Voices from the World Social Forum

Please help us stop the war in Uganda", pleaded a woman from that country, her voice trembling with emotion. "It has robbed us of our children", she said.

The lady was referring to the seventeen year war in northern Uganda, where children are routinely targeted for recruitment into the bizarre Lord's Resistance Army, which wants to set up a government based on the Ten Commandments. At least a thousand children are abducted from their homes every month by this weird army.

The Ugandan woman's story was one of many being told at the World Social Forum in Mumbai. After the singing and dancing at the opening ceremony, the WSF has got down to the serious business""-hearing the voices of the oppressed and trying to find ways in which to overcome their distress.

The narratives of each delegate and speaker are different, but the objective is the same""-how to fight injustice and repression.

Maximilien Arvelaiz, a supporter of embattled Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution", spoke of the CIA-backed attempted coup d'etat against the democratically elected government, and of the right-wing's repeated attempts to bring down Chavez.

Nobel Laureate Shireen Ebadi spoke of the impunity with which conservative goons murdered Iranian intellectuals, and wanted them to be brought to justice. She spoke out bitterly against the US, warning that the so-called clash of civilizations is a pretext for war.

Ex-Irish prime minister and the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, clearly said that the Iraq war has no legitimacy. Jacques De Lauren, from the Catholic relief agency Caritas, pointed to the forgotten 14-year war being waged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for control of the region's rich mineral resources.

Although a peace agreement has been signed, the violence continues. "After 9/11," says Jacques," I asked the local people what they thought of it. They said that they were sad for America, and the 2,700 people who died. But then they shrugged and said, 2,700 people are killed here every day."

Edwin and Anita from Bangalore talked of a Karnataka government plan funded by the World Bank to push 7,000 tribals out of their homes in Nagarhole forest to build luxury hotels for "eco-friendly tourism", and of the resistance movement of the tribals.

Pakistan's Asma Jahangir spoke against military rule in Pakistan. "Even the civilian rulers that we have had have come with the permission of the military," she said.

But opinion is sharply divided on the way forward. Arundhati Roy, who also visited the far left's parallel "Mumbai Resistance Forum 2004", across the road, said "We need to build bridges between the two movements. We need to discuss the issue of armed resistance and other forms of struggle. My heart is in both places."

A woman representing 200 NGOs from the tiny Pacific republic of Vanuatu wanted people to "speak the truth to power". Edwin however pointed out that "Those in power have no shame. The only language that power understands is power."

India's attorney-general Soli Sorabjee disagreed. He pointed to how Gandhi was able to defeat the British, and how public opinion had brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa. "The power of the spirit will ultimately prevail over the power of the sword", was his rather rhetorical flourish.