BANGKOK (AFP): Thai farmers, fishermen and workers marched through Bangkok Friday as global finance and business leaders gathered for IMF and World Bank meetings, demanding a say in policies shaping their livelihoods.
Hundreds of protesters, many wearing straw hats and colourful scarves, had hoped to reach the main conference centre but were stopped by a line of police more than a kilometre away, the road blocked by shipping containers.
Some carried fishing nets and hoisted banners reading "World Bank, stop destroying the poor", a reference to criticisms that the global lenders extract too high a price from countries which borrow money.
Some protested specific projects, notably the World Bank-backed Pak Mun dam, a hydropower project completed in 1994 that fishing communities say damaged their livelihoods.
"There are no more fish. They can't swim upstream," said fisherman Putta Muansaen, 67, who travelled overnight from northeastern Ubon Ratchathani province.
"The water has changed, the river has changed, and the ecosystem has changed," he told AFP.
Somporn Yamyong, 62, travelled from rice-rich central Suphan Buri province to draw attention to years of debt and meagre earnings.
The rice farmer said she wanted Thai leaders and the IMF and World Bank to hear about the "hardships facing farmers" like her.
Thailand received an IMF loan three decades ago but paid this off in 2003. It has some projects with the World Bank.
Coconut farmer Sombat Chuekrod, 51, from Prachuap Khiri Khan province, south-west of Bangkok, added: "Thai people are already poor. Please don't make us any poorer."
There were some non-Thai protesters in the crowd, including Harry May, a 59-year-old South African activist and researcher, who said global lenders were "bankrupting our countries, especially developing countries".
"We shouldn't be indebted to the same people who say they're going to relieve debt and provide development and then just create more debt for those countries," he said.
On Thursday, there were brief scuffles when police blocked protesters as they tried to hang a banner from a footbridge in the Thai capital, but there was no sign of trouble on Friday morning. -- Reuters
