An anti-FTA rally with around 150 trade activists from the Asia-Europe Peoples’ Campaign (AEPC) was violently dispersed today near the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), the venue of the on-going 40^th Ministerial Meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“The action was dispersed violently by the police. They started dismantling our streamers and without allowing us to negotiate, started to disperse us violently kicking the protestors around and hitting us with truncheons and metal shields. It was as if the policemen were showing off their might for ASEAN leaders to see. Three people were arrested and people got hurt” recalled Aki Nano of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, a member of the AEPC.

The protest action was carried out to demand a halt to the negotiations for a free trade agreement between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU). In a statement issued by the group, they assert that the “EU-ASEAN FTA and similar trade and economic partnership agreements being negotiated advance the corporate interest at the expense of peoples needs.”

The AEPC was reacting to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s keynote speech at the opening of the 40th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) last Monday which put the free trade agreements being negotiated by ASEAN, the central strategy towards economic integration.

According to the AEPC, there is genuine cause for concern that “ASEAN’s vision of deepening integration will lead not to shared prosperity and solidarity among the countries within the region but to deeper poverty and inequality and wider divisions among the peoples’ in the region.”

In a statement AEPC expressed their concern that “the fast-paced, aggressive, and ambitious liberalization agenda underpinning these FTAs will threaten jobs and peoples livelihoods in the Philippines and across the region.”

“This maybe a foretaste of the way the police will from now on handle genuine peoples’ protests over very legitimate issues concerning people’s lives and livelihoods, with the implementation of the Human Security Act” said Baltazar Martin, a leader of the Kilusang Mangingisda (fisherfolk movement). “We were treated like dogs by the police. This only shows that the human security act is yet another instrument used by the state against the interest of its own people. Where is the “caring and sharing” that GMA so proudly talked about? added Martin.

The Asia-Europe Peoples Campaign is a platform for trade activists working together to monitor, analyze, and campaign against the proposed EU-ASEAN Free Trade Agrement. The EU-ASEAN FTA was launched in May 2007 in Brunei and is scheduled to be completed in 2 years time.