Women of Aotearoa, Philippines Share Wisdom

Friday, 12 November 2010, 9:23 am
Press Release: Auckland-Philippines Solidarity

12 November 2010
Women of Aotearoa, Philippines Share Wisdom, Affirm Solidarity for Women’s Rights and Self-Determination:

No To Further Sell-Out Of Land, Sovereignty In The Name Of ‘Free Trade’
While foreign and trade ministers attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Japan discuss further opening of economies for ‘free trade,’ women activists say no to further sell-out of land, culture and sovereignty. They denounced APEC, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other trade deals that ensure huge profits for big business at the expense of women, workers, indigenous peoples and other disadvantaged sectors.

“WISE WOMEN SPEAK,” an intergenerational - inter movement korero (forum) on the liberation of women and self determination featured Coni Ledesma, International Spokesperson of Makibaka: Patriotic Movement of New Women together with Ngapuhi leader Titewhai Harawira and activist lawyer Annette Sykes at the Auckland University, New Zealand, 10th November.

“In 1975 we marched to demand not one more acre of Maori land to be sold. Now more trade agreements are being negotiated above our heads without our participation,” activist lawyer Annette Sykes says as she points out that the capitalist neo-liberal agenda is the new form of colonization. Sykes challenged the participants, mostly students and young women to speak out and revive a strong women’s movement in defense of land, rights and self-determination. “With the Terrorism Suppression Act and Search and Surveillance Bill that allows installation of listening devices into our homes, the state’s actions are meant to silence us and tell us that it’s not right to demand land, rights and liberation.”

Ledesma, senior member of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Peace Negotiating Panel was invited to NZ along with Luis Jalandoni, Chair of NDFP Peace Panel for a peace speaking tour from 26th October to 12th November hosted by Auckland Philippines Solidarity (APS), Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa and Wellington Kiwi Pinoy.

Welcoming Ledesma, distinguished Maori woman leader Titewhai Harawira says, “I remember coming to the Philippines in the ‘80s where I was shocked at how women were treated. At the same time, sharing the pain of struggling indigenous women in the Philippines gave me a lot of strength.” Denouncing the latest news on mining exploration projects in NZ, Harariwa says, “Enough is enough. Neo-liberalism means theft of land, theft of identity, theft of culture. Corporate giants spend billions to save the whales. They save the whales while they shoot natives and grab their land.”

According to Ledesma, “It is important for women to find the correct analysis and understanding of the cause of oppression of women. Women's oppression is not a problem between men and women, but a matter of class oppression that began when classes in society emerged. The oppression of women will be fully eliminated, and the real liberation of women achieved when the system of exploitation and oppression of one human being by another will be abolished. Today, global monopoly capitalism operates on insatiable greed for profits at the expense of women, indigenous peoples and other marginalised sectors. Socialism will remove the conditions that have made women unequal to men.”
At the forum, Ledesma also appealed for solidarity for women activists in the Philippines currently detained on trumped-up charges including Angie Ipong, a 65-year-old church worker and veteran social justice activist who has been jailed since 2005.

Ms Ipong was arrested by the military while she was giving a seminar to peasants and women leaders on the Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), one of the landmark bilateral agreements reached in the government-NDFP peace talks. She was missing for 13 days during which time she underwent torture while undergoing interrogation. She began a hunger strike from day one of her illegal arrest to force her captors to surface her and allow her to have access to her lawyer.

Looking at the photographs of Filipino women detainees Angie Ipong and the two nursing mothers among the Morong 43 health workers, Harariwa notes, “I’m sad to see you’re still carrying placards for these women to be free. I believe that no one is free until everyone is free.”
The forum organiser says Maori have learned a lot from cross cultural korero. Helen Te Hira from Auckland Philippines Solidarity says, “Maori have been to the Philippines over the years, learnt and discussed about colonisation, militarism, deforestation, so this is women from different communities talking and exchanging their experiences and hopefully from that we will get sense of where we have come from and where we're going.”

“With the governments of New Zealand and Philippines both selling off the people’s ancestral domain and sovereignty to foreign powers and local business elite, Maori and Filipinos share a common struggle to defend the rights of women, indigenous people and all disadvantaged sectors in the face of large-scale mining and other destructive projects against the people and environment,” Te Hira noted. The forum participants affirmed solidarity on common struggles of Maori and Filipinos especially against mining corporations and big business causing massive community displacement and loss of ancestral domain in Aotearoa and Philippines. “In building women’s networks, we need to find linkages to strategies with those who have common desire to eliminate poverty and violence against women” Sykes adds.

