Ninety-Nine magazine - February 2018

Challenging the power of the

Issue 10 - February 2018

Free trade vs democracy The global crackdown on trade dissent

Also in this issue The UK’s ‘hostile environment’ for migrants Taking on the drugs giants in South Africa Tunisians resist the IMF

ISSUE 10: February 2018 03 Campaign news 06 Global news 08 Free trade vs democracy 11 Global Justice Now supporters 12 Taking on the drugs giants in South Africa 14 The ‘hostile environment’ for migrants 16 Protests at the WTO 18 Tunisia and the IMF 19 Reviews

Ninety-Nine is published three times a year by Global Justice Now Global Justice Now campaigns for a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few.

We champion social movements and propose democratic alternatives to the rule of the 1%. Our activists and groups in towns and cities around the UK work in solidarity with those at the sharp end of poverty and injustice.

Ninety-Nine magazine, Global Justice Now 66 Offley Road, London SW9 0LS 020 7820 4900 • offleyroad@globaljustice.org.uk • globaljustice.org.uk Editor: Jonathan Stevenson Design: Matt Bonner www.revoltdesign.org Cover image: Protest against the World Trade Organisation summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina in December. © Fotografías Emergentes Printed on 100% recycled paper.

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@GlobalJusticeUK Global Justice Now

2 Ninety-Nine 2018

Together we can beat the Brexit blues Jonathan Stevenson Head of communications

It’s not clear how many people voted for Brexit to give Liam Fox absolute authority over trade deals beyond the reach of parliament, but my guess is it wasn’t that many. All the same, that’s the power grab that our trade secretary is currently pursuing, and he’s been going about it with some confidence.

A telling detail about Fox is the picture of the Victorian colonialist Cecil Rhodes he has on the wall in the Department for International Trade. His civil servants reportedly refer to their mission as ‘Empire 2.0’ as a result, which would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

Fox’s vision, based as it is on a fantasy of Britain’s shameful imperial past, will surely come unstuck when coming into contact with the real world of 2018 and beyond. The early symbol of this is Theresa May’s desperate cosying up to Donald Trump in the hope of a trade deal – one that can only be worse for people and planet than the hated TTIP, which we fought off 18 months ago.

Yet just as a Trump state visit is not welcomed by the majority of British people, so too the desire of Fox and some of his fellow ultra-Brexiteers to now turn the country into a low-wage, low-regulation tax haven off the shores of Europe is not shared by most of the public. That’s why we Just as Trump’s state should have confidence visit is not welcomed in resisting it, for as long as it remains on the table. by the majority of In different ways our British people, nor is current campaigns the ultra-Brexiteer tackle several pieces of the jigsaw that was vision of a low-wage, thrown into the air on 23 low-regulation tax June 2016. And the way Brexit unfolds (or unravels) haven off the shores in the months ahead will of Europe. have a major effect on how the UK relates to the world, and so on all of our work. Internationalism has taken a hit since the Brexit vote, but it is up to us to keep the candle burning. If we don’t, the likes of Liam Fox will claim an unjustified mandate for a very different kind of global role for Britain.

Opposition growing to Fox’s trade power grab Global Justice Now has taken a lead role over recent months in galvanising opposition to the government’s secretive and antidemocratic trade agenda. A big thank you to everyone who signed the Dangerous Deals postcard to trade secretary Liam Fox in the last issue of Ninety-Nine. They formed part of a 265,000-strong petition, organised jointly with other Trade Justice Movement members, which was delivered in November.

At the heart of the government’s plans is the Trade Bill which is now going through parliament. The bill represents a power grab for the Department for International Trade, transferring even the limited powers to scrutinise trade deals currently enjoyed by MPs and MEPs through the EU into the hands of trade secretary Liam Fox. Fox launched a Trade White Paper in the autumn – a government consultation on the future direction of trade policy – and received over 70,000 responses including from Global Justice Now supporters. Yet in a particular insult to democratic participation, the very morning after the consultation closed, Fox laid the text of the Trade Bill before parliament.

CAMPAIGN NEWS

Our campaigning has also helped get 120 MPs to sign EDM 128 in support of trade democracy, making it one of the most popular motions among MPs out of many hundreds. All the opposition parties in parliament – Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens – have backed the call for trade democracy and are trying to amend the bill.

Although the UK is not supposed to negotiate trade deals until it has left the EU, informal talks have begun via 14 working groups with 21 countries ranging from authoritarian Middle East states such as Saudi Arabia to countries with a shared corporate trade agenda such as Canada and Australia. Yet the chief prize for postBrexit trade is still seen as a trade deal with Trump’s USA. Unfortunately, we know that this will be based on TTIP, the disastrous EUUS trade deal that we defeated in 2016.

