Re: The Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill NZ

"Finally, the Bill removes the protection, which allows New Zealanders
to support a liberation movement, such as in South Africa yesterday or
in Palestine today 'for the purpose of advocating democratic
government or the protection of human rights'"

Kia ora

Our tupuna last century were labeled "rebels" by the state and
interned to the Guantanamo bay of that day, Tasmania. Ruthless at
squashing independent movements here and round the Pacific its seems
that the settler gubbament has its head so far up the arse of the
neo-liberals & US, its not gonna let small things such as indigenous human
& civil rights to stand in their way.




> RE: The Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill - Submissions Due
>
>
> I am writing, as a Green MP, to inform you that the Terrorism
Suppression Amendment (TSA) Bill is currently before the Foreign
Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee. The Committee is calling
for submissions, which are due on May 18.

> The TSA Bill was introduced by the Government and had its first
reading in the House on 29 March.
>
> The Green Party has expressed some major concerns about the
implications of this Bill for the civil liberties of New Zealanders. I
include here a link to my first reading speech , but here is a
summary of the concerns I have.
>
>
> The change increases Prime Ministerial power, at the expense of the
judiciary, in reviewing terrorist designations. The 3-yearly review of
the terrorist designations will now be done by the Prime Minister,
rather than by the High Court.
>
> The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee, when it
considered the original Terrorism Suppression Act in 2002 made
strenuous efforts to ensure a significant judicial role in the review
process. Now that has been largely eliminated.
>
> Given the serious consequences for anyone designated a terrorist, it
is unfair for the person who made the original designation, the Prime
Minister, to be the person later checking whether it was accurate. The
only legal avenue open to a designated person is a difficult and
expensive judicial review.
>
> Another concern is that New Zealand would automatically adopt the
United Nations list of terrorists, even if we had evidence proving a
person or group so listed was innocent. The UN process operates on
the basis of trusting that Governments have correct and unprejudiced
information when they put forward people for inclusion on the list,
and it is very hard to get a name removed, as the Swedish Government
found out when 3 of their nationals were labelled by the US without
any evidence. The practice of designation is a highly politicised
process, and has extremely serious ramifications for those listed. The
absence of review or appeal for those listed raises due process and
civil liberty concerns. This is happening even while other countries
under greater threat have been testing the legal scope, fairness and
accuracy of the UN designations.
>
> The Bill also complicates our legal system by putting in a general
offence, a 'terrorist act', with a potential sentence of up to life in
prison. This is unnecessary, given that every terrorist act -
including murder and kidnapping - is already an offence here, with due
process protections under criminal law, and set penalties.
>
>
>
>
> Even people with no intention to harm anyone or destroy property can
qualify as terrorists under the proposed law. A terrorist can now be
someone who, for political reasons, causes 'serious disruption to an
infrastructure facility, if likely to endanger human life'. Some
protest activity during the 1981 Springbok tour could now fall foul of
this definition.
>
>
>
> Finally, the Bill removes the protection, which allows New
Zealanders to support a liberation movement, such as in South Africa
yesterday or in Palestine today 'for the purpose of advocating
democratic government or the protection of human rights'.
>

>
> You can download a copy of the bill. (pdf 1.7mb) from the
parliamentary website, or get a copy from the Committee, phone 04 471 9508
>
>
> If you have an interest in, or concern about, the issues in the
Bill, you can make a submission to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and
Trade Select Committee, Parliament Buildings, Wellington.
>
>
>
>Submissions close on 18 May 2007

DECLARATION AND POSITION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES TO THE MEETING OF THE APEC TRADE MINISTERS

Lautaro Mapuche Warrior



CHILE 4 to 5 JUNE, 2004

Honourable Ministers of Trade of the Member Economies of APEC, meeting in Mapuche territory – Wallmapuche



APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation created in 1989 as a forum to advance economic cooperation, free trade and investments in the region and which 21 countries have joined, pretends to benefit and improve the living conditions of all citizens in the member countries.



In this regard, we, indigenous peoples and organizations with ancestral rights in these member countries of APEC would like to present some fundamental concerns which affect our future and call your attention to the following recommendations and specific demands of the peoples concerned.



1. We, the indigenous peoples of the countries which form APEC have suffered from the negative impacts of the development of free trade and the accelerated economic cooperation in the context of the so-called globaliyation in various forms; the criteria which guide the agreements of free trade do not take into account nor respect our human rights; we underline, that we are holders of ancestral rights; in the frame of these agreements, we are not consulted nor do we participate in the taking of decisions which have an immediate impact on our lives and collective rights.



2. Therefore, we urge that you recognize our human rights as indigenous peoples as they are enshrined in the Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, such as there are the rights to land, territory and self-determination, expressed in Article 3: “Indigenous peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”, as well as in the Draft Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples of the Organization of American States. In this respect, our right to self-determination as peoples and our territorial rights must be recognized and respected in any decision or acitivity which is taken or taking place in our territories and which affect our ways and conditions of live as indigenous peoples.



3. In particular, we would like to call your attention on Articles 6 and 7 of the ILO Convention Nr. 169 which establish that indigenous peoples and communities affected by a development project or proposal must be consulted in a broad and transparent way and they must participate in the decision-making and at every step of the project or proposal. We believe that this internationally recognized principle and right is not taken into account in the APEC agreements.



4. With regard to our natural resources and traditional knowledge and the rights associated, we would like to draw your attention on the Convention on Biological Diversity which states in Article 8(j) that “ the knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities” must be respected, preserved and maintained. Furthermore, Article 10 (c) of the same Convention calls for the protection and continuation of the customary use of biological resources, in accordance with traditional cultural practices.



5. We are calling on the members of APEC to recognize the elemental norms of the human rights of indigenous peoples; particularly those countries which have not ratified ILO Convention 169 and which furthermore do not have a policy on/with indigenous peoples.



6. We stress to the members of APEC that the lack of the right to full and effective participation of indigenous peoples, is contrary to democracy and does not provide security in peaceful co-existence.

http://www.mapuche-nation.org/

Declaration of the People's Conference against Imperialist Globalization

Quezon City, Philippines, 21–23 November 1996

We, participants in the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization, representing people's organizations, nongovernmental organizations, solidarity groups, movements, networks and individuals from 34 countries in Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, North America and Europe, have come together to confront a common danger and respond to a common challenge.

Monopoly capitalists, frontlined by multinational/trans- national corporations (MNCs/TNCs) backed by their respective states, are in haste to expand and tighten their rule in the world. They have created the bandwagon of “globalization” with its three elements: trade and investment liberalization, deregulation and privatization. These monopoly capitalists, invariably called modern-day imperialists or neocolonial powers, use globalization to extricate themselves from three decades of recurring prolonged recessions induced by the international debt crisis and the crisis of overproduction.

In the post-Cold War era, the traditional imperialist powers that have long divided the world among themselves—the United States, the leading states of the European Union, and Japan — are colluding more than ever. They connive, using their MNCs/TNCs, to exploit and oppress the peoples of the Third World and of the former Soviet bloc, and their own workers too. But in the inevitably intensifying rivalry, each power plots to penetrate and take over the other's domains and redivide the world.

Thus, the promised “new world economic order” of prosperity and peace is far from coming. Emerging instead is a new world disorder far more destructive of the lives of billions of peoples, in industrial and non-industrial countries alike. The prescribed path, free trade, is not free at all.

To advance their unified goal, the major imperialist powers have harnessed various instrumentalities. Chief of these are the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund- World Bank tandem and its nefarious structural adjustment programs, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, lately restructured as the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as international, regional and bilateral military alliances and agreements. Reactionary regimes, particularly of imperialist client-states in the Third World, have conspired with imperialism to further this goal.

The major and minor imperialist powers are using regional free trade blocs—principally the European Union, the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)—to speed up the WTO trade and investments liberalization timetable. Meantime, they secure their national and regional markets. With NAFTA in its tight grip, the US has seized the initiative in APEC to regain economic preeminence over Japan in Asia-Pacific, check China's growing influence, and consolidate American geopolitical hegemony in the region.