“One hundred years after the declaration of the first International Women’s Day, the International Women’s Alliance (IWA) was founded on 16th August 2010 in Montréal, Canada immediately after the successful Montreal International Women’s Conference attended by more than 350 participants from 32 countries. Faced with global concerns including indigenous struggles, developmental aggression, violence against women, racism, discrimination and genocide, resistance to wars and imperialist aggression, IWA aims to foster the creation and coordination of local, regional and international campaigns, to promote mutual support and the sharing of resistance strategies, and to mobilize women around the world in the struggle against imperialism, violence and capitalist globalization,” Ledesma shared with the forum participants.

Ledesma enjoined the women of Aotearoa to join the first assembly of the International Women’s Assembly in July 2011 in the Philippines. The forum closed with the signing of the international petition calling on Philippine Pres. Benigno Aquino III to effect the immediate release of Morong 43 community health workers who have been illegally arrested, tortured and detained since 6th February, including 26 women, two of whom gave birth recently. Around 30 signatories include Titewhai Harawira – Ngapuhi, Maori Council NZ Annette Sykes – Lawyer and Activist, Catherine Delahunty - Member of Parliament, Green Party of Aotearoa, Lena Henry – Iwi Have Influence, Helen Te Hira - Auckland Philippines Solidarity, Ann Pala - Ethnix Links, students of Auckland University and members of various groups. #

Reference: Helen Te Hira aotearoasolidarity@gmail.com 09 280 3372 or 0272888894

Annette Sykes: Bruce Jesson Lecture 2010

Source
Speech: Annette Sykes

Annette Sykes: Bruce Jesson Lecture 2010

Read full lecture as a .pdf fileKi te kore koe e mau puu ana ki o tikanga me toou Mana Motuhake,
Kua ngaro koe ki te poouri otira e whai kee ana koe i ngaa tikanga a tetahi noatu When you fail to sustain your beliefs, sovereignty, freedom
You become lost to yourself as you are subsumed by those whose customs and practices you must now serve 

In 1980 following the furore which was engendered by the publication of the Maori Sovereignty articles, Bruce Jesson commented:
“Essentially, Maori sovereignty is about the complete incompatibility of the Maori and Pakeha ways of life, and about how economic and political power has resolved this conflict in favour of the Pakeha.”
At the time there was a strident group of Maori radicals who readily identified with the concept of Maori Sovereignty and with Maori resistance to Pakeha intrusion into their territories, their values, their mindscapes and their landscapes.2 The core was drawn from an urban underclass from the communities of South Auckland, Hastings and Wellington. Their message was simple: Pakeha have colonised our hearts and our minds and have substituted our traditional systems and institutions with ones that Awatere described as exploitative, oppressive, dehumanised and spiritually deficient.3 It was time for the nation to turn the page on an era of greed, irresponsibility and injustice and an era of change was demanded.

To read full lecture as a .pdf file - CLICK HERE
ENDS

Annette Sykes : the proposed options for the Seabed Foreshore Act

Annette Sykes

Lawyer and Maori activist Annette Sykes says her path in life was chosen for her

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Down at Island Bay, lawyer and activist Annette Sykes scrambles across the rocks in her heels.

Like a hand? She scoffs. She's a country girl and has never minded a scramble.

Where there's a rocky track to be trodden - a protest march, a land claim, an acrimonious debate with the Crown over matters Maori - Sykes' name pops up.

She and fellow activists Ken Mair, Moana Jackson, Tame Iti and Titewhai Harawira have been to the forefront of meetings with ministers at hui.

Sykes is now 42 and her face has been staring out from newspapers for two decades. She presents a steely jaw; her eyes are usually narrowed.

She looks scary and says scary things. In 1995, police considered charging her with sedition.

Then as now, she denies advocating lawlessness. Then as now, she was simply warning of the possibility of unrest in response to uncontrolled foreign ownership.

So here we are, almost a decade on and it's groundhog day.

The water around the mangrove roots at Island Bay, on Auckland's North Shore, is as murky as most people's understanding of what is happening with the country's foreshore and seabed.

This is what most of us know: Titewhai Harawira has called for a march on Parliament. Ken Mair has called for Maori to occupy beaches.

On civil disobedience, Sykes is careful.

"I look at Gandhi as a model of someone who advocated all strategies possible to effect change within a peaceful manner.