With the Trade Bill making its way through the House of Commons and then the Lords, we will continue to put maximum pressure on MPs and Lords to support amendments that stand up for trade democracy.

Find out the latest via: globaljustice.org.uk/trade

Handing in the trade democracy petition (below); Labour, SNP, Lib Dem and Green MPs have pledged their support for the campaign (right).

© Joyce Nicholls/ Trade Justice Moveme nt 2018 Ninety-Nine 3

CAMPAIGN NEWS

Trump defers UK visit again Members of the Stop Trump coalition celebrated a victory in January as the US president pulled out of a planned UK visit to open the new US embassy building. It followed the failure to schedule Trump’s state visit in 2017 as originally intended. Plans for a third attempt were reported after Trump met with Theresa May at Davos, but the threat of mass protests - which seems to have deterred the previous two visits - has not gone away.

Trump further burnished his racist credentials by referring to Haiti, El Salvador and various unnamed African nations as “shithole countries”.

With our allies, we will keep on calling

out Trump and trying to obstruct his policies, whether or not he ever visits.

We also need to undermine the causes of Trump – the disastrous and unfair global economy which allowed his election in the first place.

The way to really challenge the rise of right-wing ‘populism’ is to build an international economy that world for the majority, not the 1%.

© Wasi Daniju

£1 billion drugs rip-off exposed A new report by Global Justice Now and STOPAIDS, Pills and Profit: How drug companies make a killing out of public research, was launched in October. Backed by over 20 health and patient organisations, it exposes how big pharmaceutical companies are ripping off taxpayers by taking over drugs

©X 4 Ninety-Nine 2017

developed with public money and selling the drugs back to the NHS at extortionate prices. The report was covered in a one-hour BBC Radio 5 Live Investigates programme as well as in the Telegraph, Independent and BBC News Online.

Emma Robertson from patientcampaigners Just Treatment, who has breast cancer, featured on 5 Live Investigates calling for the price of breast cancer drug palbociclib to be reduced.

Following this, and a Just Treatment petition of almost 20,000 names, the drug company Pfizer dropped the price of the drug to the NHS. The report kickstarts Global Justice Now’s newest campaign to call on the UK government to attach conditions to public money for research and development so that the drugs produced from public research are affordable and accessible for all – here and around the world.

Listen to 5 Live Investigates: globaljustice.org.uk/5livedrugs Read the report at: globaljustice.org.uk/pillsandprofits

CAMPAIGN NEWS

© Cpl Darre n Legg RLC/MoD

A new report from Global Justice Now highlights how the UK’s aid money is being diverted away from poverty alleviation, and instead being used to fund police, military and security forces around the world.

The government’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund brings aid money together with other government funds to make up a £1 billion pot that allows the government to fund projects in dozens of countries which supposedly promote the UK’s national security interests.

One recipient of this fund is Nigeria, whose security services are supported with £4.4 million of aid via the conflict fund. A core part of this project is to provide “strategic assistance” in the fight against Boko Haram. This means that money intended for reducing poverty is instead being used to prop up security forces around the world. But what’s worse, there is a real risk that the conflict fund is funding projects that actually risk harm.

In Bahrain, for example, where according to Human Rights Watch, “the authorities prosecute and jail prominent human rights activists and political opposition leaders”, the fund has provided £3.52 million for training projects to teach Bahraini police how to “command and control” demonstrators, including sessions on using “less than lethal options” such as water cannons and dogs.

Using aid money in this way – to fund overseas security projects – is hugely problematic as it is diverting aid away from its core purpose of ending poverty.

Read the report: globaljustice.org.uk/conflictfund

Crown

Aid money being diverted to security forces

A Royal Marine unloads UK aid

Boost for UN corporate treaty despite blocking efforts Together with 200 campaigners from 80 countries, Global Justice Now joined the mobilisation in Geneva in October to support UN efforts to draft a legally-binding treaty on transnational corporations and human rights. Despite the European Union, the UK and other powerful countries’ trying to derail the UN Human Rights Council process, we achieved a positive outcome, allowing discussions to move on to the actual text of a treaty next year.

There was a further effort at the December meeting of the UN General Assembly’s budget committee, when the EU delegation tried to eliminate funding for the process, which would effectively have ended it. Again, the unity of developing countries and the voices of civil society that are working on the issue prevailed.

The UK government, like the EU, prefers the current voluntary mechanisms for addressing

allegations of human rights and environmental abuses by corporations. Yet these have repeatedly failed to hold companies accountable for their violations.

Slowly, people are seeing the importance of a legally-binding treaty. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gave the campaign a timely boost in a speech to the UN in December, pledging that a future Labour government in Britain would give the UN process active support.