In face of this situation, we, participants in the People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization hereby resolve collectively to oppose globalization in every way and by every means possible in our respective countries and worldwide.

We denounce and oppose the subservient client-states for selling out their peoples' interests. They connive with imperialism in promoting distorted concepts of “democratization,” “civil society empowerment,” and “sustainable development” in a bid to disarm the people and co-opt their organizations into the imperialist strategem.

We oppose imperialist globalization because the schemes it promotes worsen the uneven development among and within nations, intensify the exploitation of peoples, and deepen inequality and social polarization. They accelerate the concentration of wealth in the handful of imperialist states, their MNCs/TNCs and the billionaire-owners, and drive the majority of nations into deeper impoverishment. These schemes also foster mindless consumerism and trash Western culture that warp, marginalize or efface the cultures of Third World peoples and debase their humanity.

Globalization schemes are wiping out jobs and livelihoods in industry and agriculture, both in industrial and non-industrial countries. Evidence we have seen undoubtedly show that globalization is causing mass layoff of workers via “downsizing,” “labor flexibilization,” “labor-only contracting” and other management designs; massive landlessness and worsening forms of feudal and capitalist exploitation of peasants and farm workers; displacement, commodification and modern-day slavery of women; eviction of the urban poor; deprivation of indigenous peoples of their ancestral lands and patenting of their human genes; wanton human rights violations and political repression; commodification of migration; razing of the environment; de-industrialization and bankruptcy of small and medium enterprises; cutdown or total absence of state social services; rising costs of consumer goods and services and declining levels of income and standards of living of the majority of the people. They also aim to deprive the toiling masses of their capacity to organize and effectively fight for their rights and survival and to resist imperialist domination.

No wonder workers and peasants of many countries, men and women alike, have raised their banners in defiance. They and their fellow oppressed represented in this conference—indigenous peoples, women, youths and students, intellectuals, the middle classes, among others—are determined to shatter the myths and expose the false promises of globalization by showing its all-too-real adverse impacts on peoples'lives and environments. More than that, they are waging varied forms of struggles to frustrate globalization.

By its own rapacity and cupidity, monopoly capital is fast bringing together the world's exploited and oppressed peoples to share their common pains as well as their common struggles and aspirations. In more and more countries, they are developing new means of struggle or taking up proven ones, including the revolutionary recourse to armed struggle. Having resisted and survived state reaction and brutal repression, the people are resolved to win.

We hereby resolve to carry out the following actions:

* Fully expose and vigorously oppose the deceptive slogan, destructive schemes, and the programs and policies of globalization in our own countries and worldwide;
* Junk APEC, NAFTA, the European Union and the WTO as imperialist instruments to further subjugate and exploit the toiling masses and peoples of the world;
* Fight for the dismantling of imperialist military alliances, the abrogation of Cold-War vintage security agreements, and the withdrawal of overseas US military bases and troop deployments.
* Struggle to establish a social, economic, political and cultural order in our countries that shall ensure freedom from foreign domination and domestic exploitation and oppression. Develop our natural and human resources for our peoples' well-being. Foster international cooperation based on equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit.
* Resist imperialist economic, political, military and cultural aggression, political repression by reactionary states. Campaign for the freedom of all political prisoners, and demand justice for the victims of all human rights violations;
* Strengthen our anti-imperialist solidarity, perseveringly build our national organizations and alliances and enhance our capacities to carry out both independent and coordinated action programs. Forge strong solidarity links among ourselves and with other anti-imperialist and progressive organizations to further advance the world's anti-imperialist movement.

(Approved and adopted in plenary session by the participants, People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization, November 23, 1995.)

The BAYAN homepage is— http://www.sequel.net/~bayan/ E-mail address is—bayan@mnl.sequel.net

Papers at plenary, country cases, workshop resolutions can either be requested through e-mail, or accessed at the BAYAN homepage.

Foreign Policy In Focus: Asia Pacific Economic Cooperatio

Foreign Policy In Focus: Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
November 1998, Vol. 3, No. 35

Written by John Gershman, Institute for Development Research Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS)

Key Points

* APEC is the largest, most diverse trans-Pacific forum of its kind.
* APEC has adopted a declaration that envisions elimination of all trade and investment barriers by 2010 for the wealthiest countries and 2020 for the poorer ones.
* APEC is in crisis due to the region's social and economic crisis and the growing opposition to the U.S.-dominated trade and investment liberalization agenda.

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), founded by a dozen countries in 1989, has become a forum of twenty-one countries that addresses economic issues in the Asia-Pacific region. This diverse group includes the U.S., Canada, China, Taiwan (officially Chinese Taipei), Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, South Korea, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, and Chile. At the
November 1998 meeting, three additional countries-Peru, Russia, and Vietnam -will join as full members.

Together, the APEC countries account for over 50% of the world's merchandise trade, half the global GNP, and two-fifths of the world population. Operating from a modest secretariat in Singapore, APEC sponsors regular meetings and annual summits of senior government officials and heads of state. APEC operates by consensus rather than through binding agreements and the type of legalism evident in the North American Free Trade Agreement. In this process of "concerted unilateralism," APEC members define broad regional goals but leave the specific aspects of implementation to each nation.

APEC consists of three occasionally overlapping processes. The first is economic and technical cooperation promoting economic and human resource development, or "Eco-Tech." Second is trade and investment liberalization, an agenda that emerged at its 1993 meeting when President Clinton invited the 18 APEC leaders to Blake Island, Washington, for the first-ever APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. The Bogor Declaration, adopted in 1994,
proclaimed the elimination of all trade and investment barriers by 2010 for APEC's wealthiest countries and 2020 for its poorer ones. Subsequent meetings led to a refinement of these goals in terms of Individual and Collective Action Plans that were to provide the actual liberalization commitments.

At the 1997 Vancouver meeting, APEC leaders agreed to liberalize trade in nine sectors on a fast track basis covering $1.5 trillion in trade (known as Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization). Those sectors include: chemicals, fisheries, forestry, energy goods and services, environmental goods and services, gems and jewelry, medical equipment, toys, and a telecommunications mutual recognition agreement. Of these, the last was approved in June 1998, while liberalization in fisheries and forestry remain actively resisted by Japan.

The third-and weakest-process is the sustainable development agenda, which also emerged within APEC in 1993. To date, this process has been characterized by a flurry of small-scale, capacity-building projects and little else beyond statements of principles and a meeting on marine resources earlier this year.

The weakness of the sustainable development agenda has five major causes: poor leadership by the wealthier countries, most prominently the United States; popular opposition to APEC's free trade agenda; the failure to connect the trade, investment, and environmental tracks; the weakness of prosustainable development forces within negotiating governments (most of which are dominated by commercial interests); and the inability of pro-sustainable development forces from civil society to penetrate the national and regional processes of policy formulation.

The challenge of working with diverse economies and varying perspectives on trade and investment regulation gives APEC a certain informality and lack of cohesiveness. Although the APEC forum has declared its support for free trade, many members oppose mandatory implementation schedules for comprehensive tariff and quota reduction. Indeed, some
countries-principally Malaysia and Japan-have insisted that the liberalization goals be nonbinding and have opposed the U.S. demand that all economic sectors be opened to foreign trade and investment. Countries that oppose the U.S. in its drive to convert APEC into another free trade area would prefer that APEC remain a consultative organization that
facilitates technical cooperation on economic matters.

Both APEC's inability to develop a positive response to the ongoing Asian crisis and U.S. criticism of recent interventions by Hong Kong, Malaysia, and China in currency and portfolio capital markets set the stage for a clash at the 1998 APEC meeting over the scope of appropriate responses to the economic crisis and the utility of APEC itself.

