BAMAKO, MALI, 19 JANUARY 2006 - The WSF opened today (pictures) with a variety of actions and events. First activists from all over Africa and Europe and other parts of the world held a demonstration in the streets of Bamako. Later the WSF was officially opened with a ceremony in the Mobido Keita Stadium. The Youth Camp and some media activists participated with a soundsystem bus. Slight troubles were caused by clashes between Moroccan and Western Saharian nationalists at the end of the ceremony.

Though no one got injured or arrested, WSF security and Malian police had to intervene, seperate them and asked the opposing nationalist to leave the interior of the stadium, which both sides had used before to expose their national flags. Before this the stadium witnessed the opening talks of Malian associations, remembering the quest of WSF to tackle the poverty in the world and create solidarity among the people.

"We have to talk about why our joung people dreams are all about leaving Africa, why do they want to go to Europe and prefer the risk to die?" Activists from the youth camp with the help of local DJs brought some beats to the demonstration.

BAMAKO, MALI, 20 JANUARY 2006 - With the official opening of the world social forum today, the IMC in the Youth Camp Thomas Sankara opened its doors. Next to the swimming pool of the sports centre of Bamako, a swimming pool that is unfortunately as dry as the air in Mali the doors of the IMC open today. From here IMC is sending its all day radio program which is also available online.

We have a working WiFi network and 15 computers running in a Ubuntu Linux network. From here the pages of Indymedia but also various other publishing sites are filled by a ever changing team of grassroots journalists. Next to the swimming pool the cinema programme has started tonight featuring a variety of films.

BAMAKO, MALI, 18 JANUARY 2006 - Fabian Frenzel writes:

The last day before the offical start of the WSF in Bamako brought the first major political discussions. The conference „bandung du peuple“, called by a network of Third World activists, took place in Bamakos conference centre near the Niger river.

In Bandung in Indonesia, in 1955, Third World leaders came together for a united conference against Western and Soviet Union colonialism.

The idea of the conference „Bandung du peuple“ was to hold a debate about imperialism from a grassroots perspective in Bamako before the WSF starts. The other idea was to prepare for a stronger political outcome of the WSF by moving beyond the idea to "just" create a space for broad discussions.

The outcome was poor. The one good thing about the conference was to reminds us where we shouldn't go.

The tone of the conference was openly anti-american. Although a critique of the forgein policy of the United States of America is not only everbodys right but also more than understandable, the voices to be heard in the conference argued partly in a very unreasonable way and ignored that in today’s world of interconnection and global gouvernance it simply doesn't work to single out one country to be responsible for all the evils in the world. In Bandung in 1955 the states of the Third World were not even that one-sided in their critique and condemned the Soviet Unions, US and French imperialism equally. Here in Bamako it was all one-sided. Members of one panel discussion went so far to call for the unconditional support of the Iraqi resistance and quite a few people supported this. And no one objected. So I do it now:

There might be reasonable forces in Irak who think it is important to put pressure on the occuparion forces to leave, but: this doesn’t justify killing their own people, trying to inflict ethnic and religious civil-war, and not even - from my perspective – to kill occupations forces.

If people argue for unconditional support for the Iraki resistance, they might as well support Irans right to nuclear weapons. Why? Because Iran is obviously a much nicer country than the USA...and guess what, that is exactly what another member of the panel I attended did. Calling for the support of the Iran against imperialist oppression!

Fact is: the Iran is imperialist in the south of Irak, in Libanon and Palestine. France, who wasn’t mentioned at all in the whole talk, is imperalist in West Africa. Their are a few activist here who very much like to tell stories of french influence in West-Africa.

Read more.

Thomas Sankara International Youth Camp is a gathering of male and female young people coming from all over the world to share experiences, ideas on the way the world goes on and how they can act in society, more so to experience ideals and values of friendship, fraternity and solidarity in all the languages of the world.

The camp is fully participating in the World Social Forum, as one of its essential parts and activities. It is autonomously managed by the young people themselves, as a component of the coherent structured space called « The World Social Territory ».

It is international and open to everybody to freely agree to accept the rules of life in the Camp. The innovation is that the Thomas Sankara International Youth Camp does not follow the tradition of a Camp devoted to classical activities such as afforestation, cleansing etc.

This Camp innovates in that it largely gives room to discussion through the « World Youth Forum » which focuses on giving voice to youth. This way, the World Youth Forum will discuss all the questions concerning youth and people resisting.