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GLOBAL NEWS MOVEMENT NEWS

Victory against water privatisation in Indonesia

© EPA/Bagus Indahono

An Indonesian woman wears a ‘Water is expensive’ bandana at an International Water Day rally in Jakarta.

The Indonesian Supreme Court has ordered the termination of water privatisation and restoration of public management of drinking water in Jakarta. The decision is the culmination of a long battle by activists since the privatisation of Jakarta City’s water services – one of the last acts of the Suharto dictatorship in 1997.

In addition to ruling that the transfer of water services in the Indonesian capital to private operators was illegal, the court also based its decision on the failure of the private companies to guarantee the human right to water for residents. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2012 by the Coalition of Jakarta Residents Opposing Water Privatisation.

Campaigners now intend to keep up the pressure to ensure that the mandated return to public ownership and transition is done without the corporations squeezing out further unearned profits, or imposing large debt burdens on the government of Jakarta and its people.

Women in Mexico join Not One More protests Women in Mexico City used the traditional Day of the Dead festival on 2 November to stage a procession against femicide and harassment. Many dressed in Day of the Dead themed costumes for the demonstration to highlight the murder of 2,735 women last year in the country.

It followed mass protests across

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Mexico in September following the death of Mara Fernanda Castilla, a 19-year-old girl who used a taxi-hailing app to get home and was found dead a week later. Thousands marched in Mexico City chanting in Spanish: “They will tremble, they will shake, because machismo has got to end.”

They were the latest actions using the

#NiUnaMás (‘Not one more’) hashtag adopted by groups campaigning against violence against women across Latin America, starting in Argentina in 2015. The United Nation has called violence against women “one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today.”

GLOBAL MOVEMENT GLOBAL NEWS

NEWS SHORTS New Nantes airport scrapped after 50-year campaign

Climate justice groups in France are celebrating a huge victory after a controversial plan to build a new airport near Nantes was scrapped. It follows a decades-long local campaign against the airport, which for the last nine years has been coupled with a 4,000-acre protest camp and selforganised community, ‘la ZAD’, at the site in NotreDame-des-Landes in western France.

WTO summit ends in failure amid bans and resistance A decade and a half after the IMF was kicked out of Argentina following the 2001 debt crisis, a new neoliberal government led by businessman Mauricio Macri has set about welcoming global finance back with open arms. Hosting the World Trade Organisation summit in December, as well as this year’s G20 summit, was part of that.

It didn’t start well, with widespread international media coverage of the banning of 67 civil society delegates (see page 8). And with southern countries refusing to negotiate over new trade issues

until the flawed but not irretrievable Doha Development Round is completed, the summit ended in impasse.

A week of action took place in parallel, bringing together social movements from around the world to protest and strategise (see pages 16-17). “The global resistance has made itself seen and heard in Buenos Aires,” they declared. “Once again, wherever the great global forums go, the resistance of the peoples standing up and fighting for their rights will await them.”

Tunisians protest seven years after democratic revolution

Protests in Sudan as price © AP Photo/Hassene Dridi

of bread doubles

Protests have broken out over the price of bread in Sudan after it more than doubled following an IMF intervention. Police fired tear gas at protesting students, and one was shot in the capital Khartoum.

The protesters chanted ‘No, no to high bread prices!’

Authorities have seized newspapers criticising the price rises, which were required by an IMF economic programme.

Trump circus heads to Davos

A rally to mark seven years since the revolution in Tunis, Tunisia.

Thousands of people marched in Davos and Zurich in opposition to the World Economic Forum in January – and especially US president Donald Trump’s presence there. The elite gathering, held at a luxury ski resort, has long been a target for demonstrations but this year there were more widespread calls to keep out US president Donald Trump.

The Tunisian government announced concessions in January in response to a new wave of mass protests around the seventh anniversary of the 2011 revolution. Protests under the banner ‘Fesh Nestannew?’ (‘What are we waiting for?’) focused on unemployment and rising prices for basic goods, demanding ‘work, freedom, and national dignity’. It followed a new budget law enacting a series of austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund (see page 18).

The authorities first sent in the police and army, arresting nearly 800 protesters before trying to defuse the protests by announcing increases to welfare payments. The IMF’s chief spokesperson Gerry Rice was forced to defend its role, making the laughable claim on Twitter that “the IMF does not advocate austerity”. Warda Atig, a Tunis-based protest organiser said: “As long as Tunisia continues these deals with the IMF, we will continue our struggle. We believe that the IMF and the interests of people are contradictory.”