Attention by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to APEC has been growing since the first Heads of State Summit in 1993. The Indonesian government blocked a planned NGO forum in 1994, but NGOs success-fully organized parallel summits in 1995 (Osaka), 1996 (Manila), and 1997 (Vancouver) and plan to do so in Kuala Lumpur (1998) and Auckland (1999).

Problems With Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems

* Washington's free trade model for the Asia-Pacific region has met with resistance from countries less enamored by the ideology of economic liberalization and determined to maintain their own development strategies.
* U.S. policy in APEC promotes an economic model that downplays human rights and sustainable development.
* U.S. policy has focused on enhancing U.S. corporate interests rather than addressing the social and ecological costs of the current economic crisis.

Between 1989 and 1992, APEC had a relatively low profile within U.S. foreign economic policy. During that period, NAFTA and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were Washington's top free trade priorities. The 1993 Seattle APEC meeting, hosted by President Clinton, marked both a higher priority U.S. role in the Asia-Pacific region in general and a more coherently articulated free trade and investment
agenda for APEC. Clinton's free trade vision received strong backing from Australia and New Zealand, but other countries-notably Malaysia-were less than enthusiastic.

For the U.S. government and business community, APEC offers an opportunity to exercise economic leadership in an important world region. U.S. economic objectives, however, have been at variance with those of a number of the Asian members and with the goals of NGOs that are trying to get a voice at the table in order to raise issues about human rights, labor, and democratization. Washington regards APEC as an instrument to assert its
economic liberalization agenda, reduce its merchandise trade deficit with the region, and build a regional free trade bloc with strong U.S. participation, while serving to discourage Asian nations from organizing into an exclusive trading bloc.

The Asia-Pacific region has surpassed Western Europe to become America's largest regional trading partner-both as a supplier of U.S. imports and as a customer for its exports. Like NAFTA, APEC is regarded by the U.S. both as a regional bulwark against advances of the European Union and as a lever to strengthen Washington's economic liberalization agenda at the World Trade Organization (WTO). By developing initiatives supported by a significant group of APEC members, the U.S. uses APEC to build a "critical mass" for incorporating its global liberalization agenda into the WTO.

Washington has not been entirely successful in promoting its economic goals in the Asia-Pacific region. In the context of the economic crisis, the U.S. trade deficit with the region has been rising, but the U.S. has been able to boost its share of foreign direct investment (FDI) in those countries hardest hit by the crisis.

The primary resistance to expanding NAFTA into a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) comes from opponents within the U.S. who either oppose the free trade agenda or oppose attaching labor and environmental agreements to new trade accords. In the Asia-Pacific region, however, opposition to the U.S. free trade juggernaut comes from both governments and citizens of the region. Although the Clinton administration has succeeded in winning rhetorical commitments to free trade, its proposals for the establishment of a mandatory timetable for the implementation of a free trade area have been consistently rejected.

The Clinton administration's continued insistence on liberalization-especially in the face of a massive economic crisis-is widely reviled in the region as a vulture strategy. Rather than trying to address the social costs of the crisis, Washington has focused on pursuing policy reforms that would enable U.S. corporations to pick at the choice carcasses of Asia's economic crisis. The U.S. had harsh words in particular for the 1998 host, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, for his use of capital controls.

Washington's narrow economic approach to APEC is problematic. The U.S. argues that economic liberalization, democracy, and security in the region are all mutually reinforcing (forming "three pillars" of foreign policy in Asia). But with the scramble for market share dominating the U.S. agenda, other issues get short shrift. U.S. policy demonstrates no abiding concern for the patterns or effects of either economic growth or crisis in the region, and Washington is a recalcitrant supporter, at best, of the calls for demo-cratic reform from the region's citizens.

Absent liberalization, the U.S. has no serious proposals to offer at APEC regarding the economic crisis beyond those already proposed by the G-7. A former member of APEC's Eminent Person's Group, C. Fred Bergsten has proposed that APEC formulate a neo-Keynesian program to spend the $30 billion Japan recently offered the troubled Asian economies. The Japanese, stung after the U.S. denounced a similar plan just over a year ago, are likely to gracefully decline if such a proposal is offered.

While the U.S. concentrates on overcoming the objections to what regional leaders see as Washington's agenda for a U.S.-dominated pattern of globalization, other problems raised by U.S. citizen groups and regionally based NGOs receive little attention. A central complaint is that APEC is opaque and undemocratic. As a result, citizen organizations have difficulty raising their concerns about the development process in the Asia-Pacific region.

Although the U.S. has raised concerns about human rights and environmental degradation in the region, it still allows its commercial ambitions to overshadow these issues. This is clear in the current U.S. drive for liberalization in forestry and fisheries. Rapid liberalization, in the
midst of a massive economic crisis and without regulations insuring sustainable harvests, will only accelerate the region's rates of deforestation and overfishing, already among the world's highest.

Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations

* Washington should drop its insistence on comprehensive trade and investment liberalization and recognize the validity of a plurality of development models and priorities.
* The U.S. should support initiatives to develop rules for regulating short-term capital flows and to address the social and ecological costs of the current crisis.
* The U.S. should insist that APEC become more transparent, participatory, and accountable.

As the liberalization locomotive within APEC is stalled and new, large-scale free trade agreements are unpopular at home, Washington could seize the opportunity to pursue a less narrowly focused policy agenda toward APEC. Trying to force liberalization on APEC member states has failed, and maintaining it as the centerpiece of U.S. policy in the region
is counterproductive to Washington's stated goals of promoting democracy, equity, and environmentally sustainable development. At a time when even mainstream economists endorse capital controls, U.S. policymakers should rethink their commitment to comprehensive economic liberalization.

The conflicts over appropriate responses to the crisis have challenged APEC's raison d'etre. As the world's broadest regional economic institution, APEC is worth preserving if it can do two things:
1) catalyze constructive action on the important regional and global policy issues raised by the current crisis (such as regulating short-term capital flows and addressing the social and ecological costs of the crisis) and
2) move toward a more balanced sustainable development agenda. As first steps, the U.S. could gain support for such an agenda by abandoning its liberalization-for-everyone approach, increasing its support for capacity-building efforts at the national and regional levels, and leading by example at home.

U.S. policy should focus simultaneously on improving the transparency of APEC negotiations and on expanding the APEC agenda to include issues of concern to civil organizations other than Chambers of Commerce. Any effort to make the APEC process more transparent and participatory should encourage more citizen involvement at the national level (particularly in the U.S.) in discussions about APEC policy. Also important is the
participation of nonbusiness citizen groups at the committee and working-group level. Although the Clinton administration has occasionally included NGO representatives in some U.S. delegations, this sporadic inclusion falls short of the steps needed to open up the U.S. policymaking process. Within APEC, the U.S. should facilitate NGO access to meetings and
should make documents publicly available.

Human rights issues, while not on the formal APEC agenda, are slowly forcing their way onto the backdrop of the meetings. This is primarily because of demands by citizens in the region for democratization and respect for human rights, including demands by groups in the 1998 host country, Malaysia. Human rights have also been highlighted when previous host governments have harassed NGOs or citizens engaged in protest or parallel activities. The Philippine government banned Nobel Peace Laureate José Ramos Horta and other potential "troublemakers" from attending the Manila People's Forum in 1996, and Canada is in the midst of an investigation of police repression of protestors that may implicate the Canadian prime minister. The Malaysian government has made it clear it will tolerate no "unruliness."

The informal bilateral discussions that parallel the multilateral meetings enable U.S. officials to raise issues not on the official APEC agenda. These are prime opportunities to raise issues regarding the social and environmental impact of the economic crisis and to emphasize respect for human rights. While it is laudable that Clinton will not meet with Prime Minister Mahathir to protest the detention of former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the inconsistency and hypocrisy that characterize U.S. policy in the region reinforce regional sentiment that America's promotion of democracy, worker rights, and environmental protection are self-serving in nature. To overcome these criticisms and to chart a more responsible foreign policy toward APEC and its member countries, Washington should indicate that the U.S., too, needs to improve its own practice regarding the environment and human rights.

