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Landless Activists Arrested in Run-up to South Africa Summit

August 22, 2002

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(Oakland, Calif.) Over 70 protesters, including one American citizen, are being detained after South African police stormed a demonstration by 3000 landless activists marching against forced evictions in advance of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.

Heads of state and ministers from around the world will be gathering with corporate leaders in Johannesburg next week for the WSSD to address the goals of more "sustainable development" - development which is more socially just and environmentally sound.

The National Land Committee and the Landless Peoples Movement together with landless activists from around the world have come to Johannesburg for a "Week of the Landless" to underscore their plight and to remind policy makers that sustainable development, sustainable agriculture, or sustainable forestry requires that the poor have land, and that means land reform. With more than 8000 security police, the government is attempting to keep protests by poor people out of sight. Activists are calling for the immediate release of the detained protesters, named the "WSSD 72."

"It costs $150 to join the 'civil society' forum at the WSSD. Two in five South Africans live on less than $2 a day. How are they meant to make their voices heard if not through protest?" said Raj Patel, Policy Analyst at Food First. "There's no democracy at the WSSD, just hotels for the rich and cells for the poor."

Food First, together with the National Land Committee (NLC) and the Landless People's Movement (LPM), have denounced these arrests and the ongoing official attempts at intimidating protestors and stifling freedom of expression. Ten years after the first Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg is a microcosm of the growing rift between rich and poor and the failure of the United Nations to acknowledge the importance of eliminating poverty to achieve sustainability.

"Truly sustainable development is only possible if poor people have a chance to participate, and that means they must have land," said Ms. Anuradha Mittal, co-director of Food First, who is Johannesburg. "This fact was recognized at the Rio Earth Summit ten years ago. If this summit doesn't renew these commitments, then the WSSD will be nothing more than a meaningless photo op."

Peter Rosset, also a co-director of Food First, who works closely with some of those who were arrested, said, "sustainable development means human rights. If people are in jail for having tried to express their views, then we might as well forget about the supposed goals of the summit."

"Apartheid is apparently alive and well, not only in South Africa, but wherever these sorts of corporate love-ins take place," said Dr. Patel. "These events pay only lip-service to democracy. It is a sad indictment that the globalization that we're told to respect and admire can only happen behind doors closed to the poor, protected by the police forces of the rich."