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TRADE

Free trade vs democracy From Buenos Aires to London, free trade zealots are striving to keep democratic controls out of trade deals. It’s a sign that we’re winning, writes NICK DEARDEN Opposing the secret nature of trade deals is a perennial issue for those of us who want to see trade justice.

When trade deals take place in secret, weaker countries can be bullied and bribed by stronger ones – and by big business. When parliaments are unable to hold governments to account for trade deals, ministers can cook up deals which ride roughshod over public services and environmental protections, all in the name of ‘free trade’.

Trade justice is hard enough to win even when negotiations are open and subject to democratic approval. When secrecy reins, it becomes impossible.

The campaign around EU-US trade deal TTIP saw the public forcing their way into the debate on trade policy. As a result we won some some improvements in how trade deals are carried out.

Below: Trade secretary Liam Fox addresses the WTO in Argentina in December Right: A protest inside the WTO summit Inset: Nick Dearden speaks to the trade committee in parliament.

But in post-Brexit Britain, we now have to fight these battles over again.

One day in late November, I got a personal taste of the growing lack of trade democracy. My day started in Westminster, presenting evidence to parliament’s International Trade Committee about the shocking lack of power MPs have to scrutinise, let alone to halt, trade deals. It finished with me having my accreditation to the World Trade Organisation’s summit withdrawn along with 60 experts and campaigners from across the world.

Both events related to the same issue: the lack of power we as citizens have over trade policy.

Trade isn’t just some technical issue that matters to ‘experts’. It’s about food standards, workers’ rights and environmental protections. It’s about how we run public services and whether we can afford essential medicines.

SHUTTING OUT PARLIAMENT Last November, parliament’s International Trade Committee invited me to explain the problems I saw in Liam Fox’s Trade Bill, which had just been introduced into parliament. I told them that it lacked any process for allowing the public, or even them as MPs, to have control over the government’s trade policy.

That means that as Liam Fox flies around the world talking trade to governments from Saudi to the US, Brazil to the Philippines, neither parliament nor the public has a right to know what he’s talking about or to whom. There doesn’t have to be any consultation or impact assessment on a trade deal he is negotiating and MPs have no right to set a

© WTO/Cuika Foto

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© WTO/Cuika Foto

framework for such talks.

It gets worse. When the secretary of state has completed talks, and signed a trade deal, MPs can’t amend it or stop it. If they’re lucky, they might just get a debate and the right to agree.

This matters, because we know that trade policy increasingly affects more and more aspects of our lives. We know a trade deal with the US, for instance, would change UK food standards – GM food, chlorine chicken and hormone beef – because the US commerce secretary told us so before that last round of talks. We know it could pose a threat to the NHS. And we know it would likely include a secretive ‘corporate court’ allowing US multinationals to sue the British government for doing pretty much anything said corporation doesn’t like.

And it’s not just about our own welfare. We know this government remains committed to tighter intellectual property. Imposing this

TRADE

policy in countries like India could threaten the ability of tens of millions of people to access essential medicines.

We know the government also wants to agree international e-commerce rules. This, in a nutshell, would hand more power to Google, Amazon and Facebook to use and abuse our data and to keep more of their vast wealth to themselves.

And we know the government will try to use trade deals to enhance the power of the footloose financial firms in the City of London, no matter the damage this will wreak on some of the poorest countries on earth.

The problem is that there’s not too much we can do about this destructive agenda until we get a proper democratic process for agreeing trade deals. Fortunately, we do have substantial support from other organisations including those in the

“My day started in Westminster, presenting evidence to parliament’s trade committee.

It finished with being banned from the World Trade Organisation’s summit in Argentina.”

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TRADE Trade Justice Movement, and from many MPs to amend the Trade Bill so that they can hold the government to account for trade policy.

and move towards new issues like e-commerce and investment, which is all about benefiting their big businesses. Although developing countries held out by refusing to sign an agreement in BANNED FROM ARGENTINA Buenos Aires, banning our voices strengthened Two hours after leaving Westminster, the World the hand of those governments that want trade Trade Organisation (WTO) got in touch. The 11th deals to be secret agreements between elites.

WTO summit was being held in Buenos Aires Why did Argentina take this action? Because it and our delegation has a government committed to had already received privatisation and austerity, who “Around the world, accreditation two wanted to use the WTO to show months previously. Only that Latin America is ‘open for governments are at the last minute, it business’ and the days of the socracking down was being rescinded called ‘pink tide’ are over. That at the request of means taking an increasingly on any form of Argentina’s new approach to democracy in trade authoritarian government. Despite protest and campaigning. repeated requests for policy. No wonder, Around the world, more information, the governments are cracking down given that trade government couldn’t tell on any form of democracy in us why. deals today go to trade policy. No wonder, given We were not alone. the heart of how our that trade deals today go to Trade activists from the heart of how our society is across Europe, Latin world is run.” run. A crackdown on our rights America and Africa also to debate, to amend, and to had their accreditation oppose trade policy is an attack on our ability to rescinded at the last minute. decide what kind of world we want to live in.