Specifically, we recommend that Washington take the following actions:

* Stop insisting on comprehensive trade and investment liberalization and recognize the validity of Asian development models that allow for the judicious intervention of government as a legitimate strategy in pursuing industrialization and food security.
* Support regional mechanisms to scale-up successful strategies of community-based natural resource management, encourage the transfer of clean production technologies, and promote energy conservation.
* Consistently implement existing labor rights provisions in U.S. trade legislation, such as GSP provisions regarding the Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) operations, and the IMF.
* Create citizen advisory groups paralleling APEC working-groups to enable NGOs and citizens to participate in the formulation of U.S. policy within APEC.


John Gershman (jgershman@igc.org) is a Research Associate at the Institute
for Development Research.


Sources for More Information

APEC Education Network
Box 353690
Seattle, WA 98195
Voice: (206) 543-0663
Fax: (206) 616-1978
Email: Hellman@u.washington.edu
Website: http://www.apec.org/
Contact: Donald Hellman

APEC Secretariat
438 Alexandra Rd.
Alexandra Point
Singapore
Voice: (65) 276-1880
Fax (65) 276-1775
Website: http://www.apecsec.org.sg/

Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace
110 Maryland Ave. NE, Box 70
Washington, DC 20002
Voice: (202) 543-1094
Fax: (202) 546-1094
Email: apcjp@igc.apc.org
Website: http://www.apcjp.org
Contact: Andrew Wells

Asian Human Rights Commission
Unit D, 7 Floor, 16 Argyle St.
Mongkok Commercial Centre
Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
China
Voice: (8522) 698-6339
Fax:(8522) 698-6367
Email: ua@hk.super.net
Website: http://www.hk.super.net/~ahrchk

Focus on the Global South
c/o CUSRI, Prachuabmoh Bldg.
Chulalongkorn University
Phyathai Road
Bangkok 10330
Thailand
Voice: (662) 218-7363
Fax: (662) 255-9976
Email: admin@focusweb.org
Website: http://www.focusweb.org
Contact: Walden Bello

Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development
1831 Second St.
Berkeley, CA 94710
Voice: (510) 204-9296
Fax: (510) 204-9298
Email: lzarsky@nautilus.org
Website: http://www.nautilus.org
Contact: Lyuba Zarsky

Publications

Vinod K. Aggarwal and Charles E. Morrison (eds), Asia-Pacific Crossroads: Regime Creation and the Future of APEC (New York: St.Martin's, 1998).

Walden Bello and Jenina Joy-Chávez-Malaluan, APEC: Four Adjectives in Search of a Noun (Philippines: Manila People's Forum on APEC, 1996).

Focus on Trade, an electronic magazine produced by Focus on the Global South.

Donald C. Hellman and Kenneth B. Pyle From APEC to Xanadu: Creating a Viable Community in the Post-Cold War Pacific (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998).

Lyuba Zarsky, "APEC and the `Sustainable Development' Agenda," Asian Perspectives, 1998.

World Wide Web

APEC Education Foundation


APEC Secretariat
http://www.apecsec.org.sg

Good links on APEC
http://www.nautilus.org

Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org/

U.S. State Department Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eap/index.html

Arrogance Of The Elites The Real APEC Tale

By Naomi Klein
The Toronto Star, October 1, 1998

Stack the latest document in the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation scandal on the pile of papers pointing directly at the Prime Minister's Office. "PMO has expressed concerns about the security perimeter at (the University of British Columbia), not so much from a security point of view but to avoid embarrassment to APEC leaders," reads an E-mail from summit organizer Robert Vanderloo.

It's clear the RCMP are intent on pinning the blame for their strong-arm tactics on the Prime Minister while the PM would surely like nothing more than for the whole affair to be dismissed as the actions of a few ham-fisted cops.

Maybe they're both right. The RCMP may well have been out of control and their actions may indeed have violated the protesters' civil liberties. But that was, at least, partly as a result of the fact -- clearly outlined in the documents -- that Ottawa handed the RCMP demands that could not be carried out peacefully. And what exactly is the acceptable means of preventing "embarrassment to APEC leaders?" If the officers looked in their RCMP manuals under "embarrassment prevention," they would have come up empty since causing politicians to blush is neither a crime nor a security risk.

Those are among the questions that the RCMP public complaints commission will be hearing next week as the blame for SprayPEC gets batted around in Vancouver. Outside the scope of this commission however, is the question of why the bodies advancing global trade -- from APEC to the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund -- are becoming lightning rods for so much global discontent.

Beyond the cries that human rights are being sacrificed at the altar of corporate profits, are deeper concerns about the lack of transparency and access to these powerful decision-making bodies. In the absence of opportunities for meaning public participation citizens groups must shout to be heard. As their voices grow louder, it takes increasingly forceful measures to make sure they do not cause a disturbance -- let alone embarrassment. This is a problem faced not only by the RCMP, but by police forces around the world.

Once upon a time, world leaders could have their meetings in peace. Sure, there were a few protesters shouting against nuclear bombs or whaling, but the vast majority of labour, human rights and environmental activists had their eyes focused exclusively on national battles.

That time has decidedly passed. At the G-8 Summit in Birmingham, England last May, 10,000 protesters formed a human chain around the city demanding Third World debt relief. Two days later, when the leaders travelled to Geneva to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the
World Trade Organization, the caravan of students, farmers and the unemployed followed like a long shadow.

It was this ad hoc global network, connected through a web of electronic mail, which generated enough heat over the Multilateral Agreement on Investment that its introduction was stalled last April. But as public concern about free trade mounts, there has been no attempt to create official channels for such grievances to be addressed. In the absence of such a response, surveillance of activists is stepped up and every legitimate demonstration is regarded as a riot waiting to happen.

For instance, when APEC trade ministers met in New Zealand in July, 1996, activists organized a small counter-summit. On the night before the summit, two secret service officers where caught breaking into and rifling though the home of protest organizer Aziz Choudry. His civil case is currently under appeal.

When the leaders' summit was held in Manila in 1997, the police sealed all the exits from a parallel anti-APEC conference, preventing a planned protest at the summit site. In Geneva last month, police raided an anti-MAI seminar and 50 participants were detained without charge.

So, do we have a conspiracy on our hands? I'm afraid it's nothing more glamorous than the garden variety arrogance of powerful people, accustomed to the comfort of closed doors, suddenly facing a horde of uninvited guests. Just ask Sylvia Ostry, Canada's Grande Dame of free trade. "Isn't there some way of monitoring these people?" Ostry asked at a Toronto seminar last November. It sounded as if she was talking about busting a ring of Internet child pornographers, but she was actually referring to politically engaged Canadians who were turning the tide of public opinion against the MAI.

The real question is one which should be leveled at Ostry and other free traders who seem to believe that writing the laws of our shared global government is a private matter and not our concern: Isn't there some way of monitoring these people?

Trouble In Paradise - Pacific Peoples Under Free Market Assault

by Aziz Choudry (January 1999)

Three lawsuits lodged this January seek over US $1 billion in damages, seizure of profits and unpaid wages from 18 top US companies on behalf of thousands of Asian workers lured to Saipan, in the US-administered Northern Marianas Islands in the South Pacific. Over 50,000 people, mostly young women from China, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Thailand have ended up working in appalling conditions, subject to constant surveillance and harassment, for some 32 Saipan factories mostly owned by Chinese, Japanese and Korean subcontractors, making popular clothing tagged with a "Made in the USA" label, and which enjoys duty-free access to the US market.

Meanwhile, this year's APEC host, the New Zealand government, says it will "ensure that the Asia-Pacific community being constructed through APEC reaches out to those nations that sit in the Pacific as well as around its edges." It claims that "our "Pacificness"" will be a "feature of our hosting of APEC leaders".

And while there is little acknowledgement of the existence of Pacific lands and peoples within the official APEC process - and even among many of the alternative activities and campaigns on APEC in the region - increasing pressure is being brought to bear on them to reorient and restructure their economies in line with the neoliberal agenda.

New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Solomon Islands already belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu are in the process of joining. New Zealand, Australia and Papua New Guinea are APEC member economies. Both APEC/WTO members and non-members in the region are being encouraged to view APEC and the trade and investment liberalisation agenda as a model for economic development.

The South Pacific Forum Secretariat, which represents the governments of 16 countries in the region has observer status at APEC Ministerial meetings. Forum Leaders and Ministers have increasingly focussed on an economic agenda already promoted throughout the region by World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programmes, Asian Development Bank loan conditionalities, free trade arrangements like the WTO and APEC, as well as pressure from donor countries like New Zealand and Australia which explicitly links future aid commitments to undertakings by governments of recipient countries to pursue further economic reforms to open up their economies and decrease government size and expenditure.

In Madang, Papua New Guinea in 1995, South Pacific Forum Leaders endorsed the APEC non-binding investment principles. The 1997 Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM) stated that "private sector development is central to ensuring sustained economic growth, and that governments should provide a policy environment to encourage this". The July 1998 FEMM in Nadi, Fiji exhorted Forum members to implement "domestic measures consistent with WTO and APEC principles and obligations". The Forum Secretariat has asked that Forum countries report on progress in implementing WTO and APEC principles and obligations at the 1999 FEMM. The theme of the August 1998 South Pacific Forum meeting spoke volumes about its narrow agenda: "From Reform to Growth: The Private Sector and Investment as the Keys to Prosperity". Plans are also afoot for the creation of a "Forum Business Advisory Council" modelled on the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) and to be formally linked to the Forum to strengthen business input into regional policy-making.

Not surprisingly, the export-oriented, exploitative model of development which characterises the situation in the Northern Marianas is far from unique in the Pacific. Take Fiji. A recent ICFTU report on Fiji states that "the violation of fundamental workers' rights in the area of freedom of association is clearly an important factor in the cost of Fiji's exports and so has a significant effect on Fiji's position in international trade. By 1993, the tax free export sector contributed US$75 million out of Fiji's total GDP of US $885 million....[T]he government has argued to the [Fiji Trade Union Congress] that it cannot improve labour law as Fiji needs a cheap labour force to attract foreign direct investment and so increase exports."

Samoa's biggest private sector employer, Yazaki, the Japanese electrical parts manufacturer, was lured to the country by its low labour costs, non-unionised labour, and political stability, as well as incentives from the Samoan government estimated to cost around US$8 million. The plant produces wire harnesses for Toyota, Mitsubishi, and General Motors. Cuts on overtime mean that most workers earn US $22 for a 40-hour week, just above the minimum wage but not enough to keep up with inflation. Samoa retains the wages paid out to local workers, but the export earnings go to the parent company, a Yazaki subsidiary in Australia. Samoa, with the support of the New Zealand government and other donors, has been pursuing policies of privatisation and deregulation since the early 1980s. At the same time as the poverty gap continues to widen, Prime Minister Eti Alesana asserted that there is no poverty in Samoa - because of the jobs provided by Yazaki!

With much of the fishing, timber, mining, tourism and other sectors now dominated by a handful of transnationals throughout the Pacific, "development" and "reform" have wrought havoc on local communities.

Meanwhile "rightsizing" continues throughout the Pacific. In the Solomon Islands, the New Zealand government aid programme has part-funded a programme to reduce the public sector's size by 7-10%, while New Zealand consultants have provided advice. In Vanuatu, the Asian Development Bank-imposed and New Zealand government-supported Comprehensive Reform Program (CRP) includes significant cuts to the size of the public sector, the introduction of a value-added tax and tariff cuts.

After former PNG Minister for Public Services, Bart Philemon announced in 1995 that he would use New Zealand as a model for privatisation and sweeping civil service reforms, columnist for the Times of PNG, Kumulau Tawali wrote: 'Changing systems and adapting is not as simple as taking a video tape and slotting it into another video machine. Politics involves people and cherished values of generations." But the market ideologues arrogantly claim that anytime, any place, anywhere, market-based solutions are the best - and only - answers.

Moves to push small Pacific nations further and faster in this direction ignore the structural causes of their economic, social, and environmental problems, and the strengths of traditional lifestyles, values, resource use and social support systems. They take no account of the realities of countries like Papua New Guinea where as much as 85% of the population is engaged in the subsistence economy.

They ignore the diversity of the distinct peoples, cultures and societies which make up the Pacific. They obscure the political and economic agendas behind the aid programmes which have resulted in well-founded accusations of "boomerang aid". In many cases, 70-90% of official aid returns to donor countries like Japan, Australia and New Zealand in the form of education services, consultants, and technical services, creating lucrative investment opportunities and new markets for goods and services.

Forced dependency on imports has had dire consequences for small Pacific island farmers, unable to compete with lower priced products from overseas. While Pacific nations are being told to export more to earn more foreign exchange and repay loans, commodity prices on world markets continue to plummet, and the floods of imports of overseas goods and services continue unabated. And as the economic crisis continues, the region's three largest economies, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea have been the worst affected, according to the World Bank.

The South Pacific Forum's narrow economic focus flies in the face of demands from Indigenous Peoples from Bougainville to East Timor, from West Papua to "French" Polynesia for the right to self-determination. And it ignores the vulnerability of small, exposed nations to the vagaries of unregulated markets.

Pressure to open up small island economies to the global market smacks of the same callous disregard with which the Pacific has long been treated by Pacific Rim powers. It has been used as an unwilling guinea pig for nuclear tests, toxic waste dumping, and as a source for cheap raw materials. The latest economic blueprint for the region sees the Pacific Islands having little input into the development of macroeconomic policies which they are supposed to accept.

A key "practical impediment" to rendering Forum Island Countries attractive to investors is the enduring strength of traditional land tenure systems. In 1995, in Papua New Guinea, where 93% of the land is in community hands, and seen as "our bank, our fridge, our supermarket" by the people, massive popular opposition to a World Bank-driven program to register customary title forced the defeat of the government's proposed Land Mobilisation Bill designed to attract foreign investment. Throughout the region, the strong connections between peoples and the land and ocean are under renewed threat from a vision of development that sees only dollar signs and commodities to be bought and sold on a mythical level playing field of the free market.

As a Fiji Council of Churches/NGO submission to the 1999 National Budget puts it: "In recent years we were told to follow the tigers of South East Asia. Now their economies have collapsed. What confidence can we place in those who advise us on economic policy? This leads us to ask: are we trying to make Fiji into something it was never meant to be - a poor copy of large nations, reliant on an economic model in which we will always be dependent or losers? In our current system some may profit but most are excluded or exploited. We believe that this system is not made for us."

Pacific peoples have proud histories of struggles against colonialism. Free trade and investment regimes are resulting in a new relationship of servitude to the economic powers - countries and companies - which have their eyes on the region. After centuries of colonial domination, the Pacific deserves far better than to be locked into a permanent race to the bottom to provide cheap labour and natural resources and new frontiers for profit at the expense of its peoples and fragile environment.

For more details, please contact the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group at mailto:gattwd@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz or Fax (64 3) 366-8035 or Phone (64 3) 366-2803

Toward a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific

At their latest annual summit in Vietnam in November 2006, the leaders of the 21 members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum agreed to “seriously consider” negotiating a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).

POLICY BRIEF 07-2

Toward a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific

by C. Fred Bergsten, Peterson Institute

At their latest annual summit in Vietnam in November 2006, the leaders of the 21 members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum agreed to “seriously consider” negotiating a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).

The FTAAP initiative may well turn out to be the best, or perhaps only, way to catalyze a substantively successful Doha Round. If it cannot do that, an FTAAP can still offer a Plan B to restore the momentum of trade liberalization, prevent further proliferation of bilateral and subregional preferential trade arrangements, avoid renewed risk of “drawing a line down the middle of the Pacific,” channel the US-China economic conflict into a more constructive, less confrontational context, and revitalize APEC itself.

Perhaps most important, an FTAAP could maintain US engagement in Asian, and even global, trade relations by providing a basis for congressional extension of trade promotion authority in mid-2007 and a negotiating momentum that the next US president in early 2009 will feel compelled to maintain.

http://www.petersoninstitute.org/publications/pb/pb07-2.pdf

APEC moves towards free trade mining

Asia Pacific mining ministers wound up a talkfest in Perth today vowing to explore a free trade agreement between Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) members that would dwarf all other FTAs.

AAP | February 14, 2007

APEC moves towards free trade mining

By Liza Kappelle

ASIA Pacific mining ministers wound up a talkfest in Perth today vowing to explore a free trade agreement between Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) members that would dwarf all other FTAs.

Australia’s Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane told reporters after the meeting that APEC mining ministers had agreed to examine the effects free trade in minerals and metals would have on the sector.

The study will also explore practical ways to increase trade and investment opportunities among the 21 APEC members, which represent 40 per cent of the world’s economies.

"We have taken the first step to achieving a long term vision of an APEC free trade agreement," Mr Macfarlane said.

"This would dwarf every other FTA ever written."

APEC members include some of the biggest mineral producers - Australia, Canada, Peru, Chile and the US as well as some of the most voracious consumers of commodities, such as China and Japan.

Mr Macfarlane said the mining ministers’ meeting also adopted a set of non-binding principles for the industry including pursuing policies that enhanced sustainable production, trade and consumption of minerals and metals.

These agreements were the culmination of three days of talks behind closed doors by ministers and senior officials from 19 of the APEC nations.

Mr Macfarlane would not reveal details of discussions with nations or stakeholders, including non-government organisations, other than to say they were very positive.

The Perth meeting kicked off a series of APEC discussions in Australia that will culminate in a leaders’ summit in Sydney in September.

Mr Macfarlane said he expected to hear more about removing barriers to free trade among APEC members after each of these meetings.

World leaders including US President George W Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Hu Jintao will head down under for the leaders’ meeting.

APEC was established in 1989 as an informal dialogue group.

A citizen’s guide to an emerging empire

Omar Hamed is an activist based in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. In 2006 he attended the inaugural Pacific Youth festival held in French (Occupied) Polynesia. He helps run the Aotearoa Indymedia Centre and in his spare time writes about imperialism, globalisation and democracy in the Pacific


PICTA, PACER and the WTO: The emerging framework of neo-liberalism in the Pacific.

This article is an introduction or guide to PICTA, PACER and the WTO in the Pacific. The ’guide’ gives readers basic knowledge of both trade agreements and the stepping stone function they provide towards the WTO re-colonising the Pacific.

“Old colonial powers, freed from their responsibilities for poor and vulnerable former colonies, are flexing their muscles and building new empires” - Jane Kelsey

No one can doubt that we live in an age of empire and imperialism. The neo-liberal World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) stalk the planet complimented by regional and bilateral free trade agreements. The attempts by the imperialist nations to open up new markets and new resources to their trans-national corporations (TNCs) are intensifying daily. A global trade system is being forced onto the world by the central capitalist nations to secure a flow of wealth and natural resources from the less developed to the developed world.

In the south Pacific the global pattern is repeated. The dominant wealthy nations are seeking to re-colonise what they see as their “patch”. Australia and New Zealand have been colluding to turn the Pacific into their captive market for low value goods, source of cheap and disposable labour and plentiful natural resources.

From PICTA...

The story of Australasia’s re-colonisation of the Pacific doesn’t begin with PICTA, but for now it’s a fine place to start. PICTA stands for the Pacific Islands Countries Trade Agreement. PICTA is a trade agreement between 14 Pacific Island countries in the Pacific Forum; it does not include Australia or New Zealand. PICTA was designed by Australia and New Zealand to lead to a free trade area between Pacific nations sometime in the near future by eradicating the barriers to free trade between member countries. Barriers such as tariffs and quotas, and import and export licences. It will in the future provide for neo-liberal structural readjustment and fiscal reform to provide for smoother access for TNCs deep into the public and private sectors of Pacific nations.

PICTA came into force in 2003 but is yet to be fully implemented. There has been little public consultation or debate about this agreement. The negotiations are carried out in a secretive and undemocratic way. No thorough or satisfactory social impact assessment of PICTA has been carried out. Amongst many of the negative impacts that PICTA will have the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) point out that, “Far from furthering co-operation among Pacific Island states, PICTA will encourage competition between them and could provoke unanticipated discord and tension among them and their peoples.”

...to PACER...

If the future of Pacific trade seems concerning then wait till you meet PACER. PACER is the next step on from PICTA. PACER stands for the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations and is the regional trade agreement that includes the 14 Pacific nations in PICTA as well as Australia and New Zealand. PACER is about creating a free trade agreement in the south Pacific that would allow Australasian TNCs to dominate across the Pacific. PACER will provide for free trade in goods before also developing into a Pacific free market for trade in services.

Law Professor Jane Kelsey wrote in 2004 that, “PACER is based on an individualised, competitive, self-maximising and exploitive model of free market capitalism.” It isn’t hard to see why. PACER and PICTA will inevitably lead to a loss of Pacific nations revenue from tariffs. For many islands tariffs on imports make up more than half of government revenue. Pacific governments will be forced to seek out alternative ways of income generation. Western consultants are quick to recommend taxes on goods and services, which will “punish the poor”, and allowing foreign corporations greater access to natural resources and land ownership.

...to the WTO...

PICTA and PACER are only the beginning. They are stepping-stones towards a common Pacific market that in reality will be dominated by corporate power and characterised by a loss of indigenous sovereignty and “marginalisation and impoverishment of vulnerable sectors of [Pacific] populations” as the nation-states involved move towards full compliance with the World Trade Organisation’s neo-liberal trade regime.

The recently averted accession to the WTO by Tonga demonstrates the disastrous consequences that joining the WTO has for the Pacific. Oxfam New Zealand in its report, Blood from a Stone, exposed the reality of Tonga’s accession which will result in its tariffs being allowed at no more than 20%, resulting in tariff cuts that would, “affect Tonga’s ability to provide basic health care, education, water supply and other essential services for its people.”

...and all the way back home.

“There were times that I felt ashamed to be a New Zealander”, wrote one New Zealand trade negotiator involved in the PICTA and PACER. In fact, Australia and New Zealand’s entire role in regards to Pacific trade is something to be ashamed of. Not just something to be ashamed of, but something to change.

It is our role in the “big brother” nations, as we are known in the pacific, to echo the noise being made toady and tomorrow in the Pacific, such as the Nadi Statement of the Pacific Regional Civil Society Forum Meeting, held between October 20th and 23rd, 2006, which recommended, “Negotiations on [PACER] should not be initiated unless there has been a comprehensive impact assessment, full consultation and democratic decision making.”

If we seek to build with our Pacific neighbours a fair-trading system that promotes development and sustainability then it is time to mobilise, to organise and to educate. As the cry of the World Social Forum goes, “another world is possible.” Our role as activists, organisers, students, teachers, trade unionists and members of civil society is to exert our influence over the government to such an extent that they no longer find it in their interests to pursue trade injustice in the Pacific. The power as always for popular social movements is in the streets and that is where we must go to challenge PICTA, PACER, the WTO and empire; old and new.
.

APEC Monitoring Group

Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999
From: APEC Monitoring Group

by Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog and Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group

"APEC itself is almost dying, but unfortunately the agenda of APEC has spread rather widely, becoming the reality of the lives of the peoples in the region through the Asian economic crisis, through IMF and through WTO." Reiko Inoue, Co-President, Pacific Asia Resource Center, Japan.

The Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group organised a highly successful programme of education and action throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand during 1999, culminating in a public meeting and two-day forum called "Alternatives To The APEC Agenda" in Auckland on the weekend of the APEC Leaders Summit (10-12 September).

Under the dark shadow of the continuing massacre in East Timor, 160 delegates from throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region described the APEC agenda of trade and investment liberalisation as the new imperialism. Overseas speakers and participants came from Australia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, Indonesia, Philippines, Bougainville, and the USA. Participants heard how poverty and deprivation has been created over and over again throughout the region, as the pain of New Zealand-style neoliberal experiments is inflicted on groups tragically unprepared for its consequences.

One of the APEC Monitoring Group's primary goals has been to help people in Aotearoa/New Zealand understand the link between APEC's free market goals and the destructive economic policies which have devastated this country and peoples' lives over the past 15 years, and to promote discussion on alternative policies and strategies to achieve economic, social and Treaty of Waitangi justice. Besides APEC, there was a strong focus on strategies to oppose attempts to begin a "Millennium round" of negotiations at November's WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle.

Over 400 people attended the public meeting on 10 September, addressed by Jane Kelsey of the APEC Monitoring Group, Moses Havini of the Bougainville Interim Government, Tame Iti, a Maori sovereigntist from the Tuhoe people, and Antonio Tujan, Executive Director of IBON Databank, Philippines. A spontaneous march and rally followed the public meeting when around 200 people marched to the Carlton Hotel where New Zealand Prime Minister Jenny Shipley was staying.

The forum was divided into three sections - Implications of the APEC Agenda, Alternatives, and Strategies.

Maori lawyer Moana Jackson, Director of Nga Kaiwhakamarama I Nga Ture (Maori Legal Service) opened the conference with an address outlining that globalisation is part and parcel of the same colonisation process that has sought to commodify all things for private profit.

He cut through the globalisation and neo-liberal jargon to situate APEC and similar projects exactly where they are.

* APEC is the continuation of the colonisation that the Indigenous Peoples of Aotearoa/New Zealand have faced for nearly 200 years and which other Indigenous Peoples have faced for over 500 years.

* This colonisation, although not new, comes in new and different forms. We need to analyse these and learn how to respond to them.

* Opposition and alternatives to this colonisation can only be addressed if we deal with its full history not just the last 10 mutated APEC years.

* In Aotearoa/New Zealand alternatives must be built on the understanding and acceptance of the Treaty and the right of tangata whenua (Maori) to self-determination, sovereignty or tino rangatiratanga.

A panel of speakers addressed the implications of the APEC agenda first from the international perspective and then from a local perspective.

Although the contexts were different, the themes were similar.

- colonisation is responsible for the growing impoverishment and injustice in the world

- the institutions of APEC/World Trade Organisation/International Monetary Fund/World Bank are the white knights of this colonisation

- this colonisation impacts on Indigenous Peoples, women, workers, smaller countries

- this colonisation is now impacting on life-forms

- the promoters of this colonisation are concerned that the victims of the colonisation are not accepting how 'good' it is for them. APEC governments will be spending millions of dollars over the next period to "manufacture consent" through public relations campaigns.

Jaggi Singh, an organiser with APEC Alert which opposed APEC in Vancouver in 1997 spoke of the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Canada's domestic market reforms. Saul Landau, an award-winning US independent filmmaker outlined the devastating effects of NAFTA on Mexico.

Reiko Inoue, Co-President of Pacific Asia Resource Centre (PARC), Tokyo, and Changgeun Lee from Policy and Information Centre for International Solidarity, Korea, spoke of the impacts of the free trade and investment, free market agenda in their respective countries.

"With their very basic public services eliminated, the people of the world are forced into a 'race toward the bottom' at a national/international level for their right to survive. No matter how dismal their working environment may be, no matter how meagre their wages, people cannot help but accept and work in these conditions. This is because in the age of neo-liberalism, the purpose of the state is to provide a set of conditions most favorable to the capitalists and most oppressive to the workers, all wrapped in the ideology of gaining the 'competitive edge.' More rights and more privileges to 'foreign investors'! Endless competition toward the bottom for the people of the world!", said Changgeun Lee.

In a keynote address introducing the "Alternatives" session, Antonio Tujan, Executive Director of IBON Databank, Manila, said:

"Our response to neoliberalism cannot simply be a return to Keynesian economics of greater state intervention to prevent unbridled monopoly capitalism. Neoliberalism has in fact exposed in all its nakedness the violence and greed of capitalism. It is not our wont and interest to strengthen capitalism through Keynesian neo-classical policies.

"Neither can our response be to seek narrow nationalist protection from foreign inroads without critically pursuing equitable social benefits from trade and other economic endeavors for our peoples and communities. This would simply be strengthening and protection for our own bourgeoisie which are actually tied to global monopoly capital and whose interest is simply protecting itself while ensuring the opening up of other countries for their own benefit."

In the same session, Bien Molina, from Hong Kong-based Asian Migrant Center noted:

"Parallel "people's fora" on APEC have become a steady feature of the annual APEC summits. Indeed, this is already the 6th alternative forum since the daring 1994 Bogor meeting staged by a handful of anti-APEC activists.

"Each year, the question of "alternatives to APEC" crops up. But each year, we basically manage only to elaborate on our critique of neoliberal globalisation, but hardly come up with coherent ideas on alternatives. In fact, repetitious debates about whether to "reject" or "engage" APEC continue to surface each year, despite the fact that the APEC neoliberal philosophy has been clearly rejected since the 1995 Kyoto forum."

"The debate will continue to stagnate at the "reject-engage" level until we qualitatively raise the discussion to the level of the substance of the alternatives. What is our alternative to the APEC/neoliberal agenda?"

Antonio Tujan urged: "We must fight for the peoples' alternatives to globalization. It is for us to develop these models, to work on these models as we advance our resistance to globalization. In fact, this resistance stands as our first and most important alternative to globalization.

"Models for working alternatives to globalization are also drawn from our own daily experiences and from that of our communities. And finally, these models are rooted in our histories as peoples and as communities."

Speaking about APEC, the WTO, and the G-7, after outlining his people's struggle against transnational mining operations and for self-determination, Moses Havini, International Representative of the Bougainville People's Congress, said:

"These "exclusive clubs" have a long list of "sins" as observed by this conference. Where our own governments have virtually lost control and given our sovereignty away by allowing, for example, free trade and investment to foreign governments and TNCs into our lives. A free run of unlimited exploitation by these "sharks" of our Pacific resources such as timber, fish, minerals, workers' rights and other natural resources which could well make our Pacific, a "barren" place in the not too distant future."

"In strategising for the future let us just simply take CONTROL and RECLAIM our SOVEREIGNTY. Firstly, for Indigenous Peoples of their right to Self-determination; and secondly for the rest of us, for all our human rights both collective and individual; those rights that we used to enjoy once upon a time, before colonisation and neoliberalism hit our shores."

Other speakers included Leonie Pihama, Maori educationalist, Peter Wills, Biologist and Genetic Engineering activist, Prue Hyman, feminist economist, Jane Kelsey, author of "The New Zealand Experiment" and "Reclaiming The Future", Bill Rosenberg, researcher for Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa, Mereana Pitman, a Maori decolonisation educator, GATT Watchdog organiser Aziz Choudry, Crispin Beltran, Chairman of Kilusang Mayo Uno, Philippines, Angeline Greensill, Maori sovereigntist, John Minto, of Quality Public Education Coalition, Leigh Cookson of APEC Monitoring Group, Robert Reid of the Trade Union Federation, and Radha D'Souza of Asia-Pacific Workers Solidarity Links. Tim Howard and Alistair Shaw, recently returned from working as observers in East Timor, spoke on the critical situation there. The forum ended with a march and rally of 400 people against APEC on Sunday 12th.

Workshop topics were: Reorganising Labour; Privatisation/Local Campaigns; Education; Environment and Health; Investment; Democratisation; Local government/politics; Church and social justice; International cooperation; Free trade agreements.

