility, but the politicians! Eventually we were indirectly asked to
leave the place, saying the time was over and the police was expecting us
to go. By that time two heavy loaded police riot vans had gathered around
the building and the police was distributed in the area like army soldiers.
We stayed outside the fence for a while putting biohazard stickers all over
the place. Chris brought along her latest painting....you'll get to see it
in Geneva or Cologne.

Visit to Organic Farm near Berlin
Sided by alot of intersted persons and a journalist, participants of the
Interconti-nental Caravan visited the organic farm =D1Appledream" near
M=B8ncheberg. The farm supplies Berlin households with crates, stuffed with
organically grown food on a subscription base.
The Indian visitors asked many ques-tions about costs, techniques and the
struggle against diseases in organic agriculture, and about the breeding of
 livestock under an ecological  perspective.
Lunch we had at =D1Oecolea", a rural commune, only a couple of miles away.
After we had been presented some pro-jects running in the commune, the
people from the Caravan met with local anti-GMO activists, discussing the
problems of genetically manipulated seeds =F1 lasting for only one year, not
being able to promul-gate itself, but still expelling old and highly
resistant traditional seeds from the indian market. This drives Indian
farmers into debt  & dependency with multinatio-nal companies such as
Mon-santo and AgreVo. Such developments are contra-dictory to their views
of self-determination and self-sufficiency in agriculture, barring their
ways to real independence from western european and northern american
industrial nations.
In a forum-discussion, organised for the evening as a part of the
internationalist days in the Berlin Technical University, such views were
restated with even stronger force.




__________________________________________________________________________
This update is a compilation of the reports and press releases that we have
been receiving from different places. For more information on the ICC
events,  you can contact the local groups, or the Cologne press office:

European Press office: tel: +49 173/ 419 74 64 or +49 221 9816711 fax: +49
221 3318752
        email:  icc99presse-AT-gmx.de
Cologne: tel: +49  221 94 02 651  email:  icc99-AT-gmx.de ;
Berlin:  tel:+49 30 61308029
Brussels: tel: +32 476 684263, email: transnationalcaravan-AT-hotmail.com
Amsterdam: tel:+31 20 7768279  email:  pfe-AT-xs4all.nl
London/UK: fax: +44 171 2840779;  email: unimundal-AT-hotmail.com
Paris: tel: +33 143 620404 (Conf. Paysanne), fax:  +33 143 628003
Lyon: tel: +33 478 300332  fax:  +33 478 227102  email: ybon-AT-worldnet.fr
Nantes: tel: +33 240 416522  fax: +33 240 143 173
Toulouse: tel/fax:: +33 553 401 010  email: agi-info-AT-intelcom.fr
Poland:  email: gawlik-AT-plearn.edu.pl;
Czech Rep.: email:  zemepredevsim-AT-ecn.cz
Spain:  tel:+034 93 4124710  email: sodepaz.navarra-AT-nodo50.org
Geneva: tel: +41 22 73 18 430  fax:  +41 22 73 81 984
Bern: tel: +41 31 302 6660  fax:  +41 31 301 7874  email: nosuko-AT-pobox.ch
Milan: tel/fax:  +39 02 26 22 40 10 or tel:  +39 02 67 05 185 (Luca) email:
yabasta-AT-tin.it
Turin: tel: +39 011 84 21 00 email: cingo.g-AT-inrete.it;
Rome: tel: +39 06 822 869  email: latorre-AT-tiscalinet.it;
Venice: tel: +39 041 53 81 479   email: magve-AT-ve.shineline.it



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