This was the first time in 15 years that such Banned or not, we will not give up because this draconian action has been taken to prevent work has never been more important. civil society having a voice at the WTO. It was Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now. unprecedented for a democratic government to take such a step.

This is important because the WTO effectively sets trade rules for the whole world. Those rules have a fundamental impact – too often negative – on poverty, inequality and the environment. Thanks to the role of campaigners, we have often prevented dangerous new deals being completed, and have stood up to rich country governments, who over the years have been outrageously hypocritical in the rules they’ve set for trade in, for instance, agricultural products. It is still the case that developing countries are challenged for very modest protection of food and small farmers, while rich country subsidies happen on a massive scale.

At December’s WTO, rich countries again tried to close down the so-called ‘development agenda’, where there is at least the rhetoric of fighting poverty and unfairness,

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Below: Protesting outside the second meeting of the secret US-UK trade working group in November.

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n Historically our council has bee people disproportionately made up of unds. kgro from white middle class bac to Global Justice Now is working mbership, me encourage a more diverse work, including among our activist net body, ing ern staff and council. As our gov so it is essential that our council, and es voic the our campaigns, benefit from other and experiences of people from to like re backgrounds. We’d therefo other particularly encourage those from n. backgrounds to stand for electio

vital “Global Justice Now is a really t its council is organisation, so it’s crucial tha communities. drawn from a diverse range of Together we are stronger.”

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w we “Local activism is central to ho nce as a campaign. Having that experie lly important council member has been rea too.” for me, and I’m sure for others Mary Steiner, East Midland s are and council member

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For more on standing go to 2018 globaljustice.org.uk/electionsor call 020 7820 490 0. is Friday 6 April.

The deadline for nominations

e Now

A more representative council

integrit y, sensitivity member requires dedication, er ‘work’ either and a lot of thinking, but it is nev group of people – there is a great buz z about a n cause. coming together for a commo I will miss it. I urge My time on council is up and ugh issues with anyone who enjoys working thro ately about other people, who feels passion has an effective ensuring that Global Justice Now like to make a voice in the world and would there and stand for difference to put yourself out 6 April to do so. election. You have until Friday !

I look forward to voting for you

© Joyce Nicho lls/Global Justic

(right) explains Outgoing chair Paul de Hoest make Global how our council elections help anisation Justice Now a member-led org rful organisation Global Justice Now is a wonde es that we have to be a par t of. The range of issu migrant rights to campaigned on is amazing: from ereignty. water privatisation and food sov ifting to be out Whilst it is fascinating and upl ses, behind the there fighting for these great cau t makes all this scenes there is a huge effort tha iliar with the paid happen. Many of you will be fam suppor ted and staff in the office, but they are council, which is directed by the activities of the bal Justice Now democratically elected by Glo including this spring. members every three years – und the strategic At council we debate issues aro which have led, for direction of the organi sation t wa s undertaken example, to the relaunch tha e to being par t a few years ago and the driv vement against of, and shaping, the global mo corporate power. and different I have met so many wonderful ncil and that is the people during my time on cou ng an effective strength of a good council. Bei

PHARMACEUTICALS

Taking on the drugs giants in South Africa Treatment Action Campaign’s SIBONGILE TSHABALALA talks about the continuing global fight for our right to health.

Sibongile Tshabalala was the lead speaker on Global Justice Now’s Sick of Corporate Greed speaker tour in November. During the tour Sibongile shared her experience as an HIV positive woman and prominent health activist in South Africa with Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). She spoke to Ed Lewis about her background, the campaign and the global fight for access to medicine.

Ed: How did you get involved in TAC? Sibongile: I found out I was HIV positive in 2000 but it was another six years until I was able to access any treatment from the public sector – it was simply too expensive.

I was curious to find out more about HIV, the science of it and the treatments. In the end, I asked my own healthcare centre so many questions that the nurse had to refer me to the TAC group! I’ve been an advocate for treatment access ever since.

TAC was first established in December 1998.

How did it come about?

Sibongile: Most of the poor in South Africa were infected by HIV and there were a lot of people who were dying because of AIDS-related illnesses. Many living with HIV couldn’t access life-saving antiretroviral drugs which were priced too high by pharmaceutical companies.

When Zackie Achmat found out he was HIV positive but could afford medicines whilst many South Africans couldn’t, he and his friends, Mark Heywood, Sharon Ekambaram, Hazel Tau and others decided to set up the campaign. Many had been very active in the liberation of the country [from apartheid], but noticed that many people were dying from AIDSrelated illnesses while they fought for freedom. So they decided to do something.