Further details about the Alternatives To The APEC Agenda forum, factsheets, papers from the conference, and other information are available at www.apec.gen.nz or from PO Box 1905, Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Workshop outcomes will be posted on the site shortly.

APEC is coming

What a complete was of resourses for this neo liberal pony show and front for American Imperialism & Militarism in our region.

I'll be posting stuff from various anti APEC archival stuff over the next few days.

Jordan Baker
May 1, 2007
Latest related coverage

Sydneysiders will have to put up with street closures, motorcades to and from the airport and lots of police around the Opera House, Government House and Darling Harbour before and during APEC this September.

Organisers today released early details of a four-phased traffic plan for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in early September, when US President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin come to town along with 18 other regional leaders.

Some 400 business leaders, 6000 delegates and 1500 members of the media will also descend on the city.

Motorcades of various sizes will travel between the airport and the city - US Vice-President Dick Cheney had 20 vehicles when he was in Sydney - and cars parked in clearways will be towed.

From Friday, September 7 - which has been declared a public holiday - until the following Sunday, access to parts of the city will be restricted and there will be high levels of security.

Some vehicles will have to be searched.

Motorists will be told which streets will be restricted closer to the date.

Other measures include:

- High visibility policing of clearways and CBD roads, including enforcement of

restrictions.

- Traffic escorts of APEC leaders to venues and hotels.

- Selected routes for commercial deliveries to enter and leave the northern part of the city will be provided closer to the event dates.

- Security measures at some businesses within the northern part of the CBD.

- Entry to some streets might require vehicles to undergo security searches.

- Access to residential and business premises will continue, although at certain times there may be a police or security presence at or nearby premises.

- Continued use of electronic traffic signs on major roads within the metropolitan road network and throughout the CBD.

- The signs will be updated by the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority to alert motorists, residents and businesses of changes

Earlier today NSW Deputy Premier John Watkins questioned the value of APEC for Sydney and said the city would face massive disruption.

He said it would have been better to hold APEC in Canberra.

In reponse Prime Minister John Howard said he was "amazed" by the NSW Government's attitude.

"This will be the most prestigious gathering of world leaders ever in Australia, and is the NSW Government saying that Australia’s biggest and most international city can’t handle that?" the Prime Minister said.

"These are the economies of our region - this is the Pacific region, the Asian-Pacific region which is our future.

"And small- minded, retreating New South Wales is saying we can’t handle it. I know there will be disruption, and that’s because of security, but security is not the fault of democracy, security is the fault of terrorism, and instead of trying to wedge the Federal Government on that issue, the NSW Government should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder and saying, we want this event in Sydney; we want this event to be a great success; and it will bring millions of dollars to the NSWs economy, there will be thousands of visitors coming for APEC."

Last Updated 01/05/2007, 19:09:14

The Australian chaiman of an international business advisory council says the New South Wales, isn't welcoming the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit in September.

Karon Snowdon reports Sydney is to host the leaders summit in September which will also attract around 8-thousand government and business delegates.

But the State Deputy Premier John Watkins says the high security surrounding the event will only disrupt the Sydney business district and won't provide anything tangible for the city, unlike the Olympics.

The attitude has been criticised as small minded by the Prime Minister, John Howard.

Now Mark Johnson, the Chair of the international business council which provides advice to the APEC leaders summit has weighed in.

"I'ts a little parochial and so in that sense its disappointing," Mr Johnson said.

If we don't want to be a wrold city in a world economy we can turnacks on lots of these things and suffer a diminished standard of living.

Mr Johnson is also the Deputy Chairman of the country's biggest investment bank, the Macquarie Bank

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‘Mother Earth is Crying’ Benefit Gig

image by Sue Rankin



Its a privilege to walk on the land of Aunties ancestors and decedents . Much Respect Auntie Sue.

A fund raiser to help put the support van on the road for

Sacred Life Walk 2007.



Sue Charles will be walking from Adelaide to Uluru to raise awareness on climate change, as handed down from her Great Granny and the Seven Sisters*

The van will be used to carry food, swags, water and other material for Aunty Sue to walk.



Aunty Sue is asking for people to support the walk and join her at Trades Hall in preparation for her leaving Adelaide 070707.



The evening will feature:

Sue Charles: ‘Talkin up the Walk’

Izzy: Combat Wombat wordsmith and spoken word

Faye June Ball: Singer songwriter, Indigenous educator, calling us in with her soothing acapella

Angelaqua: A blend of blues rock and world landscapes.

Brendon Murray: Spiritual activist, artist and singer songwriter

Russell Smith: Brolga Boys singing solo for Aunty Sue.

Kutcha Edwards: Singer songwriter, Indigenous educator

DJ’s and other special guests.





Doors open at 7pm

A light supper will be served.

Tickets at the door

$7 Concession

$10 Waged

$15 Family



All proceeds will go into the Sacred Life Walk, Friends of the Earth account.

For more information call:

Sue Charles: 0400 653 166

Kirstyn Lindsay: 0401 742 886

OutKast ft Erykah Badu, Cee lo, Big Rube... Liberation!

Nina Simone - Young Gifted And Black (Live)

New York @ Central Park Harlem Festival 1969

TRADITIONAL OWNERS PROTEST ACT OF DISPOSSESSION

Aboriginal elders and community members will protest against
the new Aboriginal Heritage Act at this year’s May Day March

Sunday 6 May 2pm Trades Hall

Victoria's new Aboriginal Heritage Act is just another act of dispossession, says Wurundjeri elder and traditional owner, Annette Xiberras.

Indigenous Victorians are furious about new State government laws that will restrict Traditional Owners from exercising their rights over land under the Aboriginal Heritage Act.

"Victoria's new Aboriginal Heritage Act is supposed to protect Aboriginal rights. What a joke. As a Wurundjeri elder, entitled to speak for the land around Melbourne, I won't have the same rights that I have to do that any more under the new laws," said Ms Xiberras.

Under the current legislation, the Wurundjeri people have the right to say yes or no to the disturbance of their cultural places. This right is being taken away under the new Act as developers will be able to challenge an Aboriginal organisation’s decision in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).

"Our people suffered some of the most severe and intense genocide in this country. Not a single Aboriginal person in Victoria today has been brought up in the traditional way, knowing their traditional language and having access to their sacred lands. That's because of invasion, agriculture, gold mining -- our people were taken from our lands and brought up in missions, our children were stolen and lied to about their heritage.

"Despite that, our elders have managed to hold onto significant, living traditions. Wurundjeri people know who they are, Yota Yota people know who they are, Gournditchmara people know who they are. It seems the only people who don't know that are the State Government..

A major concern to traditional owners across the state is the ability of Aboriginal people with non-traditional connections to country successfully obtaining Registered Aboriginal party status under the new Act:

"What is the point of being a Traditional Owner with native title rights if there's no way to exercise those rights? If the State Government really supports Aboriginal rights why did they fight the Yota Yota people in a court case that told those people they'd been washed away by history?

Ms Xiberras has also slammed the Government for not consulting with Aboriginal people, industry and local government over the new Act:

“The Government has not asked Victorian Aboriginal people what they want from the Act. Instead they have given us information sessions telling us what they are going to do and then calling that consultation.

She said that the Act is not realistic and that industry, farmers and small landowners will suffer under the unnecessary red tape and complex assessment processes.
"Even small battlers in the bush who want to put a new shed up will have to pay for an official cultural heritage assessment, which will cost them around $6,000 every time.

"The problem is not farmers and small landowners. The problem is that the Act does nothing to redress the real injustices for Victorian Aboriginal people.

"Bracks needs a rocket up him to take note of Aboriginal issues, and that is exactly what he's going to get on May Day and ongoing. The Victorian government is on notice to respect the rights of traditional owners, as our protest will tell him."

Annette Xiberras, Wurundjeri elder, is available for comment or interviews about this issue by calling 0410 44 04 64.