[asia-apec 20] Free-trade Activist

[ALARM]

ABOUT ALARM

ALARM (APEC Labour Rights Monitor) is a joint project of different labour groups, trade
unions, migrant and women workers organisations and other support groups in countries covered
by APEC.  It was first agreed in principle during the Trade and Workers' Human Rights
meeting(Kyoto, November 1995)  and subsequently endorsed by the participating groups of the
NGO Forum on APEC which met shortly after. The PP21 meeting (2-7 March 1996, Kathmandu)
and the EPZ Women Workers' Conference(25-30 March 1996, Hong Kong) also expressed
support to this project.  ALARM is based in Hong Kong. 


ANTI-FREE TRADE ACTIVISTS OUTRAGED BY POLICE SEARCH

Police and suspected Security Intelligence Service (SIS) agents intruded into the homes of two
anti-free trade activists on the pretext of searching for bomb-making equipment. On July 18,
police searched the home of Aziz Choudry, a spokesman of the group "Trading Our Lives."

 On 21 July, they searched the home of a University of Canterbury lecturer, Dr. David Small, who
was a speaker at an alternative forum held on 14 July parallel to an APEC conference in
Christchurch.
A spokesman of GATT Watchdog, Murray Horton, said the justification for the searches was that
a device bearing an anti-APEC slogan had been found outside the City Council office.

"We express the greatest outrage that the police and their political masters could think that this
had
anything to do with GATT Watchdog. We are very upset at the assumption that people organising
public activities would be sitting at home making bombs." Police found nothing to justify their
searches, he said. 
(Source: newspaper reports, 23 July 1996)