HYDERABAD, Jan 22: The Hyderabad chapter of the Pakistan Social Forum would observe the Global Week of Action from Jan 22 to 26, which was being organised all over the world under the aegis of World Social Forum, said the forum’s office-bearers on Tuesday.

They said at a news conference at the press club that they had finalised a number of activities, which would be organised during the week in the perspective of the problems confronting the country.

Mustafa Baloch of Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Suleman Abro of Sindh Agriculture and Forestry Workers Coordination Organisation and Akhtar Baloch of Society for Protection of Rights of the Child said that “Talks for Change” would be held on Jan 23; Dignity Forum on Jan 24 and Dialogue on Peasants’ Rights on Jan 25 in Hyderabad while the closing ceremony would be held on Jan 26.

They said that the most popular leader of Pakistan’s largest political party who had represented the federation had been assassinated, 0.2 million people had been booked in Sindh alone and their homes were being raided.

Army action had displaced around 85,000 people in Balochistan and sent the Northern Areas up in flames, the judiciary was demanding justice for itself, journalists and advocates were behind the bars while people had been made to stand in queues for getting basic commodities, they said.

They said that the world had put Pakistan on the list of most corrupt countries and also looked suspiciously on the lections process. Barring rulers no one was talking about strong economy, they said.

They said that religious extremism, state terrorism and powerful forces wanted to gobble up all the resources but they were giving people hope from the platform of WSF.

They said that the World Social Forum (WSF) had been established after the end of Cold War when multinational companies and international financial institutions and industrialised nations devised a strategy to usurp the world resources.

They said that they floated the ideas of globalisation, free economy and free markets to occupy the resources of economically weak countries and it was felt that the entire world would fall prey to a few multinational companies, IMF, World Bank and World Economic Forum.

All the human-friendly people and social movements expressed anguish over this modus operandi and gave vent to their anger in 1999 in the US city of Seatle where people protested against WTO, they said.

The Seatle protest was followed by similar protests in Washington and Prague in 2000 resulting in forcing WTO to hold its meetings in Doha - an Islamic country. But people chased them even there, they added.

They said that the human friendly people rejected corporate globalisation, World Economic Forum and capitalism and finally established World Social Forum in 2001 in Brazil.

The forum organised its meeting in Mumbai in 2004, Karachi 2005 and in Kenya in 2007. This time, the forum had decided to observe a global week from Jan 22 to 26, he said.