Financial Express | November 11, 2001 | by Rohit Bansal
Doha - In a jamboree where super stars like US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick could be in one corner vying for media attention with a Pascal Lamy of the European Union or a Shi Guansheng of China, NGO activists-turned-actors haven't done too badly. Some three dozen camera crews, and over hundred hacks jostled with each other, perched precariously on tables and chairs, and hung on to a free-wheeling script, as activists enacted a brilliant spoof on Sunday of the 'green room process.'
In the cast were dummies of World Trade Organisation (WTO) director general Mike Moore, Mr Zoellick, Mr Lamy, and even tiny Vanuatu, which is acceding; on the last day of this ministerial. Also on hand were 'protestors' and 'the developing countries,' parts enacted by dozens of Ivy League PhDs. Most surprising of all, the Qatari police let them do the skit right inside the Sheraton open air lounge, the media centre just 50 steps away.
So, there we had Mr Moore - oh, how the activists find him such a juicy target! - blasting away how patents and profits must always come before people. Everytime the activists would boo, he would say: "Keep quiet civil society. Keep quiet!"
This was one place where 'Mr Zoellick' had a distinct continental accent. Bertrand Egbert, his dummy, was making an amusing intervention on TRIPs, just when 'the developing countries' tried to storm in. Confounded, 'Mr Zoellick' asks, "Hey, who do you guys represent?" "Everybody," says everybody!
The green room process is passe. "This isn't Seattle," we are told. "This time, they've put a Green Man," to moderate the debates! So this 'Green Man' pulls out one weakling of a guy, supposed to be Vanuatu, from 'the developing countries' and orders him to explain what the hullabuloo was all about. And the boy, looking fantastically confounded, replies, "I have been looking around for a green room, and now you tell me I need to speak to you, a Green Man! What's all this?" This five-foot nothing activist asks. In a minute, he is dismissed, but not before he confesses: "Hey, I have even forgotten where Vanuatu is!"
This goes on until TRIPs is trashed and so are patents and royalties which indigenous communities are supposed to pay for their own knowledge, and so on.
In all, the activists are thrilled that Qatar has come true to its promise of allowing peaceful demonstrations. "Our methods are straight out of Mahatma Gandhi. It's the only way to counter someone as insensitive as Mike Moore. As for the Qataris, they are super. We have seen such brutality in earlier ministerials. I've had pepper laced liquid being thrown on me at Seattle. These Qataris can train the cops in Seattle and Geneva," says Anuradha Mittal of Foodfirst. Barry 'Mike Moore' Coates agrees. "We were peaceful, and they let us be," he tells some half a dozen television crews craning for his sound bite.
What helped keep protests under the lid was that WTO and the organisers clubbed some 680 non-government types as 'NGO,' but actually just 200 of them out here are 'genuine' activists. All of them had to argue their cases through ellaborate supportive dossiers and were advised to be peaceful and go home no later than the 14th.
"That's fine," says Mr Coates. "We are here to enact a different theatre. Our protest has nothing to do with civil liberties in Qatar".
So, what's next? How Qatar reacts to activists' plans to disrupt a Lamy presser, and then the final announcement by Mr Moore on the 13th.Financial Express:
