>> Back to Events Index First Global White Band Day, 1 July 2005 “They Made Their Own Music” Written by Ben Phillips, South Asia Policy and Campaigns Coordinator, Oxfam Though much of the focus in the west for the G8 is on Africa, South Asia is home to half the world's poorest people, and one third of its people live below the poverty line. In India, the country with more poor people than any other in the world, campaigners have come together to demand "Wada Na Todo" - "Keep Your Promises". That demand was addressed to the G8 to keep the promises that they have made on trade, aid and debt, and to the Indian government to keep the promises it made on education, health, employment and the rights of the most oppressed castes. G8 embassy visits In the morning Indian activists visited G8 embassies to present a white bouquet to symbolize those who have died from poverty and a memorandum in support of the demands of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, letting G8 countries know that the world is watching them. Later, at a press conference at the Women's Press Corps, campaigners set out the goals of the movement to the Indian and international press. Marching together But the afternoon was for the people. Protesters aged from eight to eighty came together and linked up their different campaign banners to form a giant white band that they wrapped around the famous Jantar Mantar. They marched towards the parliament, as far as they could make it up to the police barricades. At first the police looked concerned and disapproving, but later even they could be found enjoying the street theatre performance by a local group about those who toil long and hard and yet remain excluded from the wealth that they create. On the placards protesters had set out their demands: "G8 - don't play with lives." "Remove poverty not the poor." "Poverty->Hunger->Death. Stop child mortality." "Dalit rights are human rights." Then speeches were made by the leaders of the movements, and by the most vocal of a group of children who had joined the march to demand free and quality education. Demonstrating with hope The cruelest thing that impoverishment can do to people, even after it has ravaged their body, is to destroy their hope. But the faces of the protesters in Delhi, and in particular those of the youngest, said even more loudly than the shouted slogans that the members of the movement for justice here - the Wada Na Todo campaign - seem to know that they are on the side that eventually will win. That history is turning their way - and that now is the time for us to push as hard as we can. >> Back to Events Index

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