To those who remembered how the Sri Lankan people had opposed such reforms which favored private interests and engaged in militant strikes, street protests, and voted against the set of reforms favoring private interests at the polls, it may have seemed strange that there was now no real force of people standing up to the onslaught of privatization entering the country.
According to Klein, the U.S. government was very excited about the potential for high-end tourism and all the possibilities for resort chains and tour operators in Sri Lanka. USAID even launched a program "to organize the Sri Lankan tourism industry into a powerful Washington-style group."
But, most importantly, plans to let private interests take over the country existed before the tsunami. The U.S. used the crisis to let interests that had been kept out into the country:
"The grand plan to remake Sri Lanka predated the tsunami by two years. It began when the civil war ended and the usual players descended on the country to plot Sri Lanka's entry into the world economy--most prominently USAID, World Bank, and its offshoot the Asian Development Bank. A consensus emerged that Sri Lanka's most significant advantage lay in the fact that it was one of the last places left uncolonized by go-go globalization, a by-product of its long war."
Tourism Concern, a UK-based NGO, released a report detailing how private interests were keeping the people from returning to their homes:
"A record amount of promised donations and aid was raised to help the victims of 400 million in the UK. Yet, ten months after the disaster, thousands of survivors are still trying to survive in temporary camps.
Many of them are being refused permission to return home. Governments and big businesses have plans for the beaches and the plans don't include the people who used to live and work there."
Later in the report, Tourism Concern said of Thailand:
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