Sibongile addressing a rally in South Africa. © Treatment Action Campaign

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PHARMACEUTICALS

TAC’s campaign for access to HIV medicine in the late 1990s and 2000s was a significant victory not just in South Africa but in the global campaign to stop AIDS. Can you tell us a bit more about the campaign?

Left: Sibongile speaking in London in November.

Below: Treatment Action Campaign members protest against patent laws which prevent access to medicine in South Africa.

Sibongile: We started our first campaign to fight for affordable access to a drug that cures two infections which HIV positive people were commonly facing and dying from. HIV at that time was supposed to be treated as an emergency in the country because we were losing more than 1,700 people a day.

The drug cost 29 rand per pill in South Africa versus 2 rand per pill in other countries like India and Thailand. Unfortunately Pfizer who were holding the patent didn’t want to lower the price. With Médecins Sans Frontières and Section27, we managed to smuggle that drug into the country. It was a living example – most people who received it were cured of the infections.

We had mobilised the community well and our voices were so strong that when Pfizer took us to court, the court ruled in our favour. Our campaign was stronger than the power of their patent. And our government was given the power to buy the medicine from other countries at a much cheaper price. That was our first victory, which paved the way for others.

On the tour you’ve been talking about the campaign’s successes, but also how far there still is to go. What are you campaigning for today?

Sibongile: TAC has fought to make changes in South Africa but HIV/AIDS

© Treatment Actio n Cam paign

isn’t over and treatment for diseases that come with HIV/AIDS like breast cancer are still unaffordable. The same issues of patenting, monopolies and overpriced drugs exist as they did when TAC was founded.

Our access to medicine campaign continues today. Right now we are applying pressure on the government to fix the patent laws in the country.

In South Africa patents laws are not strict enough on pharmaceutical companies. They are able to come in, monopolise and patent drugs far too easily. The voice of civil society isn’t heard. We are also currently pressurising the drug company Roche to lower the prices of a breast cancer drug called kadcyla. Because most women with breast cancer are now HIV positive.

Since you’ve been in the UK for the speaker tour, is there anything new or surprising you’ve learnt about our struggle for affordable medicine here?

Sibongile: In South Africa most of our public services are outsourced by private companies. I’ve realised that the NHS is also under a similar threat of privatisation. I said previously that South Africa’s patent laws are not strict enough - it’s something we are challenging with TAC. But I was surprised to find out that the UK hasn’t challenged this patent model as much as I had previously thought. All these similarities prove that our fight is really a global challenge.

Sibongile Tshabalala is the national chairperson of the the Treatment Action Campaign, www.tac.org.za Ed Lewis is Global Justice Now’s national organiser.

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MIGRATION

A ‘hostile environment’ for migrants – a very British construct Many are aware of Donald Trump’s abhorrent policies on migration, but less seems to be known about the UK’s racist and discriminatory approach, writes FIZZA QURESHI ‘Go Home’ vans driven around high-migrant areas.

Restricted access to healthcare for migrants. Using schools to identify families that are of interest to the Home Office. These are just a few of the measures Theresa May has introduced over the past few years – first as home secretary and now as prime minister – in her eagerness to create a ‘hostile environment’ for undocumented migrants, and so encourage them to ‘voluntarily’ return home.

Yet her policies have gone one step further, and forced the legal obligation of administering these rules onto everyday people – landlords, employers, doctors and nurses. In other words, large parts of society have been co-opted into being the long arm of immigration enforcement.

To offer a brief background: the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016 created a series of rules and regulations making it unlawful to offer certain support and services to undocumented migrants. This has meant no access to rented accommodation, bank accounts being frozen or closed, and driving licenses revoked. All of these rules are

The Home Office provoke

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d outrage with

now punishable by either civil and/or criminal penalties.

RACIAL PROFILING

While these Immigration Acts cemented in law how certain migrants are treated, the Home Office has also been pursuing back-door agreements with other parts of government, like the Department of Education and the Department of Health, to gather data for immigration enforcement purposes. Knowing what we do about the Home Office error rate (10% of those on a recent list of ‘disqualified people’ were found to have been wrongly included), plus who is likely to be targeted, it is clear that anyone with a ‘foreign sounding’ name, or who is from a Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) background, risks being racially profiled and discriminated against.

Individuals without legal immigration status have essentially been deemed unworthy of basic rights and needs, pushing them towards the black market, and into more vulnerable and exploitative situations.

