Agence France Presse / Joshua Kurlantzick
BANGKOK, July 25 (AFP) - While Southeast Asian leaders debated the merits of globalisation inside a plush Bangkok hotel Tuesday, thousands of impoverished villagers protested nearby, saying the new global economy has wrecked their lives.
At Bangkok's Government House, across town from the Shangri La where the foreign ministers are holding their annual meeting, about 3,000 protestors from Thailand's rural provinces stood face-to-face with riot police.
They tore up and burned T-shirts bearing the US and Thai flags, chanted anti-globalization songs and yelled slogans against the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Several observers at the scene, including a Buddhist nun, appealed for calm over a loudspeaker system, warning the situation could deteriorate into violence.
Across the street from the mass of protestors, Thai riot police carrying shields and sticks formed a security chain around Government House, where Thailand's executive branch meets.
At the same time, roughly 600 of the 3,000 protestors, who are holding a hunger strike until the Thai government and ASEAN address their concerns, received medical attention from local hospital personnel.
The protestors say Southeast Asian governments and international organisations are not responding to the needs of the poor and must be pushed into taking action.
"The governments in the region, just like Thailand, are totally in the hands of the international financial organisations and have no say of their own anymore," said protestor Chalida, who would only give her first name for fear of being harassed by the Thai police.
"Their policies please a few people but most people here still live in the villages, where they get nothing from these (ASEAN) meetings or from any of the policies they talk about."
In Washington on Monday, a coalition of activists supporting the Bangkok protestors held a vigil outside the Thai embassy and launched their own hunger strike.
ASEAN ministers here were divided Monday over the issue of globalisation, which counts its strongest critics among the developing world.
Tech-savvy Singapore urged the group's 10 members to embrace the new economy and the information technology age.
But conservative Malaysia cautioned against change for change's sake, saying that reform must serve to benefit the people of Asia.
The majority of the Government House protestors are from fishing communities in northeastern Thailand, where they claim the Pak Mun Dam power-generating plant, built with loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), has wrecked their livelihoods.
The fishers have been joined in recent weeks by activists protesting what they claim is the destruction of villages in Cambodia and Vietnam by other large infrastructure projects funded by Southeast Asian states and the ADB.
Outside Government House, the protestors have set up a temporary tent city full of makeshift bamboo shelters, motley dwellings improvised from corrugated metal and canvas and mats for children and elderly folk to lie on.
Several weeks ago, a group aligned with the protestors breached the security cordon at Government House and scuffled with riot police, resulting in at least 22 protestors being injured by police batons and tear gas.
Tempers had flared previously in May, when some of the same protestors seized the Pak Mun Dam and prevented it from running. The protestors have since moved out of the dam's main power-generating plant.
"We have been protesting in a peaceful manner, but ... we are willing to die for our cause," one told reporters.
Senior Thai government officials have said a committee would be set up to consider the problems at Pak Mun, and the Asian Development Bank has said it may commission a review of some of its Southeast Asia infrastructure projects.:
