Civil society network to protest at IMF-World Bank meeting in Bangkok

As the Annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group will be taking place in Bangkok between 12 - 18 October, a civil society network has called a protest at the Queen Sirikit Convention Centre against capitalist development projects without public participation that have led to loss of livelihoods and environmental damages.

The People's Network Against the World Bank and IMF held a press conference on 2 October at the De Prime Rangnam Hotel. Saengsiri Trimakkha, a Network representative, said that the Network is made up of civil society groups, from women groups to an urban poor network and a network of people living with HIV. Each member share the believe that neoliberalism is taking over the Thai society in what is called the "Blue Regime," in which the government tries to retain its power but wants to provide less welfare. Corporations are becoming more powerful, while citizens are facing a monopoly and loss of land.

Pranom Somwong, another network representative, said that economic policies are being used to control countries. The world is a market, she said, and the World Bank and the IMF are a manager and lender. In this context, she compared Thailand to a tenant who has no bargaining power, noting that the Queen Sirikit Convention Centre was built in 1991 to host the World Bank meeting. Urban poor communities were evicted to make way for the centre, she said, and neither the World Bank nor the IMF cared about what happened to these communities or communities affected by projects funded by IMF loans such as those living with the impact of the Pak Mun Dam. She also criticised the 14th National Economic and Social Development Plan for only seeing "human capital" and not people, and for trying to implement a means testing system in place of universal welfare.

Other network representatives also spoke at the press conference. Many are members of community rights groups and environmental activist groups facing loss of livelihoods, environmental damage, and pollution due to development projects. Others discussed labour rights violations and exclusions of the working class from urban areas.

The press conference was initially scheduled to be held at a meeting room at the Social Research Institute of Chulalongkorn University. Pranom said that they formally requested the use of the meeting room and permission was initially granted. However, in the afternoon of 1 October, the Network was informed that they are no longer allowed to use the room because university management was uncomfortable with the word "against" being used in the Network's name. 

In its statement, the Network condemns Chulalongkorn University's action as a violation of academic freedom and freedom of expression. A university should be a space for thinking, critique, questioning, and scrutiny of power, it said, and closing a space simply because a word is considered unacceptable reflects the very problem the Network is challenging.

Statement of the People’s Network Against the World Bank and IMF

Protest call! Stop Destructive Capital. People Must Determine Our Future.

We are a people’s movement bringing together many communities, generations, and struggles. We live with and resist the consequences of a development model that gives capital, markets, and economic growth power over our lives. We are people defending land, forests, rivers, energy, clean air, and the seas; farmers and landless people; urban poor and railway communities; workers, women human rights defenders, service workers, students, Indigenous Peoples and ethnic communities, people living with HIV, mothers and care workers; communities resisting mining, dams, power plants, economic zones, and large-scale development projects; as well as people struggling for the right to self-determination in conflict-affected areas and for democracy.

The power of the World Bank and the IMF does not lie only in lending. It also lies in their ideological influence over what counts as “development,” which direction the economy should take, what role the state should play, and how much power markets and capital should have.

Today, we see the consequences of this system in people’s everyday lives. Communities across the country are facing floods. Homes and farmland have been damaged. People cannot get to work, incomes have disappeared, and people are forced to use their own money, labour, and time to rebuild their lives. The floodwaters may recede, but people’s debts do not recede with them. Crises do not harm everyone equally, and recovery does not enable everyone to get back on their feet equally.

People suffering from the floods need a state that does its job not a prime minister handing out one thousand baht from his own pocket, where those who happen to be nearby receive it while those who cannot get close receive nothing. The right to assistance should not depend on who happens to be standing within reach of those in power.

This is the same system we have been fighting all along. When development projects generate profits, capital takes the benefits. But when damage is done, people lose their land, rivers, nature, ways of life, livelihoods, and the ecosystems that sustain life—and are then made to share the burden of debts incurred in the name of the country. The World Bank is therefore not merely a lender; it also helps open the way for capital to extract profit from people’s land, nature, and lives.

This is economic imperialism in the contemporary world. It does not require the occupation of territory. It operates through the power of capital, debt, knowledge, and the language of “development,” opening the way for capital to pursue profit through destructive forms of extraction, while people are left to pay the bill for the damage.

When the state cuts public spending, sick people do not disappear; care work is shifted onto women and families. When companies cut costs, workers still need to eat, pay rent, and support their families. When cities increase land values, urban poor and railway communities still have to find somewhere else to live. When projects generate profits, communities are left living with damaged land, rivers, livelihoods, and lives. And when the economy grows, many people are still sinking deeper into debt, paying higher electricity bills, and reaching the end of the month with less money—or almost nothing at all. This is the “bill” of the economic system. And this is destructive capital.

Profits and wealth are pulled upwards, while debt, risk, and the costs of sustaining life are pushed downwards for people to bear. Capital does not exercise power on its own. It grows through policies, laws, public budgets, concessions, and state power. In Thailand, it is also intertwined with networks of power that we understand through the framework of the “Blue Regime,” connecting capital, powerful local political families, the state apparatus, independent bodies, and exceptional powers.

What is called the “cost of development” inside conference rooms is not an abstract cost floating in the air. It is the lives of people outside those rooms—on the streets, along railway tracks and riverbanks, in forests, fields, factories, and communities.

For this reason, when the World Bank and the IMF meet in Bangkok, we will gather in front of the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center. We will bring the lives and demands of people outside the conference rooms directly to the place where our future is being discussed and decided.

We will gather peacefully. But nonviolence does not mean silence. We will engage in peaceful expression and symbolic action to affirm that people have the right to speak, the right to assemble, and the right to challenge the powers that shape our lives.

We oppose the economic conditions attached to loans. We also oppose the ideological power through which the World Bank, the IMF, and international financial institutions influence the direction of our country’s economy. We challenge Thailand’s 14th National Economic and Social Development Plan and every policy that prioritises growth, investment, and competitiveness while reducing people’s power to determine their own lives, land, work, welfare, and future.

We do not want mere “participation” after the direction has already been decided. Participation without decision-making power is not people’s power.

The Network was initially granted permission to use a meeting room at the Social Research Institute of Chulalongkorn University for this press conference. We were subsequently informed that permission had been withdrawn because of concerns about the word “Against” in the name of our Network.

We condemn this restriction as a violation of academic freedom and freedom of expression. Chulalongkorn University, as a public university sustained by public resources and taxpayers’ money, must not forget its responsibility to the people. A university should be a space for thinking, critique, questioning, and scrutiny of power. It has no right to dictate what language people must use in order to be allowed a space to speak, when the institution itself has been built and sustained through the labour and taxes of the people. Closing a space simply because the word “Against” is considered unacceptable reflects the very problem we are challenging.

Participation that permits people to speak only in language acceptable to those in power is not participation in which people have the power to determine their own future.

We therefore call on people to join us in closely watching, questioning, criticising, and scrutinising the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings, Thailand’s 14th National Economic and Social Development Plan, and the economic policies being shaped in the name of development.

This struggle is not only about opposing the World Bank and the IMF. It is about building the power of people’s movements to transform the economic model from the grassroots up, redistribute wealth and power back to the people, build universal welfare, and ensure that people have power over land, water, forests, energy, work, care, and everything that sustains our lives.

Because those who create, care for, and sustain life, society, and this planet should not merely be the ones who pay the bill for development. They must also have the power to determine the future.

If people are the ones who must pay the bill and live with the consequences of development, then people must have the power to determine their own future.

And when destructive capital and state power under the Blue Regime reinforce one another’s interests, civil disobedience is one of the means through which people defend their rights, freedoms, and power to determine their own lives.