Even undocumented migrants who have been the victims of crime aren’t safe. Late last year, we heard the shocking story of a rape victim being treated as a criminal when she turned to the authorities for help simply because she didn’t have legal immigration status in the UK. Unfortunately, this woman’s story is no longer unusual.

In the UK’s ‘hostile environment’, immigration enforcement has been placed above and beyond the © Ian Bur t/Flickr welfare needs of all, r banned. late e wer ch whi , with no exceptions 2013 its ‘Go Home’ vans in

MIGRATION XXX

Campaign group Docs

Not Cops protest outside

© Docs Not Cops

the Department of Hea

lth.

– not even for women who experience We also need a concerted effort sexual violence. of grassroots resistance, one that is We believe that undocumented unified and centres the needs of those migrants deserve protection from migrants affected. We need to support discrimination the migrant and too. Even if the communities “Individuals without BME state can decide that are and will their immigration legal immigration be affected, so status, this should that they are status have not be a route confident to toward abolishing come forward essentially been people’s broader to seek support deemed unworthy and advice, and civil, social and political rights. So, we can gather of basic rights, as more and more evidence and pushing them migrants fall victim formulate our to invasive (and strategies. towards the black error-prone) Home Another market, and into Office monitoring, avenue to beat and as more and back the ‘hostile more vulnerable more professionals environment’ is situations.” are asked to join to support and the surveillance organise with effort, we need to shame the UK the private and public sectors who government into backtracking. are being asked to enforce invasive immigration rules. For example, we

FIGHTING BACK

Resistance to the ‘hostile environment’ has begun. One aspect has been challenges to the Home Office’s datasharing agreements, which we at the Migrants’ Rights Network and activist groups are contesting in the courts. But the court process is lengthy, and there are no guarantees that we’ll win.

Global Justice Now is supporting campaigns against the ‘hostile environment’ as part of our work to oppose policies which demonise and criminalise migrants in the UK. See: globaljustice.org.uk/migration

are engaging with the banks to determine how they can relay their own concerns over checking the immigration status of all account holders to their representative bodies. They are not our usual allies but we need to mobilise on the uneasiness of any sector that is required to enforce these rules.

We need to remind ourselves that we will be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable. At the moment, Britain is equally or even more pernicious than the Trump administration in its treatment of migrants. To recover our ability to consider all people humanely, the ‘hostile environment’ must go.

Fizza Qureishi is director of the Migrants’ Rights Network, migrantsrights.org.uk

Unfolding hostility May 2012 Theresa May announces her aim to create ‘a really hostile environment for illegal migration’ in an interview with the Telegraph.

July 2013 The Home Office is condemned after trialling ‘Go Home’ vans in areas with high numbers of migrants.

September 2016 A new school census asks parents to state if their children are foreign nationals, with the data to be shared with the Home Office.

August 2017 Home Office figures of nearly 100,000 student visa ‘overstayers’ are revealed to be vast overestimates. The real number was just 4,600 in 2016.

January 2018 Parliament’s health select committee demands the NHS stops handing over confidential patient data to immigration officials.

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Argentina resists the WTO As the World Trade Organisation held its latest summit in Buenos Aires in December, social movements from around Argentina and the world gathered in opposition. Photos by FOTOGRAFĂ?AS EMERGENTES

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Social movements gathered in Buenos Aires for a Week of Global Action Against the WTO. Global Justice Now’s sister organisation, ATTAC Argentina, was among the main groups putting together the three-day People’s Summit. (1) The agenda ranged from corporate power to food sovereignty, state repression to migrants’ rights.

Participants in the counter-conference included Nora Cortiñas (3, second from right), co-founder of the famous Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Argentina’s inspirational women’s movement set up to resist the brutal military dictatorship in the 1970 and 80s. Plus Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (3, third from right), the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist and artist who was detained, tortured and held without trial under the dictatorship. Both joined the lively marches against the WTO during the week (2 and 5).

The week also featured a music festival and food sovereignty market (4). The People’s Summit monitored the WTO across town closely, rejecting the ‘Declaration on Free Trade and Economic Empowerment of Women’ that the WTO released during the week.

“The processes of trade liberalisation have been detrimental to most women,” it said in a statement. “We repudiate the political use of our struggles and demands to save a failed summit. Not in our name!”

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ECONOMIC JUSTICE

Tunisians have had enough of IMF austerity Since the 2011 uprising, the IMF – backed by the G8 – has imposed economic reforms on Tunisia. Now ordinary people are protesting, writes JIHEN CHANDOUL

In the months after the revolution, western governments and institutions were looking for a way to prevent countries from questioning the neoliberal model.

They found a solution at the G8 summit in Deauville, France in May 2011.