"Civil disobedience has often been the most effective and the least expensive - one of the key issues for Maori who don't have money."

Prime Minister Helen Clark has said that public access and Maori customary rights will both be protected.

What's the confusion? The seabed and foreshore argument sounds like a debate between two people speaking the same language but impenetrable dialects.

John Tamihere has said the confusion arises from the fact that no one has defined customary rights.

Sykes says customary rights should not have to be defined in Pakeha law terms - that is the point.

"I don't think it's about confusion - it's about fear," she adds.

If the fear is that granting customary rights to Maori means restricted access for Pakeha, let's look at this another way, Sykes suggests.

Maori have already given private ownership to harbour companies. Look at Port of Tauranga, she says.

Is the Government "proposing that they will require those people to also have their rights subject to these new changes? Are they going to say to Port of Tauranga that ... the public have a right of access any time of day?"

That privately owned island?

"Are they going to share those rights with other people? So what's the fear? They've already done it."

SYKES didn't want to do this interview: she has no interest in sharing her private life. And, she said, this is not about individuals.

She agreed after ringing round her activist mates, who told her not to be such a wuss.

Wuss is not the word that springs to mind. Her friends call her Cyclone Sykes - she never stops working and she never stops talking.

So, despite protestations that little is known of her personal life because it is nobody's business, she is candid - possibly because stopping herself talking would be like trying to stop a hurricane with a fly swat. In any case, the personal is so intertwined with the political that the strands are inseparable.

She could have had a cushy life, lawyering for big money. Sykes was top of the class at law school and was offered a place at Cambridge.

She says she could not have chosen another way because her way is not about choice.

As a child she would walk the beaches with her grandmother, the secretary during the Te Arawa Maori trust board's inception.

The walks involved picking up rubbish and being taught about responsibility. "I think I've had a pathway designed for me."

Sykes may be high-profile but most of her work is done quietly, within communities.

"You're not going to see it. Those are intimate things between women and children and fathers."

The cases involve incest and violence.

"I work every day for those cases to be overcome. I expose them within our communities."

Such cases are not "the rich and sexy bloody Fisheries Commission cases".

But the fact is that Sykes is part of what many New Zealanders call the treaty grievance gravy train, with money supposedly going to fat-cat lawyers; the ones who truly get the cream.

"Some of us don't work for that kind of money. I work for nothing for a lot of my clients."

She is scathing about Maori getting rich "on the backs of their people".

You might think that Sykes might be dispirited, but it's not in her nature.

"Nothing's dispiriting. I feel beautiful. I feel every day's a good day.

"I believe we've made enormous gains in the last 20 years. We didn't have Maori language schools. We didn't have our land coming back to us.

"We have a society that is becoming more and more aware of what Maori aspiration is."

SYKES lives on "around $50,000. I think that's enough to live on."

She has a home in Beach Haven, and another in Rotorua. The North Shore house is bright and comfortable, with a dozen toothbrushes in the bathroom and a spare bed in the dining room. You couldn't call it flash.

She shares both homes with an assortment of nieces and nephews. She is a good person, she says.

"I like to be a good role model." She doesn't drink or smoke, although she doesn't nag either: "Life's too short."

Sykes is good at being good. She is bad at personal relationships. Her marriage to the father of her two boys failed, as did her relationship with Mike Smith, the activist who attacked the pine on One Tree Hill.

"I'm not around at home, frankly. I could never be in a Ma and Pa Kettle relationship."

And "one of the problems is I attract a lot of people who come and live with me". Hence the toothbrush collection.

Her family are Tuhoe, Te Arawa and Pakeha. "I'm very clear on my Pakeha things, too."

In the 1980s, when Sykes was protesting against the Springbok tour, her father was involved in the Bay of Plenty rugby union.

"We didn't talk for a long time about that stuff." He is not, in a family of strong women, much of a talker in any case.

"He's a very quiet fella. He actually speaks more to the cows than he does to us." You begin to see why.

Sykes loves talking, loves other gregarious people. She also quite enjoys the thought that she frightens people.

Fear, after all, can effectively express contempt, which she has in spades for the fat cats, racists of any colour, men who are violent towards women.

She is as generous a host as she is a talker, offering food and good coffee.

"Right," she says, "I've told you all about me. Tell me about you."

It's a genuine curiosity. She's a good listener, which must help to make her such a good lawyer.

I tell her, sorry, I don't think she's scary.

"When I'm in full flight I am. It depends on who you ask and the context."

She made a Maori lawyer cry in cross-examination recently. Another lawyer came up to her afterwards and said: "I've never seen that done before."

Despite her public profile, she says she is driven by justice and love.

"I love our people. And I don't know if you know, but I actually quite like Pakeha."

What looks like anger is "more about frustration than any hatred".

Speech to Otago University Faculty of Law August 2006
08 Aug 2006 10:38 am

If the foreshore-seabed confiscations were a defining moment in our
development as a nation, how then do we see the nation being
changed by it?



If the sentiment in my foregoing introduction in Maori is true then we haven’t learnt much at all as a nation. Rather we have embarked upon further processes of colonization that are deliberately designed to assimilate and keep Maori in the margins, notwithstanding our tangata whenua status and the increasing recognition of the importance of that status at International Law in the 21st Century with the recent affirmations by the United Nations of the Declaration of Indigenous Peoples Rights, a document which many of my closest friends Moana Jackson especially have had a major hand in developing over many years for the indigenous nations and peoples of the world .

At present while there is a lot of discussion regarding the relationship that exists between the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa and the Crown (or government) that relationship is being systematically dismantled and the few protections that have been made through long hard court battles, that have spanned generations for most iwi, and involved whanau, hapu and community based strategies for empowerment and social justice are under real threat as the Treaty of Waitangi Principles Deletion Bill accentuates.



This relationship which has been described by some as one of partnership, or as one of tangata whenua and manuhiri and is to be underpinned always by good faith has been a fragile one at best in the past one hundred and sixty six years, but notwithstanding that fragility it has survived strategies of war and conquest; strategies of genocide and assimilation; strategies of denial and destruction. My challenge to us today is will it survive the rationale of the neo liberals and the new colonization processes being devised in back room deals in Parliament to ensure power bases are maintained for political parties more concerned about their longevity than any desire to ensure the platform for a society based on principles of equality and fairness; mutual respect and understanding is sustained, or are we embarking into a new era of conflict.

One hundred and sixty six years ago many of our tupuna put their names to a document that was to guide the relationship between Maori and the Crown. The words were not created lightly or in haste. Etched onto that parchment was the faith and belief that the kupu mana (words of honour) would be recognised and respected. The hope for peace was entrenched in the preamble of the covenant.

Over the next hundred and sixty six years, Maori then witnessed a
consistent effort on the part of the Crown, through their policies and
practices, to minimise, marginalise, and then invisibilise the role that the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa played in the relationship. Thus the union that was created has become a very one sided relationship determined at the whim of just one of the partners. In this relationship, one partner makes all the decisions. While the Crown may recognise the adverse effects these decisions may have on Maori, they are not bound to include them actively in
a decision making capacity.

This relationship is very similar to that of Jake and Beth Heke of ‘OnceWere Warriors’ Fame. A metaphor I think which is very apt given the spotlight on family violence prevention strategies that have been made against Maori in recent weeks. Jake decided that Beth should cook some eggs. This was obviously a decision that affected Beth so he consulted with her … She made her opinion quite clear – she did not want to cook eggs at that point in her life. As what typically happens with consultations with the crown, there followed a ‘negotiation towards agreement’… It must be noted that at
the end of this process, all Beth’s identity and dignity as a woman, a
mother, a human being capable of free thought and speech was stripped away until all that remained was a grim effigy, scarred and battered by her oppressor. Her oppressor then wakes to face the new day, tells her he loves her and that in future she shouldn’t be so lippy. And so her wishes are then forgotten, and her role in the decision making process disregarded. The oppression is complete.

It is clear then that this type of abusive relationship is not something
that Maori want to be a part of. Beth got out, why don’t we?

Now we bring our minds to the foreshore debate. After one month’s
deliberation, the Chief Justice of New Zealand presented a perspective of a full bench of the Court of Appeal. This perspective allowed for the examination, discussion and debate of Maori rights pertaining to the foreshore. Two days later in knee-jerk reaction, the Prime Minister and the Attorney General stated unequivocally that such debate will most certainly be quashed by the legislative might of the Crown. These types of attitude are not defining moments in the development of a nation. They are merely an entrenchment of old positions that once again see the crown standing withtheir boots at Maori throats asphyxiating them into the colonial rank and file.

A distinguished gentleman from Tamakaimoana once told me of an epiphany that Te Kooti once had. Te Kooti saw that if the Crown was turned upside down, it would become a claw that would strip us of our rights and rent us from the land. How true this vision is considering the government’s movements in 2006.

