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2 December 2009 | Interviews | Geneva against the WTO | Resisting neoliberalism
Endless Persecution
Asian fisherfolk communities denounce WTO
8:50 minutes
Download: MP3 (4 Mb)
The Philippine Fisherlfolks Movement and the Seafish for Justice Network has been present in several meetings of the WTO to express their demands. As in Hong Kong, in 2005 and Geneva in 2006, this time, fisherfolks returned to the Swiss city to tell the 7th Ministerial of the greatest trade organization of the world that their policies are suffocating them.
Ruperto Aleroza is one of the members of this movement and has been protesting in Geneva with a boat he and his friends built, and have travelled through the city with it holding their demands.
In 2006, they had built several boats with which they protested in Lake Leman (or Lake Geneva).
In an interview with Real World Radio, Aleroza stated that they are protesting against the WTO because they violate the rights of Asian fisherfolks. He explained that free trade, the liberalization of their products is violating their rights, their way of living.
He also stated that free trade is risking their food sovereignty, because their livelihood is the sea.
“By allowing sea products from other countries to enter the Philippines and South-East Asia, consumers cannot afford our local products, because the foreign ones are cheaper, said the member of Fisherfolks Movement and the Seafish for Justice Network.
Moreover, he denounced that there are less fish in the seas of South-East Asia because the resources have been depleted by several types of illegal fisheries, carried out by transnational corporations.
Photo: Radio Mundo Real
