2,000 Protest at Asian Economic Meeting

About 2,000 demonstrators pushed over barriers and confronted riot police Saturday in a protest against the Asian Development Bank, which opened its annual meeting inside a heavily guarded university conference center.

The protesters, chanting slogans such as “ADB, go to hell!” blocked traffic and burned an effigy of Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai when he refused to meet them.

Hundreds of police bearing clubs and shields watched over the protesters from behind the barriers.

The demonstrators have taken their lead from protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last year and the recent International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington, D.C.

They view the Manila-based ADB as another multilateral institution that promises to help developing countries but instead reinforces the global financial order at the expense of the poor.

Many protesters say they lost their land or livelihoods as a result of ADB-funded projects such as dams.

At the ADB meeting, 13 Asian nations agreed to help defend each other’s currencies in the event of an economic crisis such as the one that devastated the region from 1997 to 1998.

Economic powers Japan, China and South Korea decided to take a role in the fledgling currency-protection program adopted two months ago by the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, part of a wider goal of creating a more united Asia on the world economic stage.

Finance ministers from those countries also met on the sidelines of the meeting of the ADB, which some Asian officials would like to see become a lender of last resort to troubled nations.

The currency-swapping plan, dubbed the Chiang Mai Initiative, would help ensure a better grip on capital flows and establish “a well-coordinated economic and financial monitoring system in East Asia,” according to a statement.

Countries would lend dollars to each other to help defend the value of their currencies during speculative attacks or other currency problems. The loans would be paid back in local currencies at a fixed rate.

The initiative would complement existing international institutions, the statement said, acknowledging the likely opposition from the United States if a deal eventually led to an attempt to replace the Washington-based IMF.