There is no evidence of a desire to build relationships within such
attitudes. What is patently obvious is the governments desire to tell Maori who they are and what rights they have within the paradigm of the western state. Even when their actions have been judged at domestic and international forums like the Waitangi Tribunal and the United Nations as being in contravention of basic human rights and fundamental principles of natural justice their bullying tactics and efforts to bring Maori to submission continue. Dr Peter Sharples in a recent speech in parliament articulated the Crown’s behaviours and inaction in response to these findings in this way:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality”.

and hence why I chose to describe he and Te Ururoa my whanaunga as the kiore that have made and continue to make, the elephants roar in the hallowed precincts of Parliament. We can not help but remember the name that Te Kooti gave to describe this neutral behaviour; Kupapa.

What lessons will we take from this? Should Beth have been neutral to Jakes behaviours or the ministrations of Uncle Bully which sought to defile the generations that would follow. Could she remain neutral confronted with such injustice by those that would wield power over her and her family? Is that the foundation of a principled relationship?



Just as Beth discovered that she had to leave Jake to enable her to express herself and protect her family, so too are Maori coming to the same opinion regarding the ministrations of the Crown. They are now finding a voice within international forums to discuss those issues that the Crown would silence them on. Domestically they are once again embracing the relationships which preceded the onslaught of colonisation and asserting the principles and values of their ancestors as the basis of their independence. Any one who attended the recent secondary schools kapa haka competitions will see the true nature of the renaissance that is being inspired within our rangatahi by the concerted efforts of language activists like Huirangi Waikerepuru; Kathy Dewes; and Amster Reedy.



No longer can we look to the Crown to protect our rights because it is this protector that redefines the rights and denies them life in contemporary Aotearoa. The separation of development paths is nigh just as the disconnection by Crown imposed processes of our rights to the foreshore and seabed is imminent, notwithstanding the vacuous promises that their unjust imposed law has been constructed around.



Jane Kelsey suggested at Waitangi this year that changing formal legal system would require a revolution, not simply a written constitution especially if we are to achieve a state as Annie Mikaere has argued where tikanga Maori, with its ethical foundations in whanaungatanga, manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga, should provide the basis for law in this land. I am sure my relatives of Tuhoe agree. I pay tribute to my comrade Tame Iti who at the direction of his iwi has tested the limits of our governments tolerance for Tuhoe’s right to be Tuhoe.



What is becoming more and more apparent to me is that the architects of this new wave of colonization are forever hopeful that we will spend all our energy and resources arguing in the margins of what they have deemed as permissible behaviours for Maori to achieve. The language of Crownspeak in the many Waitangi Tribunal hearings that I have participated in recent times is an interesting indicator of this belief. They have deemed our assertions of tino rangatiratanga and sovereignty as aspirational goals and have urged that these issues around unrealistic utopias should languish in intellectual debates in institutions of this kind which are underfunded, underresourced and more and more alien to a Maori philosophy given that since the privatization of education fewer and fewer of our people can afford the luxury of these ivory towers.



In the meantime of course the Crown and its bureaucrats carry on with their agendas to disenfranchise us further in our own homelands in their negotiation and endorsement of international treaties that guarantee rights to foreign corporations and their patron governments, such as the US, Europe, China, Japan or Australia. Every one of these treaties involves giving up some of New Zealand’s sovereignty to foreign interests, who can enforce them by imposing economic sanctions. Every one of these arrangements clearly non compliant with the basic assertions of tino rangatiratanga entrenched in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Every one of these arrangements out of step with the majority of world opinion if the recent Doha rounds of the World Trade Organisation are any indication because of course all of this talk of free trade and removal of trade barriers like in the agricultural and other primary produce sectors have been brought to a halt.



Every one of these arrangements runs contrary too to the promises that the New Zealand government made when they placed their name and ratified international covenants which purported to protect fundamental human rights such as the right to development; the right not to be discriminated against because of your race and the right to freedom; physical, temporal and aural.

What is required of the Crown is an indication that a meaningful
relationship with the Tangata Whenua of this country is truly desired. This can only be achieved through constitutional change that allows Maori to share power and participate and control decisions that affect them. Anything less tramples on those honourable words in Te Tiriti and indicates that the governments true perception of Maori is as a judder bar to development, their development.



