[E-rundbrief] Info 35 - Selbstmord-Proteste von Farmern weltweit

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 35

Bad Ischl, 30.9.2003

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Selbstmord-Proteste von Farmern weltweit

Mr. Lee Kyung Hae

by Luis Hernández Navarro

La Jornada, (Mexico), September 23, 2003

Before Lee Kyung Hae set out to meet his death in Cancun, he visited his
wife's grave and mowed his lawn. On September 9th, along with his Korean
companions, he carried a symbolic coffin of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) along the streets of the "viper's nest" [what the name "Cancún" means
in the Mayan language], while delivering his political will and testament.
The following day -- Chusok day (the date that commemorates the dead in
Korea) -- he climbed the police barricade which separated the multitude from
the palatial meeting place of the WTO, addressed the crowd, and plunged a
small Swiss Army knife into his chest. He was wearing a sign that said: "The
WTO Kills Farmers."

Mr. Lee chose his time to die, in the same way that he chose his mission in
life. According to his older sister, Lee Kyang, "the most important things
for him were the farmers, his parents, and his three daughters". His
immolation was an exemplary act: a dramatic representation of the fact that
the WTO actually murders peasants around the world.

Although suicides among family farmers around the world are common, very few
members of the mass media seem to be concerned about it. More than a
thousand peasants committed suicide in India between 1998 and 1999, for
example. Many of them did it by drinking pesticides. In England and Canada
the suicide rate among farmers is twice the national average.  In Wales one
farmer commits suicide every week. In the U.S. Midwest suicide is the fifth
largest cause of death among farmers. In China peasants are the social group
with the highest suicide rate. In Australia the frequency of farmer
immolations is roughly equal to the rate of accidental death.  Mr. Lee had
to take his own life so that the media would recognize what is happening to
farmers in our world.

Sadly his sacrifice has been judged in general with a lack of understanding
and consideration. The weight of the Christian tradition has impeded some
people from seeing his true generosity.*  Just as religious rites began
before our own individual existence, and have a life of their own, Mr. Lee's
immolation is an act which transcends a simple individual decision.  By
taking his own life, Mr. Lee has greatly strengthened the global struggle
for the survival of a millenarian culture now threatened by free trade
policies: the culture of rice.

Korean culture is based on rice. In Mesoamerica we say we are the "people of
maize" - thus we can say that Koreans are the "people of rice."  Rice is
much more than a commodity for the rural people of Korea: it is an ancestral
way of life. The Korean word bap is used both for cooked rice as well as for
food in general. If you ask a Korean child what they see on the Moon, they
will tell you they see rabbits milling rice in a giant mortar. A large
proportion of the total labor force in Korea is dedicated to the cultivation
of rice. Because of rice, rural villages are located in the midst of the
very rice paddies where villagers work. Rice represents 52% of agricultural
production.

At the end of the 1980s, South Korea started to reduce agricultural
subsidies and open its markets to food imports, thanks to the agricultural
reforms of the Uruguay Round [which later became the WTO] which put a
culture more than a million years old in grave danger. Just twelve years ago
South Korea had a population of 6.6 million farmers. Today this number has
dropped to just 3.6 million.  Subsidized rice exports to Korea from the U.S.
are four times cheaper than the rice produced by Korean farmers. Opening the
Korean market under the WTO to Washington's exports is proving to be the
ruin of farmers in this Asian country.

Mr. Lee's death must be seen as an attempt to defend his culture.  A final
attempt after having exhausted many other paths. Earlier he built a
demonstration farm of twenty hectares. He wanted to show how farmers could
survive, increase their production and compete despite falling crop prices.
But in 1999 he lost the farm to foreclosure by the bank. On thirty separate
occasions he protested with hunger strikes, and even tried to take his life
once before as an act of protest against the WTO and the Uruguay Round. He
was elected to his state legislature three times as a farmer representative.
Yet none of these efforts succeeded in defending farmers from free trade.

