[stop-imf] MGJ news conference today

[Robert Weissman]

The Mobilization for Global Justice today held a news conference to
announce its four demands of the IMF and World Bank. A report on the event
follows below, from Tim Atwater of the Jubilee USA Network. In addition to
the people Tim mentions, also at the news conference were: Liz Butler of
the Mobilization, Vanessa Dixon of Healthcare Now, a DC-based coalition
that has fought against the privatization of DC's only public hospital,
and Steve Kretzmann of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network of the
Institute for Policy Studies. I'll post a bit more on the news conference
and resultant coverage soon.

--=20
Robert Weissman=09<rob@essential.org>
Essential Information
P.O. Box 19405, Washington, DC 20036, USA
Tel: 1-202-387-8030
Fax: 1-202-234-5176
www.essential.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 03:16:18 +0800
From: Tim Atwater <timatwater@juno.com>
To: j2000-grassroots@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [j2000-grassroots] Jubilee press conference, release

Dear Jubilee Grassroots,

This morning our Drop the Debt Working Group Chair Joanne Carter of
Results and I were part of the Mobilization for Global Justice press
conference on the four demands for the week of education and action around
September 29-30 World Bank-IMF meetings. This is a brief report on the
conference, a heads up to look at the news tonight and papers tomorrow to
see if anything shows up. Our press release follows below.

The four demands of the mobilization are: 1) Open all meetings of the Bank
and Fund to public (Jubilee policy hasn't been quite this specific but
calls for transparency/openness) 2) Drop the debt held by the Bank and
Fund from their own resources(the same proposal we have put forward this
year, 3) End Structural Adjustment policies and user fees (our policy
again), and 4) Stop Bank lending for oil, gas and large dams and other
environmentally destructive projects (we have a policy plank on the enviro
that comes out about the same).

Joanne spoke to point three and I spoke to point two. The overall theme
was to lay out the demands with an emphasis on this being a matter of life
and death (and life and debt). The objective was to get the media to
seriously consider the substance of our demands rather than tactics and
numbers expected. (A uture press conf on strategy and turnout was
promised.) The strategy was to bind ourselves to only discuss the four
policy planks, nothing else. Rob Weismann of Essential Action did a great
job moderating, and I think we generally did what we said we would do.

Footnote here on Jubilee's role in the mobe: When I was asked to speak I
told the Mobilization folks that the Jubilee USA Network has only endorsed
the legal permitted march and rally; was told this was not a problem. In
the question and answer period I generally said I can speak only for
Jubilee here. The overall feel of it was very good.

The room was packed with more than three dozen reporters, a dozen tv
cameras, some radio. AP and Reuters were there so many local papers may
run something. I would appreciate seeing copies of local coverage -- email
versions best, but hard copy ok. There maybe some national tv
coverage--probably CNN is running it, maybe NBC national, maybe others.

Best,

Tim

For Immediate Release: August 28, 2001 Contact: Tim Atwater 202-783-0214
or 202-486-3566

Choose life, cancel debt

=93Thousands of children die each day from debt, destitution, and disease.
Meanwhile, the World Bank, the IMF and their G7 shareholders refuse to
cancel debts incurred by the dictators they backed with loans throughout
the cold war. They refuse to cancel debts for development programs that
never worked. They refuse to cancel debts that are literally being paid by
the poorest children in the world to the richest institutions in the
world. Welcome to the violent world of debt, dependency, and denial,=94 sai=
d
Tim Atwater, interim national coordinator with Jubilee USA Network.

The official story from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
is that developing country debt is not even a problem=97but if it were a
problem, they would be the ones to take care of it.  The reality is:
&#61623; Only 23 countries have received any debt relief and 16 of them
still spend more on debt service than on health care. &#61623; Most
heavily indebted impoverished countries such as Nigeria, Haiti, Bangladesh
and Peru remain ineligible for debt relief under IMF/Bank rules. &#61623;
Debt relief under the IMF and World Bank=92s =93Highly Indebted Poor
Countries=94 program comes with such oppressive strings (=93structural
adjustment policies=94) that the cure is often worse than the disease.

=93The bitter irony is that the World Bank and IMF are trying to pass
themselves off as anti-poverty agencies, while bleeding the poorest of the
poor=94 said Atwater. =93The Bank and the Fund complain about debt
cancellation hurting their balance sheets, as if a dollar in cancelled
debt would take money away from the hungry. In fact, it is the Bank and
Fund who are depriving children of food, health care and schooling by
insisting that they as privileged creditors receive debt repayments before
children=92s needs are met.=94

=93Every year Africa is bled of more than $13 billion in debt service=97whi=
le
at least $10 billion is needed just to fight AIDS in Africa. This is
virtual genocide=97drawing money out of a continent that is being crushed b=
y
AIDS, TB, malaria and poverty. To stop AIDS, we must cancel the debt now.=
=94

The World Bank and IMF have at least $30 billion available in reserves and
profits from loan re-flows -- ample capacity to cancel 100% of the debt of
the poorest countries in the world now, from their own resources, without
additional taxpayer appropriations, according to independent analyses of
their balance sheets. If the Bank and Fund followed the accounting
practices of the US Congress and most commercial lenders, they would value
loans to many of the poorest and most indebted countries at 10 to 20 cents
on the dollar=97enabling cancellation of much more debt at reduced cost.

Jubilee USA Network is the ongoing US wing of the international Jubilee
movement to cancel the debt of the Global South. Drawing on the Biblical
motif of debt cancellation (Lev. 25), more than sixty-five Jubilee country
campaigns are continuing the movement to drop the debt without structural
adjustment and with full involvement of civil societies. Jubilee USA
Network is made up of more than sixty faith-based and non-governmental
organizations.  - # # # -