Grassroot organizations joins the migrants in action against WTO

Even under threat, migrants will speak out and act against WTO

Press Statement
04 December 2005

For reference: Eni Lestari
Spokesperson
Tel. No.: 28104379, 96081475

Migrant workers are attacked by the policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in two fronts – in the host country where we work and in the country where we came from.

Wage cuts, taxation, crackdown on undocumented workers, violence against women, and discrimination – directly and indirectly, the WTO and its policies contribute to the growing list of crimes against foreign workers. Through the years of faithful implementation of these policies, the crimes of host countries to migrants get more severe and more frequent.

Meanwhile in our home countries, the relationship between the socio-political and economic situation resulting from WTO prescriptions and the forced migration of millions from underdeveloped and developing countries is even more evident. We were the peasants, the workers, underpaid women, displaced indigenous peoples, and unemployed youth.

Hong Kong, a host to more than 200,000 foreign workers most of whom are Asian women, exhibit one of the worst condition of migrants under WTO and globalization.

Now that the fight is on our very doorstep, we shall not bow down.

Together with other migrants groups from other countries, migrant-serving institutions and migrant’s rights advocates, we shall launch activities aimed to give voice to the migrants who long been denied the right to be heard.

On December 15, our presence will be felt in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines as we visit each respective consulate and give them the “award” they receive for their disservice to their nationals. As well, the Hong Kong government will not be spared nor the United States whose shameful war on terror not only victimized migrants in the US but in other countries where it launched its interventionist wars.

As our celebration of the International Migrants Day, migrants across the globe declare an International Day of Action of Migrants against the WTO. We shall hold a Migrant’s Speak Out on December 17 to be immediately followed by a Solidarity Night for Migrants where supporters of the migrant’s struggles will be featured.

No amount of threat shall stop the determined sector of migrants in Hong Kong from participating in the People’s Action Week. We are too aware of the efforts, especially of the Indoensian government, to prevent their nationals from being active in anti-WTO activities.

These threats do not scare us. Instead, these just add on to their crimes against the migrants.

Together with our compatriots who will come to HK, the migrants sector do our all out best to frustrate the WTO meeting until the whole institution of the WTO is junked.#