The meaning of his immolation is this:  it is an act to stop the further
suffering of his people.  As part of his last will and testament he left a
note saying:

"It is better that a single person sacrifices their life for ten people,
than ten people sacrifice their lives for just one."

As the philosopher Carl Jaspers once wrote: "suicide is a testament to the
dignity of men, it is an expression of their freedom".  Mr. Lee's sacrifice
reminds us that, in times of crisis, hope comes from those who, through
their example of human dignity as part of a larger movement, become our
unique role models.

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* It was only after the French Revolution that suicide was eliminated from
the list of official crimes. Before that the bodies of those who had
committed suicide were dragged through the streets and buried without any
ceremony. In the Canonical Law of the Catholic Church (since 1917, but not
legally recognized until 1983), a person that commits suicide is deprived of
an ecclesiastical burial and funeral because, as Saint Thomas Aquinas said
in Summa: "The transit from this life to a happier one is not subject to
man's free will, but to divine will, and for this reason it is not licit for
men to kill themselves in order to go to a happier life".

In Catholic reasoning, suicide usurps the divine right over life and death.
Since the Arbes Council, in 452 A.D., suicide has been considered a crime,
and later on, during the Prague Council in 562 A.D, it was declared that
whoever took his own life would not be honored with a mass, and no psalms
would be allowed during their burial. Furthermore, Vatican Council II
established that suicide is "a despicable act and a dishonor to whom commits
it".

Translated from Spanish by Gisela Sanchez, Paulina Novo, Ana Mateos and
Peter Rosset (Food First).  Original Spanish version at:
http://www.foodfirst.org/media/news/2003/jornada-lee.html

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In einem Artikel hatte Barbara Demick - in der "Los Angeles Times" vom 
19.9.03 -
die Hintergründe von Lee's Selbstmord oberflächlich dargestellt. Hier ein -
bisher unveröffentlichter - Leserbrief von Phil Bereano dazu:

I don't think it's such a good article, actually. It isn't clear on  the 
REASON for his suicide.  Here's a letter I sent to the "Seattle Times" 
after they ran this article (they have not yet run my letter):

Editor:

As an accredited participant at the World Trade Organization meeting last 
week, I was glad you carried an extensive article about the Korean farmer, 
Lee Kyung-hae, who committed suicide (Sept. 19). This action certainly 
commanded attention throughout Cancun.

However, the article fails to explain his actual reasons for such a 
dramatic act, saying that it was "to protest efforts to further open 
agricultural markets to competion." This phrase is meaningless to me, and I 
am involved in WTO processes; what can your readers possibly make of it?

In the past few years, thousands of farmers in Third World countries have 
committed suicide because they cannot sustain the lives of their families. 
Others merely sell a kidney. They are driven to such extremes because the 
huge subsidies the US and the EU pay to our farmers make, for example, US 
rice cheaper than Thai rice in Thailand, US corn cheaper than Mexican corn 
in Mexico, US wheat cheaper than Indian wheat in India. Last year's farm 
bill continued subsidies of unprecedented magnitude.

We claim we are for "free trade" but practice protectionism for many 
products. Cancun was covered with posters pointing out that each cow in the 
EU receives over $3,000 in government subsidies, while a family in most of 
sub-Saharan Africa earns less than $600.

The US public is being shielded from such unpleasant realities, although 
our tax dollars are causing this instability to be perpetuated. And our 
ignorance means that we will never understand "why they hate us so" when an 
anti-American activity occurs.

Lee's suicide was meant to draw attention to these concrete facts, not some 
unintelligible abstraction.

Very truly yours,

Phil Bereano

**********************************************

Philip L. Bereano
Professor
Department of Technical Communication
University of Washington
Seattle, Wash 98144 USA
ph: (206) 543-9037
fx: (206) 543-8858
pbereano at u.washington.edu

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Matthias Reichl
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Wolfgangerstr.26
A-4820 Bad Ischl
Tel. +43-6132-24590
e-mail: mareichl at ping.at
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