I have to agree with Jane Kelsey and Moana Jackson that a written constitution is not a necessary precondition to this state of being. Rather if we are to achieve the Treaty vision which we as activists have long advocated it is important that the New Zealand Aotearoa constitutional framework sits within the Tikanga of Te Tiriti o Waitangi te kawenata tapu. That requires us as a nation to mature and to embrace the vision of social justice that is embedded in the values of Maori law which are not dissimilar from Pakeha law but which have been seeded in this land for many thousands of years. It does not need governments deleting references to Treaty principles in legislation, school cirriculums or denying rights that are international norms being upheld in international fora. It does need governments to look deep within their souls to analyse the legitimacy of their imposition and once having survived that gaze put right the injustice that has been done and continues to be done to Maori people.



Forensic attention has turned into almost an obsession for the New Zealand public with respect to the Kahui family and their plight, as the media has hounded this whanau like some Big Brother reality show for all the world to have an opinion upon. Where was the right to silence; the right to a fair trial; the right to the protections of the modern Bill of Rights afforded in the frenzy of grief and anger that has flowed as a consequence of the tragic passing of these tamariki mokopuna. It was almost as if the public needed a scapegoat to explain so they advocated for the illegal detention of innocent people to crack the whanau into submission like some medieval dungeon regime which would seek confessions regardless of the truth. As a result of the media trials which has ensued we have multiple and inconsistent stories making an objective assessment almost impossible in this country. I wish the same forensic attention and obsession could be given to the state of the relationship between Maori and the Crown, the abused and the abuser, the oppressed and the oppressor as we strive for social justice in our futures.



Kia tau nga manaakitanga a te mea ngaro ki runga ki tena ki tena o koutou me kii ra o tatou katoa. Kia toi te tapu, toi te mana, toi nga tikanga o te whare wananga, toi nga whakawhitiwhiti korero, toi te aroha, toi to tatou reo Maori. Kia tuturu whakamaua kia tina, tina, hui e, taike e.

http://www.kaupapamaori.com/blog/posts/annette/post4/

GATT Watchdog

October 24, 1997

Indigenous rights activists Mike Smith and Annette Sykes condemn the CHOGM forum as a political anachronism based upon a nostalgic desire to cling to the notion of the "Empire".

Mr Smith and Ms Sykes, both veteran indigenous rights advocates representing the Maori people of Aotearoa/New Zealand have been attending the NGO forums as part of an international speaking tour of European nations.

The Empire has long ceased to exist. The current reality is that the economic and political sovereignty of the Commonwealth nations are being systematically eroded by the policies of the Free Trade agenda espoused by the groups such as the World Trade Organisation.

The whole historical notion of the Commonwealth has been based upon the relentless dispossession of indigenous peoples by various military, religious, or political regimes. One only has to visit the Museums in London to witness the results of the systematic pillaging of the wealth of the common peoples that is the postcolonial legacy.

The general populations of the modern nation states are now beginning to face the horrendous implications of the systematic asset stripping of their nation's wealth by foreign interest in modern times.

We experienced this phenomenon late last century and it took our society to the brink of extinction. Creating cycles of poverty and dependence that generate the environment for the proliferation of well meaning NGOs and other charities.

New Zealand has been at the forefront of implementing these experimental economic policies and we can report that the standard of living in New Zealand has radically declined for the general population. For the first time since the worldwide economic collapse of the 1930s we are witnessing widespread reliance on charity for basic human needs such as food and shelter.

Rather than repeat these mistakes and the subsequent misery they inflict upon populations we urge people's organisations within the Commonwealth to defend the basic notions of democracy. The development agenda of a nation must be decided by the popular will of its citizens and not by stand-over tactics of the corporate elites who resort to blatant forms of economic blackmail to seek advantage in the global markets.

We are supporting the newly established Peoples Global Action (PGA) coalition as a more positive replacement for these outdated international alliances.

We believe that the PGA principle of adopting a confrontational attitude is unfortunately unavoidable in that lobbying has minimal impact on such biased and undemocratic bodies such as the WTO.

We return back to New Zealand to engage in the organisation of non-violent civil disobedience against the global tyranny of the current trade and investment policies being advanced at CHOGM.

We call upon the populations of the Commonwealth nations to take direct democratic action in May 1998 as part of a global campaign of popular action against the WTO.

We must act to defend the basic human rights and responsibilities of the diverse peoples of the Commonwealth nations because it is clear in our view that the political will to confront these issues does not exist within CHOGM.

PGA is an international coalition of people's movements with a commitment to direct action and civil disobedience in opposition to the World Trade Organisation and all other instruments of globalisation and privatisation.