A coalition comprising the G8, Turkey, the Gulf countries, the IMF and World Bank established a deal – the Deauville Partnership – to address the revolutionary processes that were unfolding in Arab countries. Huge loans were offered to Tunisia and others in exchange for pushing through a host of neoliberal reforms. The IMF and others took advantage of the unstable situation and the weaknesses of those countries to force through the moves.

Since 2011, Tunisia’s foreign public debt has increased substantially – 41% of GDP in 2010 has become 71% in 2018. Since 2017, Tunisia’s debt payments have ballooned, with all the loans from foreign lenders who had granted grace periods after the revolution now requiring repayment. In 2018, debt service payments will reach a record 22% of the country’s budget.

Tunisia has needed two more IMF loans in the intervening period, in 2012 and 2016,

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which came with further strings attached – including reducing the budget deficit and implementing austerity measures which increased prices further. This all culminated in a new law, which came into effect in early January, requiring reduced spending on public sector wages and an increase in indirect taxes like VAT – which sparked the protests.

The law has meant less money in the pockets of the poorest as well as the middle classes who bear the tax burden. rence in Spain.

The most vulnerable Jihen Chandoul speaking to a debt confe in our society are suffering, the middle classes are impoverished – and the brain drain has been accelerated. A sense of injustice is growing.

The current context for change is less favourable than in 2011, but the latest protests are clearly a signal that the economic situation is no longer sustainable.

An escape from submission to the IMF, which has brought Tunisia to its knees and strangled the economy, is a prerequisite to bring about any real change.

Jihen Chandoul is co-founder and head of policy research and advocacy at the Tunisian Economic Observatory.

© Audito ría Ciudadana Deuda/Flickr

Tunisia has faced protests across the country against price and tax rises since 3 January – the anniversary of the “bread riots” which occurred in 1984 under the Habib Bourguiba regime. It is impossible to understand these latest protests without understanding the role of international financial institutions, especially the IMF, in imposing austerity on Tunisia since the popular uprising of January 2011.

REVIEWS

Reviews OUT OF THE WRECKAGE: A NEW POLITICS FOR AN AGE OF CRISIS

BEAUTIFUL RISING: CREATIVE RESISTANCE FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH

George Monbiot

OR Books, 2017

Verso, 2017 In Monbiot’s usual very readable style, he gives us a book that does what so many others don’t. He doesn’t just describe the wreckage caused by the failing economic and political systems that are causing inequality and trashing the planet, but also devotes a satisfying number of pages to bringing together many possible solutions and alternatives that he suggests could create a more communityoriented, democratic society and a new ‘politics of belonging’.

He does an admirable job of making a coherent whole from many parts, and then adds to it by underlining how these changes could come about, particularly looking to the ‘big organising’ techniques of Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

Out of the Wreckage is an optimistic read, since Monbiot clearly believes in people and the good things about us, and ultimately his book promotes those things so vital for radical change: hope, the power of imagination, and effective action.

Liz Murray

Various Social movements often find themselves reverting back to the same stale and tired tactics. However, to remedy this we have been given a toolbox in the shape of Beautiful Rising - a wonderful and inspiring showcase of stories, tactics and theories that have been used in the global south to fight for a better world.

With wide ranging examples of social movements, from fighting apartheid to gender oppression to autocratic governments, one can’t help but be inspired by the use of innovation and creativity that turn limited resources into the necessary tools to achieve change.

There is a danger that activists will solely try to take the tactics from this

book and nothing else, essentially co-opting and appropriating them.

Beautiful Rising tries to counter this through an examination of theories and methodologies. However, partly due to the sheer quantity packed into the book, it does not explore this enough and not in relation to each example. This means that we are left with only a partial understanding of the struggles, the history surrounding them and their political complexities.

Tamara Hopewell Barreda Get 20% off Beautiful Rising with the discount code ‘RISING’ via the OR Books website: www.orbooks.com

THE SPIDER’S WEB Michael Oswald Sideways Films, 2017 (79 mins) The Panama Papers and Paradise Papers have understandably provoked outrage at the power held by wealthy individuals in the face of growing inequality around the world. So why do these unjust and immoral secretive tax havens still exist and what’s in it for Britain?

The Spider’s Web tackles this question through a rarely explored lens – offshore tax havens exist within Britain’s history of empire and colonisation. And it’s a history, according to the documentary, that hasn’t ended.

Oswald’s film lays out the impenetrable powers that still lie behind

Britain’s financial empire, a system designed to protect the few who benefit from it at the expense of plundering poorer countries.

Its most important assessment is that to dismantle the political power wielded by Britain’s Second Empire is to also dismantle colonialism. Well worth a watch for anyone interested in why this system has prevailed and why Britain is at the heart of it.

Radhika Patel

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