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Friday, 24 May, 2002,
14:42 GMT 15:42 UK
WTO falls victim to spoof
website
A group of anti-WTO campaigners, with a history of lampooning free trade, have used an internet site purporting to be the WTO's own to issue a statement that the organisation is being disbanded.
A statement on the site says that current trade liberalisation rules have led to increased poverty and inequality and have eroded democratic principles - so the WTO is being disbanded and replaced by a new organisation called the Trade Regulatory Organisation. Fake conference delegates It is of course not true, but it has prompted the WTO to issue a statement warning journalists not to be taken in. The group behind the hoax are called the Yes Men - despite the name they are men and women, who describe themselves as a network of impostors.
They have impersonated WTO officials on a number of occasions, using satire to make their criticisms. As a result of the bogus website they have received invitations to speak at conferences intended for the WTO's Director General Mike Moore. They have replied to some by saying Mr Moore himself was unavailable but could send a substitute. On one occasion, at a textile conference in Finland last year, the bogus WTO official making a presentation removed his clothes to reveal a golden leotard with a metre long golden phallus containing what he called video interface which could be used to deliver electric shocks to employees in the developing world not working hard enough. A spokesman for the Yes Men said that nobody at the conference seemed to spot the hoax. The main complaint made at the time, he said, was from a woman who said the phallus metaphor was inappropriate because women too can exploit workers. |
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