Missed opportunities : a case study of the deportations of transnational civil society activists during the IMF-World Bank 2006 meetings in Singapore.

50 p.When the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group held their annual general meetings in Singapore in September 2006, representatives from various civil society organisations were invited by these two international financial institutions (IFIs) to participate in official dialogue sessions with them. However the Singapore government issued a blacklist banning 27 activists, all of them either personally accredited or belonged to organisations with official accreditation to attend these sessions. A further controversy occurred when many more activists were detained and deported from Singapore after they arrived at the city-state's airport, many of whom were passing through to attend a parallel civil society event, the International Peoples' Forum (IPF), on the nearby Batam island in Indonesia's Riau Province. Various civil society activists who were involved in these meetings, as well as their colleagues, expressed outrage and disbelief. This was just a precursor for other incidents that were about to occur to other activists, those not accredited to the IFI meetings. Although these groups' positions on issues were not homogenous, they appeared to be treated as homogenous by the Singaporean security services - as security threats.Master of Science (International Relations