NGOs to Sue S'pore, WB-IMF for Abuse at Airport

Batam, Indonesia: Civil society representatives denied entry into Singapore to attend the annual meeting of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have vowed to take legal action for abuse and humiliation suffered at the hands of airport immigration authorities.
The cases of two Indians who were heading to the International People's Forum (IPF) to present a paper on reforming the power sector in India were typical. ‘'We were denied entry by the Singapore immigration authorities. We were detained for 38 hours and no one would answer anything and we were treated badly (several rounds of questioning, interviews by police, fingerprints, photographs, screenings, not allowed to contact anyone),'' wrote K. Raghu in an e-mail to the IPF.
‘'They were treated like criminals,'' said an enraged Ashok Rau, general secretary of the Indian national confederation of officers of the power sector association, on Saturday morning.
One well-known water rights activist from India, Wilfred D'Costa was not only detained under guard at the airport for five hours but had his two-year, multiple-entry visa cancelled before he was bundled into a plane headed for Mumbai.
16/09/06 Marwaan Macan-Markar/Inter Press Service , Italy

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